The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
When Customer Service Doesn't Matter
Tuesday - October 14, 2008 01:27 PM in
by Peter Leppik
It's been hard, I'm sure, for a lot of people to focus on day-to-day life the past few weeks, with the stock markets collapsing, banks getting taken over by the government, and our political leadership (such as it is) warning of dire times to come.
Fortunately for us at VocaLabs, things are going smoothly in our small corner of the economy (knock on wood), and a big client project is keeping us busy enough that we don't feel the need to compulsively refresh Google News to see how bad things are. Our liquid assets have remained liquid, and we have no immediate need to go to a bank and borrow money.
And fortunately for those of us living in the United States, we have an effective system of deposit insurance which guarantees that even if your bank collapses, a good chunk (usually all) of your money is still there.
Some people are not so fortunate. Iceland's bank collapse has apparently taken a lot of European savings down, since bank deposit insurance in Europe is not as uniform or robust as here in the States.
In a Banking Customer's Hierarchy of Needs, customer service definitely takes a lower priority than getting your money back. It's more important to know the deposits are safe than to get superior service than the DMV. Which is good, since at the rate banks are being nationalized, pretty soon it will actually be the DMV which handles our bank accounts.
So here's hoping this mess will be cleared up quickly, so we can go back to complaining that the teller was surly or it took 30 minutes on hold to reach an agent. In the meanwhile, we at VocaLabs aren't planning many sales calls on banks in the near future.
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