Customer experience in the banking Sector is non negotiable – My BOA experience.

 In October 2019, I was in a Bank of Africa banking hall and I quickly realized they had no network. This meant that they could not give customers their personal and company account balances, transact on Money Gram or Western Union, initiate ATM/ mobile wallet withdrawal or effect withdrawal and account transfer entries.

Now while I waited, for the first 15 minutes I had to block out as much background noise as possible as a very disgruntled customer who was ahead of me waited to withdraw money from her Ugx account as US dollars. I do not want to digress, so in summary I will simply say it did not go well, tempers flared, the manager hid then left the bank through another exit and eventually she was handled later on by agreeing to give her the same rate she would obtain from competition when network returned. She stepped out briefly for a couple of minutes and came back.

During the time the angry Forex customer left the banking hall, 3 people (myself inclusive) remained and we waited thinking that this would be a short while. Up to this point the waiting process was peaceful until a total of 45 minutes since I entered that 2 new female customers walked in and quickly grew very agitated.

After audible grumbling on the state of service in Uganda and how we (Ugandan customers) are always taken for granted and now even have to beg to withdraw our own money. A comical but realistic depiction of a customer’s pains in some banking halls ensued after the brief gushing and spurting of mismatched conjecture the two new entrants.

Female Customer 1: “So we cannot transact?”

BOA Relationship Officer: “No, the network is down at the moment,” she responded politely.

Female Customer 2: Eh…, okay so can we get some water at least?”

BOA Relationship Officer: “Sorry, we don’t have water today. It just run out,” she responded avoiding all eye contact with the disgruntled customer as she continued to staple and file away her documents.

To provide you with context, the network had been off all morning, we were a total of 5 – 8 people in the banking hall now and it was 12:15 pm and the water from the dispenser had run out. Actually, my entire duration of time in the banking hall there was no water in the dispenser.

Female Customer 2: “Hhhm, ehh so at least you put for us TV (DSTV) to entertain us as we wait!”

The BOA Relationship Officer got up from her seat, went to the back office section where the manager sits and we all thought she was going to come back with the remote and turn on the DSTV device only for her to return empty handed.

Female Customer 2: “Nyabo, so put for us TV.  I thought you had gone to get us the remote. Or give us the remote and we choose a channel for ourselves.”

BOA Relationship Officer: “No, the TV is not working!” She blurted out nervously as she giggled.

I am a regular at this BOA location so I was well aware that her giggle was a nervous one and not one of contempt but in light of the situation at hand this was not an expression she should have used because this further fueled the ladies rage.

After a brief pause the lady crouched and cradled her forehead in the palm of her hand and said,

Female Customer 1: “Eyiii, my goodness so we can't transact, you don't/ cannot afford to have water in the banking hall for your customers and the DSTV does not work!”

With the latter statement, we all burst into laughter like a cackle of hyenas and to make matters worse; even before we could recover she added,

Female Customer 1: “So why are you open? Aren't you about to close?”

We all lost it at that point and it took a good 3 – 5 minutes to get us back to the quiet seclusion of our thoughts. But even more urgent was the return lady who had been waiting for over an hour and a half and urgently needed to purchase dollars. As she stated her issue after patiently waiting, the teller simply giggled as she expressed her disappointment, anger and frustration at this whole process.

Eventually she was assisted by the manager over phone conversation but it took some serious persistence and elevation (under statement) of her tone for her to be attended to with the urgency her issue required. The lady at the till should not have giggled even though the situation at hand was extremely hilarious in light of the 2 female customers’ recent banter but my take away from this incident was to never underestimate the impact of customer service/ experience training for front office staff.

BOA, this situation could have been handled so much better and I am almost 80% sure that you must lost the dollar Forex exchange customer as a client. I am reminded of a phrase from one of the training's I attended late last year, ‘’leaders only emerge when it is time for them to lead.” (Paraphrased) The question is have you/ are you grooming these leaders?

Another thing to factor in is what are the protocols when there is an outage and how to handle clients during this kind of crisis. In a banking sector that is saturated where every customer matter, why leave things like that to chance? 

Oh and for those of you who are wondering, the network was restored at 4:15 pm that day no I did not wait until then to get service. I left my number and asked the Relationship manager to give me a call when it was back on line.