Print is not dead yet!
June 20, 2022
Two instances from two major UK banks where print is definitely not dead at all.
Last week I was in the UK for work (of course) and some leisure time as well. Work-wise I had to visit a one bank to change some address details that had been delayed by COVID. So, I went into the bank and queued up, like you do, and I got to the counter and asked “can I change the mailing address for this account please?” I insert the card into the card reader and the cashier says “Sorry, this is a business account, we can’t do that in the branch.”
A long interaction proceeds where I explain that the customer service centre said “just go along to any branch and they will sort it.”
To cut a long story short (and get the queue moving behind me) the supervisor says, “come into the office, we can do that for you.” She prints out an eight-page form for me to complete and says she will fax it to customer services and they will make the change, then goes off to photocopy the three documents I had brought in, one of which is longer than A4.
Clearly not copier trained, she copied the document six times and could not get it onto a single A4 page. I mentioned that she should set the scanner to scan to A4 – and bingo she got it. Sitting back at her desk she has an onscreen message for me to input my pin number into the card reader, which I did, and the screen message accepted the address change. Since the customer service person was still unsure, she calls the customer care centre who confirm everything is ok.
After 48 minutes and the printing of about 22 pages which went in the shredder, I leave bank number 1 for bank number 2.
At bank number two, it is the same address change, but personal. But this time it is more complex…Card in the reader, enter pin, change the details, enter pin, everything ok. Except the copying of the documents…This time it took two people, and they copied the longer document 20 times, but still had it on two pages. In the end they gave up and just stapled the two pages together and put the copies in the post to their customer service centre. Again, another long wait for a simple admin task.
If you are still with me, then thank you.
In both banks the details were updated online and confirmed by me entering my pin number. The copies were scanned, and they didn’t know how to copy a long document to A4. But why couldn’t the documents be scanned as a PDF attachment to the account details?
On the one hand I was frustrated that they could not use the technology correctly and still relied on copying and posting or faxing the documents, instead of scanning them straight to our account details folder.
Then again, these two examples will ensure that print is safe for some time to come!
Categories : World Focus
Tags : Banks Business Imaging Industry Print UK
