One man's comments on everything


Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Client service perspective : Absa


How do you measure your bank ?

It is no secret that I think the service level of South African banks are very low.    In fact I think it stinks .

Would you rate the following as being part of customer service ?
1.      Price
2.      Ease of operations?
3.      Quality of advice received?
4.      Truthfulness and transparency in negotiations?
Of course you would !
So let us have a look at one of them : In this case Absa.
1.      They have just been judged the most expensive bank amongst the top 5 in South Africa .  They have all sorts of excuses.  Whatever, none of it makes sense.
2.      In a recent survey of brokerage divisions Absa was ranked as follows :
(Out of the top 10 )
a)     They were the cheapest. (you pay for what you get ?)
b)     The quality of their service was ranked at nr 10 out of 10
c)      The quality of their advice was ranked at nr 10 out of 10
d)     The quality of their trading platform was ranked 9 out of 10.
3.      A client (full details available on request) made arrangements with the bank about arrears on his account.  The arrangements were confirmed in the presence of the clients’ lawyers during which time the client also changed his domicilium address with the bank.  The client kept to his side of the arrangement but the bank immediately had summons issued at the old address ( this off course so that the client would not know about this)
And  then proceeded to obtain judgement ( again with the client being clueless about this)

I can go on about this bank’s service but for now – you be the judge and decide whether you want to carry on doing  business with them. And of course the question is which one is now really better ?