Customer Service? Not at the Bank.

It's easy to forget that customer service is a really critical part of the marketing mix and this is a problem because it's so often the first thing that goes wrong. How many times have you found just what you want (to buy) only to be disappointed when the seller is disinterested in the final outcome and quite frankly doesn't care whether you make the purchase or not?

In my case, too many times to mention, and this week I've experienced a real corker so it's driven me to this. The starting point of this story was a distressing fraudulent transaction on one of my business bank accounts. One brownie point to the bank here (the only one in the end) as they spotted it before I did and contacted me. So far so good.

Unfortunately we didn't manage to stop the money leaving my account to a suspicious sounding individual, who is now considerably better off than I am. From here the bank loses brownie points - I get a letter from them 2 days later (following several further frantic phone calls as I try and get my money refunded) confirming that my money has been refunded, and that my account was blocked from certain types of transaction, but I could still undertake other types. Good thinks me, I know where I am. Except they hadn't refunded my money, and the information about what they had blocked and what they hadn't, was completely incorrect.

I've spent a further 2 days this week trying to sort out the mess, including cheques to suppliers that will now bounce. Bearing in mind that I am the customer and this is no fault of my own - what happened to the customer service? I got passed from pillar to post, told different things by different people, finally getting cut off when they put me through to the complaints department!

Huge marketing mistake. Not only will I tell lots of people how bad this bank have been, I will move my account to a competitor (as soon as I can get back into the blasted thing). How to lose a customer and a reputation.

Unfortunately something tells me I shouldn't have expected anything else - didn't they get us into this mess in the first place?

End of marketing rant.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk