Pity the bank!

My bank, Westpac NZ made a mere $441 million profit in the last six month. This is up by only nine million over the same period last year. The unfortunate bank had to find some way of making more money. They used to have a nice, smiling young woman who greeted you when you entered the bank, help to direct you to someone who could solve your problems, and sometimes she solved problems herself. She made appointments for you. You, the customer, felt good about being welcomed. As a cost cutting measure this person was replaced by a mannequin, unsmiling, unhelpful, somewhat ridiculous, standing in front of a computer that seems to serve no useful purpose, but then it probably doesn't cost much, there are many discarded computers lying around. I needed to discuss a matter with someone who had the authority to help me, but there was no one, apart from the unsmiling mannequin to talk to. The few staff who were around made a great effort to ignore me. Never mind, I thought, these days you communicate by phone and email. I can't phone my branch of the bank directly, I had to call a call centre. They didn't answer. Talking to customers didn't seem to rank high priority. OK, I thought, I send them an email and ask them to ring me when they could spare the few minutes from their precious time. No one rang back, but two days later I received an email that did not solve my issue. Back went my email, and four days later, I did get a call from an accounts manager, my problem was solved, but not to my satisfaction, but with the additional cost of $400. By then I did manage to get an appointment with a real human being, a helpful young woman in my branch of the bank, and she solved my issue and a number of other issues I didn't know I had, in a few minutes. She explained that though they are busier than ever, the bank cut staff by a significant number, so they are all too busy to attend to customers. Within living memory there was such a thing as a bank manger, who made a point of personally knowing his customers. Such bank managers are things of the past. We used to have accounts mangers, whose job was to look after your accounts should they need some looking after. These days staff don't stay long enough in a job to get to know their clients. Hang customer service, customers are numbers, suckers who contribute to the corporate profit of the institution. This is the face of corporate capitalism. I know that I can't complain, that compared with the New Zealand banking system, those in other parts of the world are worse, but it used to be better, and only the drive to increase the dividends to shareholders accounts for this decline. Perhaps one of there days public companies will compete to satisfy the needs of their customers, and not only to fleece them for increased profits.