My Naija News - Customer Bashing in Nigerian Banks

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Customer Bashing in Nigerian Banks

Written by Tessa Doghor

Wednesday, 06 August 2008

Customer service in Nigerian banks can be compared to the epileptic behaviour of our Power Holding Company. Why, you may ask? For most customers, the trouble starts right from the entrance where you have to wait at least 10 minutes to gain entry into the bank because if it is not your body spray beeping that terrible machine they use for security, it is your shoes or belts... I mean the bank ought to respect the fact that fashion will cause women to wear just about every and anything that looks good. Do women now have to avoid metallic fashion accessories?

Miss Onome Nimbi, a marketer in one of the companies in Lagos narrated a horrid story of a colleague who misplaced 80,000 naira in front of a bank after emptying the paraphernalia in her bag into those tiny lockers that are provided for the safe-keeping of your personal effects. She was devastated and has not returned to the offending bank. The structure that was put in place for security worked against her and she lost huge sums of money that the security of the bank could not account for.

You think it’s all over and then you get to the tellers who look you up and down and then look for good and less than acceptable reasons to keep you sitting in the bank for hours waiting because the server is down. When you have a deal waiting for you or you are on a deadline and need to run, the last thing you need is a snub-nosed cashier telling you their servers are down and they need to call head quarters to confirm what not. Doesn’t it just take you down memory lane of what it was like banking in the early nineties?

You might think that the days of spending hours in banks are over but ask the poor clients of a certain bank who spend time queuing at the head office everyday because their share certificates were not posted, they spend as many as seven working-days going to the said bank all to no avail. The chances are the customers will still be at the said bank tomorrow trying to collect their share certificates. I wish the managers of said bank will put their customers first and do something about the anomaly.

I am not trying to say that we do not appreciate the improvements that have been made in banking over the past ten years. I believe Customer care is a customer service that seeks to acquire new customers, provide superior customer satisfaction, and build customer loyalty. How on earth is the customer supposed to be satisfied and be loyal to a bank who does not consider the customer? Well I guess that is one question for the bankers to answer.

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Comments (4)

	1. Written by Mariam on 07-08-2008 01:08 - Guest
	they ignore emails Have you ever sent email to the customer service addresses listed on these banks' websites. They don't respond to emails. Why list these addresses at all?

	2. Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 11-08-2008 01:09 - Guest
	they ignore emails Its much worse than you think but thank everyone you meet in a bank and you might see thru

	3. Written by Naija on 20-08-2008 18:08 - Guest
	Customers should come first! The problem with Nigerians is that we lack customer service skills, and it is the key thing to a successful business!

	4. Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 18-06-2009 14:42 - Guest
	Mr. Nigerian entrepreneurs needs to generally take their prospective and current staff through the new mantra of customer management\' customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer retention and how to deal with customers at every touch points to achieve all these.

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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 August 2008 )

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