TSB is on the verge of a meltdown and staff working in a number of branches dealing customers who have not been able to access their accounts for days have been offered….wait for it……fruit to keep their vitamin C levels up in the face of a barrage of abuse!
Meanwhile, with the TSB brand, built up by hard working staff across the bank being dragged through the mud, there is no sign of TSB’s top managers who are the architects of this IT debacle.
But it gets worse. Thousands of customers are threatening to leave the Bank, 1.9 million customers (TSB has got 5.4 million customers) still can’t access their accounts but TSB’s Spanish owners Banco Sabadell issued a press release trumpeting the IT migration.
The Chairman of Sabadell, Josep Oliu, said “with this migration, Sabadell has proven its technological management capacity, not only in national migrations, but also on an international scale. The new Proteo4UK platform is an excellent starting point for the organic growth of the business and the improvement of TSB’s efficiency”. Oliu said that “more than 5.4 million customers are now integrated into the new platform”.
The Chairman of Sabadell needs to extract his foot from his mouth and shut up. The IT migration is an unmitigated disaster and millions of customers are not integrated onto the new platform.
What’s making it worse for customers is that TSB is not telling the truth about the scale of the problems. Philip Auger, a former TSB board member, said on the BBCs Wake up to Money: “If this sort of things happens. “Fess up straight away, be honest and play it straight from the word go and that seems to have gone wrong.”.
That’s an understatement!
Contact Centre Misery
Staff in the TSB Contact Centres are stressed out because of the levels of abuse they are receiving from customers who haven’t been able to access their accounts for 4 days. Calls are constantly backed up and some staff have had to work 12-hour shifts with no breaks and are still only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. Members are reporting that it’s getting worse today. The problems are as follows:
- None of the systems are working properly and many staff have not received the training to deal with the problems being raised by customers.
- Senior Management in Sunderland are running around like headless chickens telling staff not to panic!
- There are not enough Line Managers to help with the scale of the queries from customers and those who are around are not able to help.
- Staff are constantly being bombarded with new information from Line Management about fixes and changes to the system but staff don’t have the time to read them when there are 400 outstanding calls to be dealt with and customers have been waiting up to an hour.
- Staff are getting bogged down by unnecessary bureaucracy. If there is a problem with the system, staff have to complete a “snag sheet” and then send a screen shot of the error to 4 people. Whilst they are doing that, the telephone queues are getting longer.
- Staff have to log onto 6 different systems with their user IDs and passwords but the system is so complicated that staff don’t know where to look to answer simple customer queries.
- Customer security is not working. The security numbers are not working and the security questions are all mixed up. Staff were told yesterday to decide for themselves which questions to ask and then look around the system to see if customers have answered correctly.
In the branches it’s not much better. One member of staff said:
“What an utter shambles this has been! Rushed through to save senior exec jobs with the ground staff facing the brunt of it. Systems not working, queues out the door, staff working until 8pm to try and key things through and not a till balanced. The reputation of the bank is well and truly damaged and I dread to think of the fines that will be imposed due to data protection breaches with online banking information.
Yet again the bank relied on the loyalty of its staff and we were sorely let down. We’ve worked late and come in early and we were left to our own devices to try and deal with angry and aggrieved customers, being told to record complaints as required. Meanwhile Sabadell bosses are toasting the success of the migration and issuing press releases about how well it has gone.”
Another said:
“Following the migration on the Monday morning, within our hub system outage caused most of us to not be able to do anything other then sit there and get abuse hurled at us all day and when we did try contacting anyone further up for help, the reply was just follow the check list, leaving us lost and stress amongst staff was hideous causing many arguments amongst staff as no one had guidance or support. Closer to the end of the day a conference call happened, which the area director’s response was you have to stay latest 8pm to get everything sorted. So staff in my hub started that day been 7-7:30am and where almost forced to stay till super late trying to fix branch issues migration had caused with zero help from anywhere.”
And guess what. The Bank’s favourite trade union, Accord, has said absolutely nothing on this issue. We’d be even more surprised if they had said anything!
We would like to hear from members about their experiences of migration. Members can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 716029 or email us at 24hours@tbuonline.co.uk.