Viewpoint: To the banks, we're only numbers

It's not that I was earwigging, writes Brian Byrne. But when you're doing a transaction at Bank of Ireland Kilcullen's ATM inside the bank, it's very hard not to hear someone speaking through the counter to a member of the staff.

And let me make this very clear, what I'm writing here is not in any way a reflection on those same staff. They are sympathetic, they empathise, and they are as helpful as they can be. As much as they are allowed to be. And that last is the point.

The woman on my side of the counter had a somewhat bothered child on her shoulder. She was clearly bothered herself. She said she had been up most of the night — presumably with her child. I don't know her business. If I did I wouldn't write it here anyhow. But the conversation went something like this.

"I need a printout."

"I'm sorry, we can't do that here."

The child complained. Obviously not at the bank's comment. But maybe reflecting its mother's feelings.

"Look, I need a printout."

"Well, you could go up to the Library and log on to your account there, they have a printer."

I seriously tried to stop hearing, because otherwise I'd have felt bound to say something out loud. And it wasn't my business.

But, you know, it is the business of all of us. And it is also the bank's business. Especially because that same bank is the only one in town. And because, at least in part through a lack of competition, it has seen fit to reduce its service to its customers in Kilcullen to an almost non-service. In a town where the population has grown maybe four-fold over the last couple of decades.

That makes sense to the bank's shareholders, who want to see less staff costs. And from that, more profit dividend to themselves. Regardless of the 'customer experience'. The more online they can force us to be, the less people they have to employ in dealing with us.

It doesn't make sense to that customer with a fretful baby, and who clearly needed that printout for an imminently important reason. But she was still advised to go to the local — and part-time — library for such a basic service.

It doesn't make sense to all the retail businesses in Kilcullen who have to make alternative arrangements which require travel to other towns to get or to lodge coin, to lodge or obtain foreign currency, and more. It doesn't make sense to both private and business customers who are given no choice except to jump through anonymous online hoops which have been put in place largely at the whim of the bank's top management who probably never have had to stand in line at an ATM. Especially one where the 'Out of Service' message is a too-often one outside of branch hours.

It doesn't make sense to me. I'm old enough to remember when I could negotiate with a real manager person a loan for a car, or an overdraft or credit card, and got them because they knew me and the community in which I lived. Which is no longer possible. I also know that a business which both accepts from and lends to people money, in both instances to make a profit, has seemingly forgotten that it needs to treat people as customers and not as just their profit points.

I have, unusually for me, written this opinion piece over two sessions a couple of weeks apart because I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to publish it. I've allowed it space in my mind. And, having done so, I'm posting it for three reasons.

One, because of the clear memory of how that woman with the baby on her shoulder needed not the Bank of Ireland management line, but a little help which that same line did not allow the local staff to provide. Two, on behalf of those staff who have been put in a position where I suspect they really don't want to be. And three, that when I was in a discussion a few weeks ago with a member of the bank's regional management about the current situation, at their request, the bottom line stressed several times was that 'folks, this really is not going to change'.

Yes, according to the bank, it's not going to change. So, I'm reminded of the movie 'Network' more than four decades ago, where the key character played by Peter Finch said on TV that "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" And in the magic of television, his thoughts were amplified across all of America, and eventually there was, maybe, going to be a result.

Kilcullen is not alone in having its banking 'services' reduced to almost nothing. But if the bank's customers simply lie down under the need for maximisation of shareholder profit against the respect that a customer of any business has a right to expect, we are leaving ourselves open to even worse treatment than was given to that woman with the baby on her shoulder.

Are you not mad as hell? Are you going to take it anymore? Well, what you and the rest of us do could well be the decider whether customers of banks will ever again be seen to be people too.

I'm saying "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Will you?