Nationwide Measures To Reduce Branch Queues
Nationwide Building Society is taking some measures to decrease the number of customers queuing at the counters. From June 7th, it will not be possible to withdraw cash amounts of less than £100 from the Nationwide’s branch counter.
By introducing new minimum withdrawal limits, Nationwide is hoping to reduce waiting time, improve customer satisfaction and free their staff to deal with more complicated transactions. The emphasis will be made on the use of cash machines for smaller withdrawals. In addition, customers will be encouraged to use online and telephone banking.
Despite the good nature of their intentions, Nationwide may disappoint some of their customers, as in addition to cash withdrawal restriction, customers will be charged a fee of £10 should they require to stop their cheque.
These changes don’t come as a surprise as at the back end of last year, Santander placed some similar limitations on passbook customers and prohibited the withdrawal of small amounts from their branch counters. But in case of Santander, this change has only affected about 1% of its customers as only a few passbook users regularly withdraw small sums.
So, let’s hope that Nationwide and their customers will truly benefit from these new measures.
Indeed these changes are part of a much large set of SUBSTANTIAL changes which the Nationwide are introducing in the month of June and beyond. The wrapping appears to be rooted around the idea of Customer Feedback, but ... no survey on how to reduce queues at cash desks has EVER been seen by me, I cannot believe that if such a survey existed and customers filled in the piece that said a big FAT YES to new charges. Poppycock! Its just a case of a profit focused internal review group has come forward with these ideas to the management team and they've embraced them whole heartedly as a means of increasing profits and dare I say reducing primary costs - nameley staff!