Friday, October 23, 2015

Banks and Service - an Oxymoron??



In perusing the CBC and the Globe and Mail online sites I noted that two Canadian banks (Toronto-Dominion and CIBC) are laying of hundreds of Canadian employees. Why? Because the banks need to reduce costs. Not because they are losing money but rather because they are not making enough. Apparently their record profit this year (and in at least the five years previously) is not large enough. As I am sure I have mentioned before, the concept of a record year implies that it has been an exceptional year; that profits have been well beyond expectation. It should not ever be assumed that a company can have a record year every year. Or at least we never use to assume that. Now stockholders demand that profits rise every year and if they don't, then senior management is at fault. Those managers are then are fired/resign with a huge termination bonus, or hundreds of employees are fired with usually very limited termination payouts. It would seem that the large stockholders want to invest money in a risk free environment or rather that if there are risks that they are born by other people.

I suspect that if some people within the banking system had their way, one would never see a real body. It is their clear preference that people should do all of their banking on-line or at an ATM machine. I am sure that they would prefer to not have to pay tellers to assist people in managing their money. If everyone did their banking without talking to a bank employee, the bank would make the same amount of money on the transaction but would not have to pay anyone's salary. Good deal for the bank.

Of course banks are not the only "service" corporations who want us to serve ourselves without reducing our cost. There was a time when someone - usually a young kid, filled our gas tanks. It was a service that gas stations provided to their customers. As the gas was being pumped, oil could be checked and the windows washed. There might even be a conversation. Then gas stations started to offer a choice. One could pump your own gas and save money or have someone do it for  you at the regular price. Now not only does one have to fill your own gas tank (except I think in Saskatchewan) but you can save time and use your bank card to pay at the pump. Any bets on how long before there are gas stations with no attendants? Again - the company makes the same profit without having to pay employees.

Home Depot and Loblaw are two other companies that regularly encourage people to use their self checkout lines. Of course governments love the concept of self-serve. They would much rather have people on hold on the telephone than standing in line where they can see them.

I understand the convenience of not having to talk to anyone, of not having to wait in line while other people waste the clerk's time by having meaningless two sentence conversations about the weather. I know that people have busy lives and if one does not have to get to the bank during business hours, or to walk to the gas station clerk's little hut to pay the bill, life is so much easier. But every time we decide to use a "person-free" kiosk, every time we decide to interact with a machine rather than a person, there is a cost. That cost is very real to those entry level clerks who need those jobs but who are deemed to be a threat to the profit line of large, multi-national companies. Every time we use a self checkout line not only do we take away a little bit of an employee's job, but we provide justification for those large companies to continue decreasing service while maximizing profits. Every time we chose not to interact with a person - we provide confirmation to that company that we value convenience over service.

I regularly refuse to use self service. I like interacting with people - I think the act of providing a good service is an art that should be encouraged and not reduced to an irrelevant line on an accountant's spreadsheet.

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