Frank

BLM WHM SMN SCH THF RNG BRD MNK WAR DRK PLD > 99

That questionable taste in your mouth from reading my last blog is the taste of my privacy.  Yeah, it was intentional and my "secrets" don't usually get that illicit.  So now that we are back to my regular blog we can talk about Frank.  I will try to be more Christian-like from now on.  

Frank was this guy in the business credit card area where I worked.  I am still not done extolling the greatness that was my years at the bank so here goes another anecdote.  We had an excellent SBU(strategic business unit) because we got to the point where we could do what we want.  And how did we get there?  Because we were unbelievably efficient.  Since business owners understand contracts more they hardly ever complained about their late fees and since we knew in regular customer service SOME people were adjusting literally thousands of dollars of late fees per year, we didn't even blink an eye when we violated our contract and removed a late fee or two from our admittedly plain ENGLISH contract violators.  

At some point, because we were starting out with American Advantage points and trying to make money on wallet security offers(we pay your credit card debt if your card is stolen) and whatnot,  we started to try other things like more time offline and better SMEs(subject matter experts).  We started to, instead of answering complex questions and researching late check posting issues(payment center takes their time posting a check = POOF late fee) we started to DO the work of our leaders.  The leaders were given more time offline, and they started to be in a better mood, and that meant better appraisals for everyone yeah?  And why not, we were making them a bunch of money but really customers were just glad that we had this great idea of giving them something for spending which other credit cards didn't do.  

After a while though, we (the SMEs) started to be in not such a good mood for some reason and that led to better ideas for procedures and a LOT of discussion among us about what was right for the SBU.  So in one of these meetings we decide we don't need quality.  The leaders who were now not taking supervisor calls or who had a lot more time on their hands because we forwarded those calls to their answer machine or correspondence, could now DO the work of entire teams set up to do quality.  This meant we did away with a whole group of people that all they did all day was listen to calls and grade 'em.  

Good idea, right?  

We started to learn risk control and credit and even started to learn about Information Technology(IT) to some degree since we were this tiny group of people with bunches of information that now flowed freely to the people that called us.  Remember all of this used to be handled by other departments but since we were TRUSTED enough to handle this information and use it well, we were MUCH MORE efficient than other credit cards.  People would call one of our people and they would get an expert that could discuss at length why we no longer had international fastcards or why we used only such and such ATM network that they could not find in their area.  It was really a lot of useless information really that the customer didn't need to know, but in some sense they got these higher "quality" or more informed associates when they called for help.  

And this brings us to Frank.  Because he brought it all down.  

Frank was a good guy.  He sat next to me when I was about to be put on the SME team and he was smart and he kind of looked like my dad but much younger.  Well, Frank decided to stop doing lost stolen reports.  His team leader was giving him trouble for taking too much time perhaps and so to make his calls shorter, and seem more efficient like he was working hard, he just stopped doing lost/stolen reports.  Yep, just stopped filling them out and the longest call turned into the quickest call for him.   People talked to me about him, people bad mouthed him, and some people even thought it would be BETTER for him if we just let him go.  I got asked about it and since I used to follow a "leave no soldier behind" mentality, I said no way were we going to fire him.  Now I have to admit, we had something of a third wheel when it came to his manager.   We were a bunch of 30s guys and she was in her 60s.  In fact it was the same lady that took over a project of mine whose job it was to determine customer satisfaction with a follow up call.  So I understand that he wanted to be taken off her team now, but I didn't then.  I talked to him and others talked to him but he just went on a number of action plans that basically wrote up his mistakes and then pushed him closer and closer to being miserable which he probably already was I thought.  At no point did I think that he was going to be fired because he was too good for that and I figured he would just start filling out the lost/stolen reports and things would go back to normal.  

The lesson for today is that we should have removed him from her.  Nothing in life is so impactful as the supervisor to associate relationship, imo.  The SBU started to get bad press in the risk control area because they would send those reports back which I eventually had to fill out and send them back to them with skeleton information.  And really this leads to a fouled up reputation for us and as people find out that the whole department is the MOST PROFITABLE SBU in the world, they start to chaff at wondering just HOW we are achieving this status.  Small wonder I guess now that we as a business unit start having IT difficulties.  And I mean this in the kindest sense possible but some IT people are a bunch of CRAP people.  You're welcome.  Nothing will take it out of you more than to be in charge of this huge group of excellent associates and walk down there to see some guy eating at his desk unable to find a problem that had no cause that he can't find... that you KNOW just started happening for no reason.  But such is the real world we live in.  We saved Frank but we lost the department.  

Soon after, my leader is asked to leave the company for non-business reasons, to which I publicly make a statement of disapproval and here comes a barely literate bat lady appointed as my NEW leader to give me errors for not sending an international fastcard... which we don't send anymore.  No, she wasn't barely literate, yes she was top flight Citibank manager with full health insurance and vision care probably sleeping in silk PJs, making shit up and giving me errors... HERE at the top of the world! 

That wasn't very Christian, sorry. 

So I guess what I want to say to all you news orgs and bloggers and scryly people is that you should try to be the best but also try to be vigilant of what that might cost.  We should have simply moved Frank to a new team.  We might have had more people "quicken" their calls after this but then we simply would have started up the quality groups and started to have a more expensive SBU than we had, but we wouldn't have had this "decade of hot mess".  lol

I like Sandra Bullock.. by the way Sandra I'm available for true love... cuz it's you.