Banking on listening to your customers

A recent letter seems to be doing the rounds on the internet - its author is allegedly a 96 year old unhappy soul, who, despite her age, seems to be as sharp as Edward Deming crossed with your earnest engineering grad. And with a great sense of humor. The reason for the letter is: "to thank you (the Bank Manager) for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber with last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it.

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank." And the solution is ingenious:

"In due course, I will issue your (Bank's) employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cann ot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:
1. To make an appointment to see me
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home
7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.
9. To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call." Click here to read the complete letter.

Obviously it isn't real (I mean the 96 year old woman story) - it was written by a Peter Wear a columnist for Brisbane's Courier Mail and inspired by an incident of his cheque bouncing. This was 1999 but many brands and businesses even today fail to answer the simple core question: "who do we exist for?" IBM of course has a brilliant campaign that drives home the point, less eloquently than Mr Wear, but spot-on nonetheless...