Wednesday, March 26, 2008

HSBC - The World's Local Bank - Ha!





This little neurotic rambling is about the wonderful service you can expect should you happen to open an account or have an HSBC account related question in their Gran Plaza location! I have no idea how good or bad their service is at some of the other branches around town, but, knowing full well how foreign the concept of customer service is in Mérida, I can imagine that it's not much different. Of course you would expect better from the world's local bank, but then again maybe not. Service at the HSBC Gran Plaza location is absolute shite.

Fight your way to the two people in charge of clearing up customer inquiries (there's always a crowd) and you will meet two of the most customer-service-challenged persons you may have met in a long time. If you are beyond 1 meter (three feet) from the edge of their desk, even if they are not with another customer, they will not see you because you are in their 'invisibility zone', kind of like wearing an invisibility cloak like in the Harry Potter novels. Great if you want to sneak up on them, not so much if you want them to look up and actually provide you with some kind of service, like an answer to a question perhaps. They will poke away on their computer or write things on those important papers they have in front of them and make a supreme effort NOT to acknowledge you.

After some hemming and hawing (throat clearing works occasionally as does a good, loud Buenos Dias or Tardes) they will look up with a bovine expression bordering on disdain - imagine if you will the look on a bored, disdainful cow - and will look at anything but your face, preferably studying the paper you have in your hand to judge how much time and effort dealing with you is going to cost them.

If they are with someone, well, all the better to ignore you, standing impatiently behind the person seated in front of you.

There will be no friendliness at all, unless of course you already know and get along with these fine service-oriented (not) individuals.

When they get up from their chairs to walk through the bank they will not acknowledge anyone in the interminably long cashier lineup - this is not part of their job description.

The cashiers, for the most part, are much friendlier and customer-service oriented than these higher-paid "executives" are, proffering smiles and actually trying to provide some level of service to the exasperated clients dripping in one by one from the long lineup.

I wonder what the powers that be at HSBC head office would think if they had to suffer through the crappy service at this branch?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

True. "Customer Service" in Merida simply means that it's the customers who serve.