Pros
flexible hours that are good for students, seniors etc. nice and friendly co workers many locations, so possible to work near home opportunity for advancement is good for young new employees
Cons
Bank used to be customer service oriented (when it was Commerce) - this is no longer the case, now the primary focus is sales, sales, sales. Every quarter your sales goal is raised which makes it almost impossible to reach. In a store that has little foot traffic and mostly senior citizens on fixed incomes it is a difficult to sell credit cards, mortgages, home equity loans and savings accounts and CD's that are not even competitive with other banks. Most seniors are trying to pay off credit cards and happy that they have paid off their home loans and mortgages. Most seniors like to have personal service and many need help with their banking issues, and an ear to listen to their problems. They don't want to be bothered while waiting on line with a bank employee pushing there wonderful credit card (which really isn't that great) or someone calling from the bank every few weeks to trying to sell them something. They also do not like the survey takers calling and asking for their opinion of their last bank visit. Many do not trust anyone calling them and think it is someone trying to scam them. Still others don't understand the questions and just give random answers just to get the person off the phone and don't realize that the employees will be penalized if all the answers are not " extremely likely to recommend", Employees are then penalized because the customer was disgruntled, because they may have had overdraft charges that were not reversed or are now getting fees for everything. Many employees worked for Commerce for many years in an environment where you were taught good customer service skills and taught how to utilize them. We were not taught sales skills, nor were our reviews and raised based on sales quotas. Pushing sales and products does not come natural to many people and it is difficult to learn to feel comfortable selling. The training we have received is , basically "here put on these headphones and listen to a few sales techniques and then you are on your own." The morale of the employees in my store is nil, both tellers and customer service reps are extremely unhappy and management just can't understand why. My manager and assistant manager are both very nice people, but both need to stand up to upper management and let them know that different markets need to use different approaches to keep the customers they have happy and then those existing happy customers will bring in new friends and family that move into the area. I could go on forever, but I have to leave to go to a branch meeting that is going to be basically going to be an hour or two of complaints that we have not met our sales goal. One last thought, even if the store hits or exceeds all sales goals the average teller and customer service rep will get about $125 which after taxes will be about $80 for the entire quarter. Not much of an incentive to do your best. A couple of WOW stickers just don't cut it
