I have something to share.  This "something" is a shocking experience in my world.  Some small bit of my worldly foundation has been rocked and cracks have appeared.  What could this shocking experience could have been?  

On Monday of this past week, CIBC called me.  Not some random sales call.  It was "the CIBC".  I am sure you'll know what they may have called me about.  If not, read here.

Yah.  They did.

Early on Monday morning, my phone rang.  I reached over to grab my handset but paused when I saw "CIBC" on the caller ID.  I thought for a moment:

"Why would the CIBC be calling me?"  

A moment paused and, somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, a penny (or perhaps a few thousand pennies) dropped.  My "red alert" alarm went off.  My internal DEFCON level zoomed to the hightest setting.  Shields went up and the battlements were manned.  Somewhere a group of elven archers notched a few hundred arrows.  I was a little surprised at the level of anger that rose inside me.  My fight or flight decision went instantly to raging fight and I was ready to give whomever was on the other end a piece of my mind.

Of course, all of this happened in an instant.  I picked up the receiver.

"Left Right Minds.  Shane speaking." I said.

"Hello, Mr. Birley.  This is so-and-so.  I am calling you from the CIBC customer service department and I would like to talk to you about your experince with CIBC."

For the first few moments of the conversation, I thought they were out to "get me".  I was waiting to hear words like "slander" or "defamation".  I was expecting to hear phrases like "break your kneecaps", "cement shoes", or a "pair of pliers and a blowtorch".

But I did not get these words nor the phrases.

In a very positive and upbeat tone I heard words like "unacceptable" and phrases like "ashamed about the poor levels of service".  

I didn't know what to say.  "Was this really happening?", I thought. Was this bank that I had been demonizing for years actually calling me to ask about my experience?  Never in a thousand phone calls had I thought CIBC would respond to me - and in such a personal way.

According to what the lady on the other end of the phone said, here is what happened on their end.

Apparently, someone at CIBC had found my blog and had reported it to the customer service department.  They read my postings and checked out some of the comments and then they sought me out.  They called me at my day job number (the only number I post publically on the Internet) to apologize for my experience.

I was shocked and a little humbled.  In my mind, I had painted this bank as being an uncaring corporation that was blind to the front lines.  I had concluded that CIBC hired nothing but robotic space monkeys from Iscandar and reaped the profits their army of numbskulls acquired.

We had a pleasant conversation (once my hackles settled down) and she seemed genuinely upset that I had such experiences with CIBC.

Here is what the conversation boiled down to:

• CIBC has a problem.

• CIBC needs to train their "trench staff" better.  (My words.)

• CIBC should review how they share information from the top.

• CIBC needs to rethink how their branch managers deal with training tellers and their office staff.  It is obvious (to me) that the training standards of CIBC are very poor.

• CIBC staff should "know" the system they use every day and should be able to have process and procedure information at their fingertips.  They should not have to seek out other staff for simple procedures such as the closure of accounts on weekends.

• CIBC should think about how to solve PST and EST issues so that PST time zone clients are not penalized for living on the West coast of Canada.  

She pointed out that the PST/EST issue is eluded to in the terms of service (as being 6PM EST) but I said that this was stupid to expect clients of banks to read every little detail in their terms of service.  In today's world, most individuals will read the big print and walk away thinking they know everything.  Writing such an important detail is not clear enough.  Expectations like this will create can arise.  And before those of you out there start commenting that "it is the clients responsibility to read every detail" - let me stop you before you start.  Why?  Well, simply put: I don't care.  What I do care about is a company needs to assume that their clients are NOT going to read things like a terms of service.  Details as important as:

"Hey, buddy, by the way - if you pay at 3:01pm in your time zone, you'll get a penalty because you don't live in Toronto." 

To me, putting those kinds of details out for all to see is important (and no, terms don't count) enough to invest in a little more paper and ink.  They should also make their services more obvious.  Terms of service are written to cover a whole lot of issues that a typical business needs to struggle with.  But they are not a solution.

Anyway, in regards to the call, that was about it.

I hung up the phone and didn't know what to think.  This call had put a human face on CIBC.  I won't publish her name but the person on the other end of the phone wasn't some vampiric character from a Poe (or Rice) novel.  She was sorry.  She didn't fight with me or try to tell me I had just missed some small type here or there.  She listened and responded to my typical commentary.  There weren't tears or anything like that but she was genuinely interested in how CIBC could learn from my experience and how they could do better.  I know CIBC won't be able to solve such issues overnight but, wow, the fact that someone - a human voice - took the time to call me about my online blathering was shocking.  (Have I said "shocking" enough for one post?)

Does this change my mind about CIBC?  It does a little bit.  I still think the CIBC has some head office to branch issues and I still think that such a large bank should launch themselves into the 2010s and use some of that online juice to let their employees know what is what. Their clients base is changing.  People are more connected and "choosy" than ever.  Those who used banks and accepted how banks did business is changing.  In this economy, maybe banks should be a little more active in their outreach as well.

Anyway.  There you go.  A little heavy for a Saturday night but I have to give CIBC a few kudos for trying.  They came far to late but I can't ignore that they didn't try.  Will they take my comments to heart or, at the very least, read them. I hope so.  It won't bring me back to CIBC but - dammit - I can't say they are 100% demon spawn either.  

Damn.  I was hoping CIBC was ruling the legion of the undead.

I took a little time today and cleaned out the comments queue.  I was surprised to find so many CIBC related comments.  I posted them all, so, if you are at all interested, head on over there and join in.  I haven't spent much time thinking about CIBC since I don't deal with them all that often (we have a business credit card left with CIBC) but, the other day, I logged into the CIBC website and found that one of my accounts wasn't closed as I had requested.  Initially, I thought the account was just showing up because of some computer glitch.  I called the toll free line and asked if the account had been closed and they confirmed it wasn't.  Normally, I wouldn't have thought much of it because it was just a small error.  But the gong show that I had to endure to close that account (at least, I thought it had been closed) was too funny not to mention.  I didn't blog about it intially because I thought I had said enough about CIBC.  But, here we go.

Back in August, I called up and asked the branch how I could close one of my final accounts with them.  They said that I should come down to the branch and sign some documents in order to finalize the closure.  It sounded very straight forward and I headed on down to the branch a few days later.  I walked in and, as instructed by the person on the phone, grabbed the first available financial advisor.  The advisor said they would be happy to close the account.  We sat down and I provided him the appropriate documentation and identification.  He started typing away and then stared at the screen for a few minutes.  I sat quietly and waited for him to tell me what I was supposed to do.  Another minute or two went by and he said that he needed to get a supervisor to confirm the closure.  He disappeared and fetched another person to come and stare at his screen.  The original advisor and this new person stared at the screen, typed a few things into the computer and then looked at me to say that they needed to check with yet another person.

I sat and began to laugh quietly.  My better half told me to be quiet.  I remained silent for a little bit longer. 

A third person came in and did almost exactly what the second person did.  She typed a few things, muttered a few things to the others, and then said that they would have to bring in someone else.

I started to laugh again but I wouldn't be silenced this time.  With all of my experiences with this bank, I had had enough and was not going to be afraid to let them know that I was unimpressed.  The scene unfolded again one more time and a fifth person was brought in.  After almost forty five minutes, they all left the room.

I was laughing hard now and was making fun of them in a good humoured way.  They smiled and continued on with their work but it was obvious that they were frustrated with whatever problem they had run headlong into.  To me, closing an account should be easy.  But, at CIBC, this appeared not to be the case.  At just over the one hour mark, the fifth person came in to the office and said to me that they were embarrased.  It turns out that CIBC can't close accounts on Saturday because Saturday is "not a business day". 

I replied: "Then why is this branch open?" 

She said: "Saturday isn't a business day." 

I again said: "Then why are you open today?  If you are not in business today, why am I standing here?"

She laughed.  I told her that there must be some way to close the account because I didn't want to have to come back.  She then disappeared and returned with the original advisor and we arranged that some other guy (this guy being number six on the roster) call me on the Monday and tell me the account was closed.  I said that this arrangement was acceptable.

The following Monday, I called up the guy and chatted on the phone for a couple of minutes to confirm that my account was closed.  He said it had been done.  Boom.  A completely stupid way to go about closing an account but, whatever, I had come to expect very little from CIBC at this point and it was merely a source of entertainment for me now.  If I wanted a laugh, I should just go to CIBC ask them a very basic question (like how to open an account) and see how long and how many employees it took.  (Which, incidently, I did ask this question the other day when I had to go back and yell at the manager of the branch about the lack of a closed account and it took over ten minutes before the teller returned with a brochure and I asked for some details about an account and the teller didn't know anything and said for me to just read the brochure.)

Anyway, back to my original commentary.  When I found out that over six months later, my account was still not closed, I went back to the bank and asked the manager why it took six employees of that branch to NOT close an account.  I told him that I was pissed and that I felt it was completely idiotic for me to have come to the bank, dealt with five employees directly and then a sixth on the phone to confirm that my account was closed.  Then to find out that six months later, it wasn't even closed!  And I had to come into the branch again to yell at them when I didn't want to deal with them in the first place.  How stupid is that!

I just couldn't not talk about this now that I have ignored it for so long.  I mean, come on... six employees to screw up the closing of an account because it was Saturday?  And none of them knew this simple tidbit?!

CIBC, not only do you suck, but you can also suck my big sack of sweaty balls.  Enough said.

I have been a CIBC customer for a number of years (since 1993) and I experienced the most horrific customer service  representative.  I have never been so de-humanized.  The lady was from a collection department at CIBC calling me because they had yet to receive this month’s payment.  Which, by the way, I had sent only a week prior.

When I answered the telephone, I knew why they had called.  I started a little chit chat, as I know these kinds of calls can get quite tense, and wanted this person to know that I knew I had missed the payment and I had already sent one.  She would have none of it.  It was straight to business.  Fine, no problem, so, I told her I knew that I had missed a payment.  But, before I could really explain anything further this woman commented that I was close to having the credit card in question canceled.

“Sorry, canceled?  Missing a payment or two is a cancel-prone event?”

“Yes it is.”

“Shouldn’t I be notified of such an event before it happens?”

“Well, you aren’t as important as our bigger clients who get more flexibility.”

Here is where I shut down.  No chit chat.  No nothing.  When a company says that I am not as important as other customers – this is a show stopper in my book of life rules.  Sure, yes, I am evil because I have sent in payments late (apparently, four in my history) but CIBC is earning interest.  One would think that they are happy to charge me more money. 

I won’t pretend to understand the credit system of the world but when I get a call, I would like to be treated like a human being.  Something this woman didn’t even come close to doing. That was the moment I went from friendly to stone cold angry. 

I said to this person: “Sorry, did you just say that I am not as important as bigger clients?”

I didn’t hear the answer because I didn’t want to hear it.  I couldn’t believe it.  The worst thing I have ever done at CIBC is missed a payment here or there.  Mainly because I forget.  But, wow, the dehumanizing attitude of that woman was astounding.  With all of the over time complaints, you’d think these workers would be a little more jovial – especially, at this time of year. 

I did call back after hanging up on her and complained to the next agent I spoke with who did tell me that the lady should never have said that to me at all and he apologized on behalf of CIBC.  This made me happier.  How that woman felt that it was acceptable to tell me that I was unimportant just blew me away.

Tags: cibc, customer+service, cibc+sucks