I recently had an experience with Chevy Chase Bank which seems to be an ongoing theme in customer service – it’s bad. Please allow me to share.
I bank at Wachovia and have for years. I used to bank with Chevy Chase Bank until the teller refused to believe that I was who I said I was – even though I had banked at the same branch for five years and had a driver’s license with my photo and name. The attrition rate at the branch was pretty severe and I typically got a new teller every time I visited. Teller was rude – I was angry. I moved my business to Wachovia.
My husband has banked with Chevy Chase for more than 11 years. Because he didn’t want to move his account, every two weeks I go to Chevy Chase, withdraw the bill money and take it across the street to Wachovia to deposit in my account. I’ve been going through this ritual at this particular branch for over a year. Last week, I went in for the usual drill and was told that I had to go across the street to Wachovia, get a “Endorsement Guarantee Stamp”, bring the stamped check back to Chevy Chase, make the withdraw and then drive back to Wachovia to make the deposit. This is the first time this has ever come up and I was, quite frankly floored. I asked the bank manager several times why I had to do this (since I never had before) and what it had to do Wachovia (especially since I had given them my driver’s license and a credit card for verification) and the flat response each time was “Because that’s the policy.” Huh?
I needed to take care of the bills, so I did as they asked and went to Wachovia. The customer service rep was super nice, but was as dumbfounded as I was. She wasn’t even sure what stamp to use and assured me that Wachovia wouldn’t have put me through this. Eventually, we found the stamp and I went back to Chevy Chase. During the car ride I called my husband and let him know what was going on. He was rightfully aggravated and agreed to close the account.
When I arrived at the teller window at Chevy Chase, the bank manager processed the check with her continued unfriendly attitude. I let her know that my husband would be closing his account and her response was “OK.” Nice. She also wouldn’t look me in the eye which makes me nuts.
Chevy Chase was recently purchased by Capital One so maybe employees are in limbo, but if she wants to keep her job when the buy-out is complete, she may want to change her tune.
So here’s my take-away…
While social media enables us to engage customers online in truly amazing ways, face-to-face customer service is still king and we can’t screw it up. If you can’t genuinely try to be helpful, smile when you can and treat customers with respect – you are going to fail and I am going to laugh when you do. I worked in retail for years and dealt with some pretty nasty customers. I even had a guy throw a box of software at me . But, I tried to be as nice as I could to customers. Because people talk, bad news spreads and poor face-to -face interactions always leave a bad taste in the customer’s mouth.
Oh, and don’t bank at Chevy Chase. 
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