A simple mistake that chased away a loyal customer
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for dropping by!
Note: this is rant post, about my dad’s experience as a former employee of a local bank.
My dad is a retiree. He used to work for more than 10 years in a local bank. And he even extended his retirement age and worked as contract for the bank for another 2 years. I can still remember that in the past, whenever my dad drove passed the bank, he would look to check if there’s anything suspicious about the bank – any suspicious people, did the alarm go off, are the lights on, etc.
I can only say one thing – my dad was a very loyal employee. Several banks approached him but he refused to go.
But sadly, the bank did not appreciate him after he retired. The bank gave him nothing when he decided to discontinue the contract renewal. Contract staff to them, are not full-time staff and are not eligible for the extra pension funds. I think the pension fund is quite a lot. So in the end, my dad only received the money from the EPF.
Then recently, the bank’s credit card which my dad is holding has reached its expiry date. My dad called up and asked them to send a new card.
The bank refused and said this “Sorry to say that you are no longer our employee. Thus, we will not renew your credit card”.
My dad told me this and I was quite surprised. I thought the banks are competing with each other for credit card customers? Furthermore, my dad has 100% clean record. He never owed the bank anything.
But of course, my dad was very disappointed because after all the hard work, the bank did something like this to him. It was a free for life card, but other banks are giving him the same type of credit card – with higher credit limit. So in the end, he decided to write an email to the bank.
“I understand that the bank renewed my card once after my retirement. The bank’s decision to cancel my card now without any warning, came as a surprise to me. However, I do respect the bank’s decision. Just in case you want to know more about me, you can contact your branch managers XXX, XXX, XXX and XXX.”
2 days later, the bank called and offered to renew the card. =_=
My dad refused. The damage has been done and there’s no turning back.
And the bank called again. They even sent some emails and asked him to reconsider.
Moral of the story? I think for a large corporation like this, this kind of mistake should never be done. First, it makes people think that you never appreciate your current and former employees. Second, you jumped to conclusion without any warning, and without any solid proof. Third, you just chased out one of your most loyal customers.
In the end, my dad did more than rejecting the new card. He went on and closed all his accounts (and ours) with the bank. 35 years of relationship burned, because of a silly mistake.
p/s…. my dad worked for the first bank in his 20s, then the bank got bought over by another bank…and few years later, by this “local bank”.
That show that loyalty does not always pay.
My dad is a bank officer for a local bank for 30++ years, when he retired he extended his contract for extra 2 years, then 1 day someone was sent by HQ to replace him without any prior warning when his 2 years contract was almost due.
He was so pissed and quit immediately. Imagine going to work one day and a new face told you, “Hey, I am here to replace you. You can go home now.”
It’s not that we are hoping for more, but just slightly more courtesy and humane treatment.
Thus I will never put loyalty to a company which doesn’t show sign of appreciation. Loyalty is earned, not expected.
d_luazs last blog post..Why Travel?
Well, by the story there, I would say that your father is being naive (no offend, don’t come chase me ya…) but seriously, how would a support centre suppose to know your father? Further more, a simple mistake made by a small employee (or front desk) shouldn’t be that much of impact, isn’t it?
Sounds like your dad fell victim to poor customer policy. It happens when bureaucrats write business policies rather than the people who actually deal with customers, like marketers.
One thing about business policies – they are usually written for the majority not the minority. A person like your dad – ex-employee cum loyal customer – is a minority, perhaps making up less than 0.01% of the total client base. It’s such a small group the bank may not even bother to write a special policy for this group. You know how banks work – no policy, no special treatment. Simple as that. The policymaker may be the root cause in this case.
By the way, this problem is not confined to your dad’s bank. In the US, a VP of a phone company had his phone line terminated once for a bill flagged as overdue. For some reason the system failed to flag him as an employee and nobody in credit control recognized that the name belonged to their VP. It caused a lot of red faces.
@Wong, I think the fact that the bank could say, “Sorry to say that you are no longer our employee. Thus, we will not renew your credit card.” shows that they knew they were dealing with an ex employee. That’s why I see this as a policy problem and not a miscomunication problem.
@ d_luaz
I think in the end, they don’t really care about people because if you don’t work, others will. Same goes for a lot of other companies.
But I think banks are some of the worst employers out there. LOL.
@ wong
Or maybe you are the type who don’t believe in loyalty?
I believe my father is not the only “naive” person. Seriously, there’s nothing wrong to be loyal to the company you work for.
Also do you know that the banks have integrated system? They can check your records and profile – how much you owe other banks, your credit records, your history, etc. And the person did mention that my dad is an ex-employee
A simple mistake by a small employee? FYI, the employee has no right to say “No, we gonna discontinue”. The bank actually waited for 1 day before getting back to my father. So the answer didn’t come from this “small employee”.
@ Damien
Maybe that is why some people said for a business dealing with human beings, it should be managed by human beings and not according to some stupid business policies. We see this kind of bad treatments by a lot of large corporations who just don care about the customers/employees.
But then again, I also know that there are few big corporations who are moving towards more customer-oriented policies. For example, HSBC. Their customer service has been quite good so far. And a lot of my friends are changing their bank accounts from this local bank to HSBC or other more people-oriented banks.
LOL, and well, i do have a bad habit. If a company screws around with me or someone i know, i will never ever do business with them anymore unless they have something sooooooo attractive that i will ignore that bad treatment. oh, and i will never invest in them too