Designasterisk

It’s not often that I write a letter to the CEO of a company to provide insight to my experience with their organization. In fact, it takes quite a bit to get me off of my, shall we say, “correspondance” ass. However, the stars aligned and I was compelled to send out a two page analysis about my experience in trying to do international banking with Citigroup.

In January of this year, Angela and I moved to Chicago for my graduate program. We’d been living and working in Sydney for the last three years and wanted to keep our money in Australia, as the interest rates are quite favourable and the dollar is, to put it frankly, tanking. I had looked into banks that offered international banking, and Citibank seemed perfect. Key to our needs was the fact that bank-to-bank transfers between countries would not incur any fees.

It didn’t go well at all and in the end I had to close our account. Due to system problems in Citibank Australia, We had no ability to move any of our funds outside of the country. I spent weeks working with their customer service group to no avail. The problem basically came down to the fact that their phone system had trouble calling my cell phone (we don’t have a land line at home). Because of this, their security process couldn’t work. It didn’t matter that I could call them on the phone, verify it was me through their security screening, and that I could transfer money anywhere in Australia. Since their automated system couldn’t call my cell phone, I was not allowed to access my money. A dire set of circumstances indeed.

Now, as much as I like to bitch about bad customer experience, that’s not my point here. As a designer, I know what it is like to work on both sides of this issue. I know the limitations that the customer service representatives are under. I know the archaic computer systems that banks work within. I know that the ability to “do the right thing” is the last thing large companies enable their staff to do. So why write a letter?

To be honest, because I was pretty sure the CEO didn’t know what was going on right under his nose.

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