I was passing through the drive through late one night when my eyes beheld a usual site. The monster behind the counter began to rise when suddenly, to my surprise, she smiled and said, “Hello Charee, welcome back to PNC, it’s great to see you again!” 

Hold on. I’m used to dealing with zombies here. They don’t smile. They don’t know my first name and they certainly don’t say nice things. They grunt, growl, and devour my transaction to get to the next customer. Did the CDC finally find a cure to avoid the apocalypse? No time to think about that…Intrigued by this change in behavior, I found myself actually wanting to partake in a brief, somewhat meaningful dialogue. Then as my receipt completed its voyage through the dark underground tunnel, the teller, now quite human, said “I hope you don’t mind, I dropped a few pieces of candy in your envelope. Just a small token of our appreciation. Hope you have a great night and thank you for being a customer with PNC.” Nice touch.

Still cynical, I thanked her back and drove away with this new “experience” top of mind knowing full well this little game changer was not done by accident. You see, at the time, PNC was just a few months into their acquisition of National City and let’s just say they were nowhere near my list of companies that provided great customer service. As far as I was concerned it was a relationship beyond repair and I was ready to take the painful steps toward taking my business elsewhere.

Then as weeks turned into months of consistently good experiences, I thought about changing banks less and less. The last of the zombies were replaced by engaged humans and they continued to take pride in their front line duties. Fast forward to today, because of their consistency, this local branch still calls me a customer.

So there you go. With all the horror stories posted on Halloween about scary customer service encounters, I thought it was time to write about one banks’ local branch that woke up, became human again, and actually got it right.

In closing, I hope this post serves as a reminder that even the most well-designed customer experience strategy is worthless if your front line employees aren’t engaged and aligned to consistently deliver on your brand promise – treats or not.