Aside from twiddling your thumbs, there’s really not much to do when you are waiting for your turn in a bank. It’s unproductive. And institutions, particularly financial institutions, should know more than anyone else that productivity equals money. So if you make us wait 30 minutes to deposit money in your coffers, that’s costing not just the bank, but us, the consumers, pesos.
THE INCIDENT: At 2pm on Oct 29, I went to Metrobank Tomas Morato to deposit money. There were 10 people ahead of me and just one person behind the counter. I asked the branch officer if I could leave the money and deposit slip with him as I didn’t want to wait but he said they were not allowed to do that. Fair enough. So I asked him how come there was only one lady behind the counter and 10 people waiting to be serviced. According to him, they usually have two bank tellers but the other one is still out for lunch and won’t be back till 2.30pm. I transferred to the West Avenue branch, and there were at least 20 people in line, and four bank tellers. It was still taking them forever, though.
SHOULDA COULDA WOULDA: You know that we are nearing a long weekend, that a lot of people are going out of town, so you should expect a busy period. So why would you operate your bank with just one teller? Our solution: the branch officer should step up and take over the post of the teller while she is out for lunch. People in upper management should be flexible and think on their toes. If there is a queue of more than five people waiting, that is a problem waiting for a solution in efficiency.
On that note, I would like to commend the Bank of the Philippine Islands which requires guests to input the details of their transactions into a machine before being issued a queue number. This means that the bank teller would already have the bank account and transaction details in their system before you even reach the counter. The result: a faster turnover period; no more than a minute of your time. That’s what you call good service.
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