I’m the sort of person that can only go to sleep when I have an empty inbox, no bugs to fix, no support tickets open and no outstanding tasks to do. It’s strange, but if I have something pressing, I usually have to sort it out even if that means I don’t actually get any sleep. Anyway, it’s 3:00am and I figure that I’ll call Barclays bank on behalf of one of my other businesses that I’m on the board of. They have an 0845 number published on their website so I call it. Ring, ring and click straight into a typical press-1-for menu. I figure I would leave a message for someone to call me back in the morning but then to my amazement a lady picks up and professionally answers the phone. I’m totally blown away as I don’t have any of the documentation I need for the call, although she finds me on their computer system and takes me through security perfectly and manages to do exactly what I need; to order me a debit card for the account so now I can pay for website hosting, domains and Google Adwords directly, without having to expense these purchases personally every year.
It’s now 3:05am and I have had time to get my banking sorted and plenty of time left over to make a blog post. Contrast this with Abbey National who for business customers, struggle to operate a decent professional telephone, email or in-house service at all.
Barclays piloted 24 hour telephone banking only very recently, and I would say two big thumbs up from me.
Well done, Barclays Bank!
Very impressive!
While your bank is trialing 24 hour telephone banking I get the impression our banks are “trialing telephones”. 😉
3:05am? Mike, you’ve gotta lay of the Coffee! 🙂