The Customer Service review of four Commercial Banks.

(First published- July 14, 2020. )

My focus is on four banks actually;

ACCESS,

STANBIC IBTC,

STERLING and

UBA.

It was a ‘thing’ for me when a family friend I hadn’t contacted in few years called me from the blue. His friend’s handbag just got stolen, but for her Stanbic Ibtc debit card and phone (which contained her bank app), she wouldn’t have been bothered about the small amount the bag contained.

All my family friend knew was that I work in a financial institution so I should be ‘enlightened enough’ to proffer a solution. This expectation not only shocked but challenged me to device a solution, just so the fraudsters would not access the account for withdrawals. Meanwhile, it was a Sunday.

I have never been to a  Stanbic Ibtc  branch let alone be an account holder so initially, I was at a loss. Subsequently however, I went ahead and googled the customer service e-mail of the bank (customercarenigeria@stanbicibtc.com). But as I typed out stating the details of the account holder, inside of me I already nursed the feeling that the complaints might not be attended to, no thanks to the day of the week that it was. I sent the mail anyway, tagging along as highly important.

Next was to Twitter and onto the bank’s page with an explanatory message on the latest post and also via a dm.

Lo and behold brethren, in less than an hour the three channels were responded to.

The mail trail even saw a customer care representative confirming to me that the client’s cell-phone number was unreachable for confirmation. I gave a reply that the phone was stolen, they blocked the account anyway.

I became a guru and I felt so important with the number of ‘thank yous’ that I got in the days to come. In no time, news went round family and friends that I not only have much sense, but that I can make things happen in the financial world even on a Sunday. Meanwhile, I work in the micro-finance sector, but to people, a banker is a banker so who cares? lol.

A few weeks later, no surprises someone else in the friendly chain ringed me with her hubby’s phone that her personal phone ‘had grown wings’. And despite the fact that it was a weekend, (Saturday), I felt life was easy with the magic of  Stanbic Ibtc  until I met Access, she also banks with Sterling too.

Needless to say, as far as I was concerned prior to that day, ACCESS BANK was the best bank until ‘they fall my hand’ (local parlance for disappointment).

My bank since 2010, first as the now-defunct Intercontinental bank and since Access bank took over; I have enjoyed fantastic banking services so much that I never had a second bank account until April, 2020.

Narrating the strengths of the  Access bank  that I used to know; here goes a bank with excellent banking app, customer-friendly banking products and even prompt customer care service that will swiftly put a call across if issues gets really awful.

So on this day, Saturday, 13^th of June, 2020, my first point of call was Twitter. Like I had done with that of the friend that transacts with Stanbic, I went ahead to drop a message on the latest tweet of the urgency of my request on both bank’s Twitter account. And while I was able to send a dm to Sterling bank, Access bank’s Twitter account wasn’t accessible to be dmed. A terrible put-off first of all.

With all the sense of pride welled up in me; I mailed ACCESS BANK at contactcenter@accessbankplc.com which even popped up as a suggestion in my mail, having been overly familiar with same. I availed them the details of my family friend’s account number and the reason why the account needs to be blocked as soon as possible. Next was a similar mail to STERLING BANK at customercare@sterling.ng which I culled from the internet and just when I was editing the message, a DM response from STERLING BANK popped up as a notification on my phone that the account has been blocked.

Unfortunately, no response came from my own bank, ACCESS BANK. Yet I wouldn’t have believed no action would be taken until the next Monday, the family-friend in question called me that while her STERLING ACCOUNT was blocked, ‘the face’ of that of ACCESS ACCOUNT remained glaringly opened for any smart phone thief to have a field day. I was not only very disappointed but angry.

A week later, I sent another mail expressing my dissatisfaction and hoped that a response would come, but it never did.

This annoyingly took me back to the Twitter comment section of ACCESS BANK and my discovery was disappointing. The nonchalance of the ACCESS BANK customer care as well as the page handlers is top notch. Zero efforts towards being bothered about the ‘stains’ that are recently forming up on the formidable brand that the bank had strive to build over the years.

Even though, I am unlike a few of ‘us’ who gets dissatisfied at every little discomfort from service providers, this is despite the fact that I am not alien to how difficult it is to build-up a formidable brand in Nigeria. But then I sincerely cannot afford to shy away from the poor customer service from ACCESS BANK lately.

I am also not alien to the recent banter at the bank by Nigerian Twitter users over stamp duty deductions. But I refuse to cry foul over that because an explanatory mail had as a matter of honesty been sent by ACCESS prior to the actual deductions, explaining the reason for the action to be taken. So even when the deductions came in form of torrential debit alerts, as biting as it was on my account balance I took it in good faith.

Meanwhile, my good standing knowledge of the stamp duty charge however, was availed me by the customer care unit of UBA, the bank I newly started banking with after a decade relationship with ACCESS BANK.

I had noticed rather strange deductions on my new UBA savings account in April. And in just one week of banking, I had gotten a few debit alerts as stamp duty charges that brought me discomfort and pronto, I sent an inquiry mail to cfc@ubagroup.com.

And in another 48 hours, I got well-detailed explanations and I must applaud the professionalism and the good usage of words despite my grievance on my earlier inquiry. Same thing happened when I complained about issues from the UBA app. The response from the customer care team was not only very explicit, but alsogave me the bit by bit details on how to go about correcting the anomaly, one suggestion which worked in the end. Imagine them telling me to actually go ahead to correct ‘something’ from the settings of my phone, to show they really cared about making the app a working success.

So dear ACCESS BANK, this article is not to bring your reputable brand down by comparing you with competitors, I am not unreasonable.

It is a feedback for you to return to the dependable and reliable bank that we used to know. You would agree with me that if the hard-earned money of my family friend had been cashed out by the robber that stole her phone, it would have been attributed to the non-promptness on the part of your customer care agents. Same feat other competitors were able to seamlessly achieve.

And please don’t refer me to the aftermath mails you sent informing of how to go about blocking accounts in the case of theft, not many people would have alternative phones to do that when they get robbed.

Or that on a lighter mood, your erstwhile reasonable and prompt customer service agents were probably sacked in the last retrenchment exercise.