Re: UKNM: ATMs

[Nick Sweeney]

> On the contrary, the introduction of ATMs is an excellent example of

> technology being used to provide a higher level of customer service and at

> the same time increasing customer expectations. Until ATMs were introduced,

> people expected to have to queue up in a bank between 9.30am and 3.30pm to

> get at their money whereas now they expect to go no further than their

> nearest hole in the wall, want telephone banking 24 hours a day, etc.


Call me a bleeding-heart paternalist, but don't you think that in spite of

the pseudo-personalisation that ATMs, telephone banking and the like

offer, this disintermediation is actually an increased intermediation

which accentuates the distance between customer and bank? In short, once

you get your wages paid into the bank and use your cards to access it, the

only time you're likely to engage in personal contact with bank staff are

at times of urgency or of critical importance--and, often, when things go

wrong. Which, as the increase in complaints suggests, is where the banks

are failing, because when you have to see someone about a loan, or because

the computer has miscalculated your balance, they know you not as an

individual, but as a series of transactions that are themselves processed

and pre-judged by the same computer system. I speak from three months of

personal experience this year.


> Far from abolishing customer service, ATMs have helped create an environment

> where customer service must reach new heights for businesses to continue to

> be competitive.


Well, I'd be less inclined to disagree if I didn't know from the horse's

oatbag that NatWest switched to an NT-based ATM system:


a) because it was pretty much forced upon them by MS

b) because it allows for the introduction of advertising on ATMs 


and then blamed their staff rather than the OS when said system regularly

broke down because it wasn't as scalable as the old one.


Net marketing may be about a "one-to-one future", as Michael Sippy has

frequently mentioned; but the task is recognise that personalisation

ought to apply as much to the service provider as to the customer.


Nick Sweeney

-- 

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