1st National Bank, St. Lucia’s first indigenous Bank has listened to its customers and returned to Saturday Banking. According to Executive Manager, Marketing and Public Relations, Robert Fevrier, “Saturday Banking will commence at our Rodney Bay J.Q. Mall and Vieux Fort Branches on Saturday 4th June, 2022 from 8:30 a.m. through to 12:30 p.m. Our staff are looking forward to serving you”.
“The Bank is pleased to announce additional services making it possible for clients to apply for loans on a Saturday. 1st National Bank can boast of being the only Bank on island to provide a full gamut of convenient banking services on a weekend. Some of us are busy during the week so banking on a Saturday is an excellent opportunity to transact business. Make no mistake, our clients are at the heart of all we do. It is all about people looking after people,” Fevrier said.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic the Bank decided to suspend its weekend service in the best interest of the health and safety of its valued employees and customers. Mr. Fevrier added “All established COVID-19 protocols will remain in effect during the Saturday operations. We want to thank our customers for their support and feedback which is important to us; We continue to listen to you to engender meaningful change as we expand our digital footprint to become a bigger, better Bank”.
Perhaps Mr Fevrier you will also arrange to have sufficient counter staff available to serve the customers since 1st National is well up towards the front in the St.Lucian Banking Sectors competition to see which Bank can justifiably claim to have the longest wait time in the line for service.
All the unoccupied Cashier positions have a notice which says that ‘ Another Representative will be pleased to assist you’ but when looking around one finds that there aren’t any others to assist. !!!!
Many of you competitors have an arrow on that notice pointing to the next cashier position but they can’t fool us Mr Fevrier because we know that following that arrow towards another available representative ends up pitching your ass out into the street to wait in line all over again !!
Doubtless the rest of the staff have all gone off to lunch and you Mr Fevrier have probably joined them and it wouldn’t occur to you to figure that it is lunch times when many persons are able to leave their jobs to visit the bank and that is the time when you need more cashiers on duty rather than less. – perhaps you have never considered working staggered hours to overcome the problem of Staff Lunch breaks !!
Service Mr Fevrier happens at the ‘ Sharp End ‘ and 1st National Bank is as poor as the rest of the banking sector who all seem to believe that it is quite OK for the customers to wait in line until hell freezes over just for your Colleagues at the top of the Banking Fraternity to avoid employing any more staff.
To have cashiers waiting for customers should be your aim Mr Fevrier and not customers waiting in line for the minimum available Cashiers you seem to have operating at peak/most times in your establishments
The moral of this story is that if a problem doesn’t affect the person who is in a position to do something about it then nothing gets done at all
The day that our erstwhile Minister of Finance The Rt Hon PJP – gets to wait in the banking line will be the day that you guys make an effort to improve your service and thus your image