Whenever I deal with customer service departments, or other teams at work, I have two levels of expectation: the outcome that would make me happy, and what I think will actually happen. This post tells of an experience I had that shows: there is nothing holding you back from working together and always delivering (or getting) the outcome that makes you happy.
Working as I do in a bank, my employer provides my banking services. (As an aside: the only way to get a good deal out of a bank is to work in one.) I wanted to find out if it was possible to conduct a same-day bank transfer to Poland, and if so, what it would cost to do so, and if employees get a preferential rate.
Sadly, the information on this is not very well organised. My first stop on this investigation took me to the "Find help" section. I found an "answer" (in Danish) which referred me to another page (also in Danish) which had a link to a PDF file (also in Danish) which told me about the prices... but to find out if it was possible I had to find a link in that PDF file to a web page (in English) where it told me that transfers in Polish Złoty are possible the same day, but "Express Payment only in Denmark, Norway and Sweden". Did that mean a payment between those countries, or from those countries? And would I pay the same as our regular customers?
As I always do when I can't find the answer to how the services the company that employs me operates, I opened my banking app and started a chat. I explained my predicament, and since this was getting involved, I suggested moving to internal communication, rather than typing on my phone. Just as I was about to provide my contact details, I got "Technical error. Log out and back in again." - and I lost my chat.
I tried to find who I was talking to, but couldn't uniquely identify them. So, I opened the chat again, said "I was just talking to someone, it was getting quite involved and I was just about to give them my username to continue the discussion, can you put me through?". Although they couldn't, I got their username so I could get hold of them.
My contact managed to find someone in the employee bank to check the employee rates with, and reached out to someone in the Cash Management department to find out if it was actually possible to get a same-day transfer to Poland. They didn't know, but gave a phone number to call. My contact investigated further, while I rang the number she was given.
Between us, we got the answer: yes, it is possible to do a same-day transfer from Denmark to Poland; and employees get the same rates and fees as normal customers. But how many people - both customers and staff - would have given up before reaching this conclusion? My experience is that usually "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. But the simple fact is: not knowing the answer didn't stop my contact from getting the answer. The chat going down didn't stop us from carrying on the communication. And, according to my contact, "our customer focus programme now lets us spend more time on things like this."
But when such things happen, it's important to learn. Through this process, we learnt two things: firstly, that the information we have on our website needs improving and collecting in one place. My contact is following up on that. Meanwhile, I spotted a small error on the price list for employees (a rate was listed as % - percent - instead of ‰ - per thousand). I wrote a mail to the person responsible for the content, and it was corrected within hours.
The result of all this: despite the fact that it took probably an hour of two people's time to figure out something that ought to be straightforward, we spread the knowledge of the answer, we gained awareness of a problem, and we set things in motion to address that problem.
I'm not sure if it's appropriate to quote Jordan Belfort (he of Wolf of Wall Street fame) in the context of a bank, but it is, at least, relevant: the only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself about why you can't achieve it. And that's the thing: whether you're a contact centre team fielding calls from customers, or a team that receives a request from another team, there's nothing stopping you from giving them the outcome that will solve their problem and make them happy.
