My bank, for my business account, is one I hardly ever deal with. They have these handy machines scattered around town, and when I get a cheque from a client, I visit one, feed it an envelope, and my account has more money.
This week, it so happened that I received a US$ cheque. That’s rare, and I don’t have any mechanisms to deal with it, so I had to go to the actual branch, which is not something I do often.
And you know what? It went great. No lineup, 2 tellers devoted to business services exclusively, and we had some nice banter and I got a few questions answered in the process. It was a win.
Until the followup.
The next day, I was called by a market research firm the bank had hired. They had some questions about my recent in-branch experience. A zillion questions, as it turned out. All asking for rankings from 1-7, in so many categories that I knew, over time, that my answers would never amount to anything (“well, we’re down 0.38% in ‘made the customer feel valued’ but we’re up 0.4% in ‘speed’ so I guess it’s a wash”) and all I could think as the call went on was that this bank really didn’t care about my time.
Do pollsters not realize that modern phones have timers on them?
Mine said 5:45 at the end. Nearly six minutes of increasingly granular questions about my branch experience, which, prior to that call, was stellar.
So I did what any technology-focused business owner would do in this situation.
I whined on Twitter to the official bank account.
They never replied. But they did follow me. And now they’re lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to bad mouth them again. I have no idea what the retribution will be, but on a scale of 1 to 7, my overall sentiment to this company has shifted by about an 8 today.
Photo by vlima.com
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