Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Urgent (Sorta, Kinda)

I know it sounds vague, but it was sorta kinda urgent…

Earlier this month, I had to wire some money to the east coast. Given the three hour time difference, I wanted to get it done early in the day—the sooner, the better.

So I showed up at my local Bank of Marin branch at around 9:30 am.

As I got out of my car and approached the door to the bank, someone else was entering. He was clearly a bank employee and told me the bank was closed.

I guess I forgot that banks don’t usually open until 10 am. My fault, of course, so I figured I’d wait around or come back in 30 minutes.

But then the guy at the door asked me what I needed. I told him that I needed to send a wire to the east coast and that it was “sort of, kind of, semi-urgent.”

Very passive language on my part, I know, but at the very least, I wanted to find out how long the wire would take if I waited until the bank opened.

Then, the bank employee said something I’ll never forget:

"If it’s urgent to you, it’s urgent to me. Come on in."

Now here’s a bank that really values customer service. Letting me come in and send a wire even before the branch was even open? What bank does that? That’s well beyond merely meeting expectations. It exceeds them by several orders of magnitude.

An experience like this certainly pleases customers, but it also turns them into ambassadors for the bank.

As I said, I’ll never forget this story—and I’ll certainly be sure to mention it whenever someone asks me for a banking recommendation.

So thank you Bank of Marin. And thank you Assistant Vice President Jaime Ortiz for meeting my sorta kinda urgent need.

Posted by Richard Bloch

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