Image for Bank Customer experience: Quiz games and cookies don't cut it PostIt may not be enough to offer your bank’s customers free cookies and trivia quizzes if they’ve managed–in this online world–to actually walk in your door. The customer experience they seek probably lies more in the people behind the bank’s counters or desks, right?

The cookies are nice, mind you. The little cups of free coffee? Ditto. It raises the mood a little bit, especially on a rainy day or a cold winter’s morning. But, when the three tellers prepared to serve customers are acting like their cat just died, the rise in customer mood could be short-lived.

My Own Experience as a Bank Customer

That’s been my experience at one of the three local banks where I do business. Nice atmosphere. Fun quizzes on the board by the free coffee. But then there are those glum, haunted-looking tellers. I always feel like I’ve walked in on somebody’s funeral and I’m wearing a clown nose or something. Depending on my own mood, I’ll attempt to joke these tellers out of it or I’ll just mirror their pale and wane faces and get out of there as fast as I can.

At first I wondered if the tellers had missed out on customer service training? Or did the bank just not have a program that included employee measurement, for example.

Word on the street, however,  is it’s the boss’s fault. I mean, it’s a small town. Everyone talks. I’ve met the guy. He’s not what you might call “Mr. Personality.” He tries not to make eye contact. He’s not very good at small talk. I can only assume this personality-free man exhibits the same behaviors with his staff, the glum-faced tellers waiting to serve me.

Hmm…one wonders how this problem could be solved. If it’s a Top Down problem, who is it that’s going to tell the boss he could be hurting the bank’s customer experience?