System down should not have prevented NCBA from offering prompt customer service

Why is Safaricom successful but not Telkom or Airtel? Customer Service. That’s what Michael Joseph realized even when Safaricom services were crap. He realised that talking to your customer and helping them promptly, and not only that, communicating to them when a service is not available, is the key to customer retention. A customer will continue to buy a crappy service as long as he is subconsciously assured that he will be treated as a valued human being, that he is understood, and that his complains will be addressed, more so by big organisations like banks, telecos, and even multinationals. But this is something NCBA and a few other banks do not want to invest in; particularly, invest in customer service system that works even when the system is down. Look at this tweet by Wayua Muli.

I have seen a lot of terrible customer care and experience in my life, but nothing compares to the particular hell @NCBABankKenya has put all its customers through this week. Grrrr! Even @KenyaPower_Care can’t beat this.

— Wayua Muli (@MizMuli) September 24, 2020

That tweet elicited similar reactions for Kenya Power and Airtel, but over the years we have come to know that entities such as Kenya Power do not give a shit about their customer service, and that’s because no matter the noise you make, you have no option but to stick with them. Airtel on the other hand have just refused to learn the hard way. They think dishing out free goodies will cover for their silly customer service.

The complains against NCBA made them go about apologising after every tweet, asking those who shared Wayua’s frustrations to bear with them. Look at this particular response:

Dear @mosehesbon, in order to give you a seamless experience, we've upgraded our core banking system. We regret it’s taken longer than expected. Kindly visit our ATMs or branches to transact. We truly regret the inconvenience caused, and are always ready to assist. Thank you ^JW

— NCBA Bank (@NCBABankKenya) September 25, 2020

But that’s not supposed to be the case. We exist in a world with a multiplicity of technologies that can’t go down all at the same time. The internet might be down, but the cellular network will still be up. A bank should not integrate their core banking system with their communication system (and I know they don’t), such that in the event there is a breakdown in the core banking system, the communication department would be up in their feet relaying messages via text, social media and other outlets to the customers, telling them about the break down and the approximate time they should be offline.

It doesn’t end there. A bank that’s mindful of customer service will be on its feet in readiness to receive customer complains and immediately respond to them, explaining to them about the system down and what they doing to get it back up. They won’t wait for customers to go on a complaining spree on social media before can respond to those complains. That is, NCBA ought to have told Wayua about the system being down long before Wayua could have gone to twitter to air her grievances.