This is a few days overdue, but about two weeks ago, I took an online survey at the request of our bank, the University of Wisconsin Credit Union. I’ve been 95 percent delighted with our experience with them thus far, and my responses indicated as much.
The 5 percent of undelightedness has to do with their ATMs, which (1) require you to reswipe your card to do a new transaction, even if you’ve just done one (Citi’s ATMs in New York just had you reenter your PIN), and (2) take forever between those transactions, such that you’re standing there for ten seconds doing nothing, looking at a “Thank You” message, waiting to reswipe your card. I know that sounds like a trivial gripe — and believe me, I’m well aware of how lucky I am that this sort of thing counts as a problem in my life — but it’s frustrating because it seems so fixable (and because I feel like such a doof if I need to do more than one transaction and someone is waiting behind me).
Anyway, I basically wrote out all of the above in the “Other Comments” box at the end of the survey, and provided my name and phone number, telling the credit union that if they wanted to call and talk to me about this, I’d really appreciate it. I like doing that because then I can tell if a Real Human Being is actually reading the survey I bothered to fill out, or if the company in question is just going through the motions and wasting my time.
Well, UWCU was not going through the motions! Someone from the credit union called (I won’t share his name here, as there’s no reason to), expressed to me that he actually felt the same way about the ATMs’ slowness, and said it was an issue they were hashing out with their vendor.
COMPANIES SHOULD ALWAYS DO THIS. It’s absolutely the truth that even though he couldn’t give me the answer I’d have loved (“We’re fixing this right away, Mr. Wimmer!”), I just plain appreciated the fact that he acknowledged my complaint as legitimate. I am a sane human being. I understand how businesses work. I don’t expect a minor issue like this to get cleared up just because it holds me up for twenty extra seconds every four to five days. I just want to know that I matter as a customer.
He asked if I wanted a phone call if the situation changed, but I said no, that was OK — I take it on faith that they’re working on it, and if it changes, I’ll know when I go to the ATM. I also appreciate that the last thing anyone needs is one more person to call. Anyway, here’s to UWCU! Thanks for treating me like a person!
