Throughout my career, I have found that the single most frequent cause of a project or group’s failure occurs when the individual’s involved fail to communicate. While the seemingly obvious problem is easily visible, the transitions required to correct the situation are less pronounced and can be difficult to implement when one is not focusing on the process. The path toward correction of the communication problem has a dysfunctional, collaborative, and anticipatory phase. Discerning which phase a group is in can be simple once one understands the specific symptoms or attributes of the phases.

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I am not an expert in the field of banking by any stretch, but I am a consumer and customer of one of the biggest banks in America…who shall remain nameless :) and SOMETHINGS awry with their communication between customers and customer service. Let me tell you about my recent experience…

We recently went on a three-week trip to Norway and Finland. About 2 weeks prior to us leaving, I decided to be pro-active and call all my credit card companies and debit card company to let them know that we would be in northern European for a period of time and would be using our cards over there. Just letting them know so my card would be valid and transactions would go through when needed. You know, I was trying to do all the stuff the travel people tell you to do ahead of time, and had security in mind for my cards.

Called Discover….no problem… in a quick, friendly visit with a customer service rep, all was well and taken care of.

Called Mastercard…same thing…quick and easy, no problem; all set up and ready to go within 5 minutes.

Called my Visa debit card through B of A. My call got rerouted several times, ended up on hold for over 30 minutes TWICE, then routed to wrong department and my call was summarily dropped. Tried to go online and make a note that we would be out of the country and guess what? There were no options to even choose on the list they provided of possible automated messages. So, I left work, got in my car and drove a couple of miles down the road to my local branch. Was greeted at the door by a young guy who said he could help me. Went into a little room with him, explained my frustration with their phone system, and told him what I needed to do. He then got on the phone and called someone at B of A, got rerouted to the WRONG PERSON himself, and after he talked to 3 different people, and I sat and waited for almost 45 minutes. He SAID that it was taken care of. At that point, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not…so what did I do??? I decided to not take a chance of being able to use my debit card over there, and withdrew a large sum of money from my account to take with me instead. On the way back to the office, I then called the number on the back of my card, explained to the lady what should have just taken place and I was just checking to make sure there was a notation about my account being used in Europe between this date and that date. Well, that must have been too soon for his changes to take place within their system, because SHE DIDN’T SEE IT. Total frustration on my part, with this bank and debit card.

At this point, I asked myself…WHY was it so easy for Discover to do it quickly on the phone in a 5-minute call; and for MASTERCARD to do it in a 5 minute call, and B of A couldn’t do it in several hours and direct calls from my own bank??? WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD?

Here’s the end of my story… we got to Europe, and all my cards worked for me over there…even my B of A debit card, but I was nervous about it the whole trip. And when I got back…I decided….

I am changing banks.

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I’ve officially seen the full spectrum of Remote Deposit Capture now. We’ve been to banks that will sell scanners and merchant capture solutions to mom and pop shops and give their dog a login account through cash management (Don’t worry he’s a guard dog, so he understands security). I’ve also talked to CEO’s who just won’t allow their customers to do their encoding for them, so they won’t even consider a merchant capture product. Maybe he should get a more reliable customer base.

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With banking technology advancing almost by the minute, you’ve probably been fighting to keep up with all these changes. You can set up things like mobile banking, create a company blog, provide remote check deposit services all you want. However, no matter how much ground-breaking technology you provide your customers, the main thing that will keep them loyal to you is your FI’s dedication to customer service.

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As my two-year Kate would say after a meal, "All done." The 1st BarCampBank in Dallas is officially done. Pictures here. Videos coming soon. Read Full Post

With all the talk about TGG and changing the Financial Industry, some people might be led to believe that work is all we do. While we love what we do, it’s not all we do and the last two weeks have been super active on the personal side of things for us. What do I mean?

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"Do you have a sample policy we can have?"
"Who would you recommend for managed security?"
"What is the best way to build a technology steering committee?"

These are questions we get quite often and we feel comfortable answering, but there are LOTS of other questions that we have no clue about. Human Resources, Construction regulatory requirements, the list goes on...

As I look across our industry I see financial institutions doing a lot of the same things. Same IT systems, same processes, same strategic goals but a lot of that information is being kept to themselves. Closed. Proprietary. Locked up. I think doing this does nothing but hurt our industry which is already hurting today. That's why I built Banktastic.com. I wanted a place that was free and viewable to anyone to be able to access information, learn from it, and pay-it-forward to others that need help in hopes to improves the overall knowledge share of the industry. We have begun to do that and every day are getting new people, from CEOs to tellers, becoming apart of the community and this conversation.

Banktastic allows FIs, associations, leagues, and financial services companies attach themselves to a community and share amongst themselves as well as the collective. We are providing a service that is connecting people to each another and allowed everybody to learn from each other. We think this web-based service will allow people, both internally and to outside parties, to have a centralized place for information (get it out of the single persons email box) and leverage the power of the community to deem what is most important. We'd love for you to come join the conversation! Make a Comment (0)

When I was a kid I spent countless hours collecting, trading, playing with (and sometimes blowing up with firecrackers) Star Wars action figures. They are the toy that defined most childhoods in the late 70’s and early 80’s. That is until Transformers toys came out. You remember those right? It seemed like over night my precious Millennium Falcon and every single action figure I had were completely out of vogue. I had a few Transformers as well, but they never held my attention like the Star Wars toys I loved so much. Because my friends had completely converted I was left in the middle. Why couldn’t these guys have a Resees Peanut Butter cup moment? You know what I mean… “Two great tastes that taste great together?� You guessed it: they finally did. I was in Target the other day and saw something my childhood brain could only dream of: A Star Wars Tie-Fighter that was a Transformer-Darth Vader! Where was this when I was a kid?

I guess now you’re wondering what nostalgia for toys from my childhood and Star Wars versus Transformers has to do with banking. You’d think nothing- other than the money exchanged for said action figure was processed through a bank, but dig a little deeper… Around here at The Garland Group we talk a lot about “old� versus “new�. New bankers, old models of interaction, Banking 2.0, checkbooks versus debit cards, proprietary versus open source, the list is almost endless. It’s inevitable that the old guard becomes defensive, the brash young guns seem to take over. Polarization is a natural effect of change, and if you haven’t noticed the financial services industry is changing. Like the predicament of having your favorite childhood toy suddenly go out of vogue, financial institutions face the challenge of adjusting to all these new things: sharing information (securely), providing new services (that line up with strategic plans), attracting new customers (that move beyond ‘free checking’) Will every bank become a Transformer? Nope. There’s a population segment that the “new banker� won’t appeal to. Will all banks become the hybrid Darth Transformer? Maybe.

Hopefully if you are a banker you’ve found out how to incorporate new tools into your financial institution, (and if you aren’t a banker, your FI has found tools that reach out to you in meaningful ways). Either way that’s what we’re all about here at The Garland Group. Connecting FI’s with tools and people that will change the way you pay for your action figures!

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