The death of customer service

The ladies in the bank now wear badges telling you to Be Kind and not do anything that might upset them in any way.

Be Kind is in big capital letters on this badge and beneath is a lot of small print explaining the well-known global problem of upset bank employees, which has reached such proportions that extreme measures are having to be taken to tackle customers from whom kindness does not flow in generous enough proportions as to prevent upset being incurred by agents of the high street banks in the course of them courageously risking all in order to speak to the likes of you and me about our banking issues.

But I couldn’t quite read the small print, for the same reason I was asking this lady to heroically put herself in jeopardy to order me a new debit card with no thought of the danger to herself.

Look, I do understand that the service ethic has been reversed so that we the customer must please the service giver. And the best way to do that is not to ask for any service.

Unfortunately, my vision is now so blurred that I cannot do any banking on my phone. I either do it on my laptop or I go into the bank and grapple with the self-service screen and the ladies standing beside it, allegedly there to help.

On this occasion I had cash to deposit and then I asked the lady hovering beside the machine – allegedly to help – if she wouldn’t mind showing me how to order a new debit card because mine was falling to bits.

‘You can do that on the app,’ she snapped. I sighed and began my tedious explanation of the worsening astigmatism in my right eye and the catastrophes that will undoubtedly unfold if I try to do banking on a mobile phone.

She scowled deeply but broadly accepted this – for I could always deploy the words ‘visually impaired’ or ‘disability’ and she full well knew it.

She announced that her colleague would order a new card for me. And she led me to one of the glass-fronted booths where most of the ladies of the bank sit, so far as I can tell, all day long enjoying frothy coffees.

There is never anyone in these booths or offices with them. I have never once seen it. So I decided to feel honoured and excited that I was about to be shown into one. And I followed, holding my ripped debit card out in front of me as if to excuse the intrusion, a visual apology for my impertinence if you will.

She led me to the furthest of three booths and as she did so a lady came to the door of this booth, and the expression on her face as she flapped a hand to permit me inside was something unfathomable.

It was not angry, exactly. If I had to guess I would say the emotions she was being inconvenienced with processing at that moment were a mixture of shock and a mitigating sense of relief at both the brevity of the action required for a torn debit card and her oncoming second frothy coffee at 11 a.m., for it was five before that hour.

She smiled the faintest smile possible for a face to exhibit and said: ‘We can order your card using the app on your phone.’

It was as I explained again, this time in full, the complications of my ophthalmic prescription, that I noticed the badge on her desk saying Be Kind. I was trying to read the small print about the consequences of causing her upset but I couldn’t focus on it. I gulped. ‘You’re not listening to me,’ I said to her, and she flashed me a warning look. ‘I don’t have an app. I’m sorry. I can’t see very well.’ She gave me a look of utter contempt and sat down at the computer on her desk, which I suppose, was never meant to be used. This was, no doubt, upsetting her.

I squinted again at the small print – something about how the bank employee couldn’t be expected to help any more than they already were – and I thought: I’m sure this all started with Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs. Wasn’t he the first person to demand kindness?

Since when, every time I’ve heard kindness demanded it has been by those with a vested interest in backing you off from putting them under the least scrutiny.

The lady soon finished tapping and told me, icily, that my new card was ordered. I smiled broadly, thanked her profusely, congratulated her for doing a fantastic job, and told her: ‘That’s very kind of you.’ But of course, there was nothing kind about it.