Customer Service Case Study - US Bank ATM

Posted 4-6-2012

The old way

My wife and I really like banking without entering the bank building.  I believe we are a success for our bank, US Bank, in that they clearly are encouraging this mode of banking.  They haven't started charging to talk to a teller, but I can understand that if every encounter is costed, it's more expensive to work with a teller than it is to work with a Automatic Teller Machine.  Besides, ATM is there 24x7, and we've grown to count on the ATM, automatic pay deposits and free bill paying as our standard of banking.

One of the key aspects of our simple style is that we can go to the ATM and take a half dozen envelopes so that we can fill our our deposit and carry it ready to go to the ATM.

Well, maybe that's not so simple any more.

A great idea

Maybe the bank was having people steal deposit envelopes form them, maybe the designers of ATMs thought they could improve their engineering, but in any event a new idea made it into production.

When I told my wife I was going to the ATM she asked me to pick up some envelopes, her little supply was exhausted.  When I got to the bank, they had recently installed the next model of ATM.  It was great because the screen had solved the problem of being unreadable in the morning sun.  What a great new monitor.

The slot with the spare envelops isn't in the new machine.  I was there to make a deposit and I'd filled out the last envelope we had at home.  So I preceded to start up the deposit option on the ATM.  The first thing the machine did was ask if I wanted an envelope.  I hit the yes button, took the single envelope dispensed, and proceeded with the deposit.  I left with my receipt and a fresh envelope.  I bet this is exactly what the engineers though would happen - another happy customer.

Upon further review

I have to make sure that I put the envelope somewhere where my wife and I can find it the next time we want to prepare a deposit.  We lose car keys.  We lose mail.  I'm forever throwing things out.  (It's a matter of balance, my wife is a hoarder.)  In any event, for any number of reasons, it is highly likely that we will often be without our single deposit envelope.

The consequences of this is that we will have to go to the ATM with our checks to deposit and get another envelope.  Upon getting the envelope we will have to fill out the envelope, total it up and then deposit it.  If there are people in line, we'll probably end the transaction after getting the envelope, go back to our car to fill it our, and then get back in line to actually make the deposit.

There's an obvious work around

So maybe we're a special case.  I went into the bank and confessed to our deposit madness and asked the bank officer for some envelopes.  I asked if he could have someone maybe downtown send some out.  Sorry, he'd have to order a full box just for me.  But he did say there was a bank over on Colfax that he didn't think had gotten their new ATMs yet, and I should go over there and grab some envelopes.  

Anal vs. Excellence

Is this an anal complaint by a grump?  Or is this a question that holds a mild interest?  I liked it because it is a systems analyst's answer to a problem.  The answer has some elegance, but I believe it misses a very important reality, a blind spot.  Being a systems analyst myself, it's a constant risk in the profession.