Stop Shoving Your Do-it-Yourself “Options” Down Our Throats!

Stop forcing technology on your customer that serve you, but not them! 

I drop in to my local Wells Fargo branch to get a document notarized and the teller at the counter directs me to scan the QR code on the poster nearby to get on their “digital waiting list.” I say “ok,” as my iPhone opens the website. I fumble for my reading glasses to decipher the small text boxes and try to find a place sit down to navigate this process, but there is still no furniture in the bank branch. So, I sit on a random side table stuck in the corner.

Halfway through the questionnaire, the website freezes, not allowing me to go to the next step in the sign-up process. Now to be clear, I am 15 feet away from the person who can notarize my document, but I am still trying to use the online form to get in the digital line.

I go back up to the counter and show the bank teller that the website is not functioning and ask if there is a clipboard, or if I can just go over to the person when they are free. She apologizes and says that the online digital waitlist is the only way to get in the queue. Meanwhile two other people arrive, navigate the online form effortlessly and move ahead of me. Twice I return to the teller who just keeps apologizing and shrugging saying there is nothing she can do.

After nearly 20 minutes (I kid you not) of sitting on the side table 15 feet from a bank rep trying to navigate the digital waiting list, a bank manager walks by and ask if I’m being helped. I express my frustration and tell them I am not being helped and person after person is passing me by because I am not allowed to see a bank rep without getting on the digital waiting list…which is not functioning on my phone. Long story short, they intervened and got me the help I needed.

Just because you’ve created a touch-less way for your customers to serve themselves during Covid, does not mean that you can now wash your hands of returning to serve them as well. Just because you took something off your plate, doesn’t mean the new process is preferable for your customers. No more Covid excuses! Sure, you have cool new processes, but help your customers who do not wish to, or cannot help themselves.

What are the most frustrating do-it-yourself tasks that you encounter?