That's our policy

“I just closed my account after 44 years of being at the same bank,” my friend said.
The comment came out of the blue as I walked into her office, but it was apparent by her demeanor that she attached no small amount of importance to her action. It was a big decision.

“I was 18 years old when my dad took me to the bank to open my own checking account,” she continued, “and I’ve had that account for 44 years.”

Her decision to change banks, she said, came after a series of experiences convinced her the now-corporate-owned bank either did not care for her as a customer or was unable to tend to her needs from its corporate offices on the West Coast.

The experience of closing her account seemed to underscore her root problem.

After walking into the bank, she talked to two or three different people who led her through the forms and signatures to close her account. Finally, an officer joined the process to check off on everything and, just like that, a 44-year relationship dissolved.

“And the thing is,” she said, “not a single person asked me why I was closing the account. My first question would be, ‘Are you planning to transfer to another type of account with us?’ or ‘Is there some sort of problem?’ Nobody seemed to care that I was leaving.”

Going undercover

Her experiences led to a discussion about the new television “reality” show, “Undercover Boss.”

The concept of the 3-week-old show is that a CEO of a major corporation goes undercover to work at the front lines of the company. So far, the scenario has been that someone was filming a documentary about changing careers and was following this person around doing one-day samples of different jobs.

In each episode, the CEO (so far, they have been from Waste Management, Hooters and 7-Eleven; next Sunday the show features White Castle) spends a week visiting different work sites around the country and is assigned someone to give the “new hire” a taste of what the job is like.

It’s no surprise the CEOs find the jobs more difficult than they anticipated. They also find problems to address.

However, they also discover employees who make a positive impression on customers, employees who perform amazing work in the face of serious personal challenges, employees who ... in my opinion ... deserve better than corporate management removed from everything but the bottom line.

That has been my personal observation over the years: detached corporate concerns hovering around the bottom line are damaging to employees, the product or service, and to customers.

My friend’s experience is a perfect example. In the past, she knew people at the bank and they knew her. She asked for help with a problem and they worked out a solution. They presumably cared about her and definitely cared about keeping her business.

There are so few locally owned businesses these days that this disconnect between customer and owner seems to be commonly accepted. People just deal with their frustrations because they feel they cannot talk to someone in Arkansas about the root of their problems.

Of course, consumers jumped into business relationships with chain stores, banks, restaurants and even barber shops. We hold the power to help locally owned businesses succeed by trading with them. That does come at a literal cost because they do not have the purchasing power of a chain, so we must determine if saving that business is worth the money to us.

Or, we can wait until local stores are all run out of another state or country and we have to accept what they give us because, “That’s our corporate policy.”
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Web site for "Undercover Boss" - click here.