I have banked with Guaranty Trust Bank for about a decade and I must say that they have been very innovative in certain areas besides supporting of SMEs – GTB does not fall into the banks I recommend to my SME friends and students because I know for sure they are not focused on SME. Although, they argue that they do support SMEs, the opposite is the reality that is why I mostly use them for personal transactions. This is however not the purpose of this post, so it is better left for another day.
Over the last few of days, I have had a running with Guaranty Trust Bank over some international transactions I conducted using my Naira MasterCard. My experience so far necessitated the writing of this post, I believe it is important to publish this post to get the GTBank to continually innovate and stop pouring new wine into an old bottle.
Let me explain further, I bought a product online but I changed my mind immediately after making payment for a number of reasons. I requested for a refund from the merchant and also wrote GTBank informing them about the transaction which was a useless move because it took them over 24 hours to respond. Well, let me not bore you with the unprofessional and uncoördinated responses I got from the guys who responded to my queries because I could write 1,000 words post on that aspect of the episode (which I might still write about depending on the outcome of the ongoing discussions).
The long and short of the story is that, I got a mail with an attached document called “GTbank Card Dispute Form” and I was asked to complete the form and email it to the Card Risk department for further investigation. My grouse with this sort of instruction is that it is a complete waste of the client’s time in this era of digitization. I wrote back to them complaining that it was unfair to as customers to print and fill physical forms for online transactions. because this was a completely electronic transaction, so what is the fuss of printing out the form.
I wondered whether Paypal would ask an average American to print a form for this sort of issue? Of course, you know the answer already!!!
So, I went further to describe the painful process:
- Print form (what if I don’t have access to a printer)
- Complete it
- Scan it (or take a picture provided you have a good smartphone)
- Open up email
- Attach the form
- & then Send
GTB as far as I am concerned this is a complete waste of time and it is high time you changed this!
I also suggested that since they already had an Internet banking facility that is secured, why can’t a form be created back end so that clients who have such issues can either use the online form or the hard copy? It then becomes a thing of choice – this is how I believe a forward looking Bank should be thinking.
I concluded that email saying:
“Remember, you guys are regarded as one of the most innovative, I therefore expect nothing less except of course you drop that title.”
Well, the intro part of the response I got from GTBank read;
“We hereby acknowledge receipt of your mail and empathize with you on any inconveniences you may have experienced.”
As far as I am concerned, whoever responded to that email using the above opening script was nowhere near being empathic, it is just one of those automated, standard customer service responses. I know because I worked in Globacom customer service for 2 years.
For me, it is time Nigerians start demanding for top-notch services because we deserve it besides these banks including Guaranty Trust Bank are making tons of money from us, hence this post!
