Why there's no hope for Bank of America

Like most Americans, several years ago my bank was bought by a bigger bank which was then bought by a bigger bank and then, a few such purchases later, the last-and-biggest bank was bought by Bank of America, making me a BOA customer.

What did I know? At the time, all I knew was that customer service has very little prominence in the banking industry in general, so BOA was nothing special - or especially terrible, as it were.

Well, I've since learned. We left BOA a year or so before leaving Boston. Thankfully.

When I wrote Five-Star Customer Service, I included three "From the Trenches" stories about my bank: two bad ones and a great one. At the time I was kinder and gentler, I suppose, so I didn't name names for the two negative episodes. I did, on the other hand, give BOA full props for the phenomenal service my personal banker gave me.

As I did with all the companies mentioned in the book, I sent a copy to Ken Lewis, then Chairman and CEO (now just CEO*) of Bank of America. Just a simple, "Way to go - thought you'd appreciate knowing your staff did something special enough to go in a book."

I got my first box of books from the publisher and sent these copies out. About a week later, I called Ol' Ken's office in Charlotte to follow up.

"No interest," said one of his assistants. And before I could even finish saying, "But I'm not trying to sell him anyth-!" Click. Call over.

So much for Southern hospitality. So much for gratitude. So much for just being polite to a customer!

More prominent business leaders that Ken have been an awful lot kinder to little-old-writer me, most notably Jack Welch. (Sorry, Ken, that's right: you're no Jack Welch.) So let's just say, as I share the following link to my new Twitter friend Big Robby's blog, that I'm allowing myself ever-so-slightly to enjoy the negative press that Bank of America is "enjoying" since Tuesday's AP article on their predatory fee structure.

More on this whole fee scandal next time.

Meanwhile, Robby says it better - and more colorfully - than I ever could: http://bigrobby.com/.

Why is there no hope for Bank of America? Because, as my favorite saying goes, a fish stinks from the head. BOA isn't going to stop alienating its customers because its top dog doesn't have the faintest clue that you can't run a business that way. Instead, they'll keep on gaining new hapless customers by buying other banks and by out-spending their competition on advertising. They're doing the typical big-business mistake: opening the doors wide to bring in new customers, but losing masses of them out the back door as those customers realize how badly they're abused.


*Karma is sometimes slow, but it is inexorable. His board demoted him several months ago for something unrelated to my call in 2005. Officially unrelated, anyway.

P.S. This is where I add a disclaimer so you don't think your friend Ted is an egomaniacal nut job who thinks that CEOs of Fortune 50 companies have nothing better to do than sit around the office waiting to field a call from me. The fact that I've gotten scheduled for calls with any of these leaders at all surprises me each time it happens, and I'm honored.

Instead, what I expect to happen when I send my book to a prominent CEO is for him/her to pass the book off to a subordinate a few rungs down the chain - Bill Marriott gave it to his son David, for instance. These guys know the Big Boss passed it off, though, so they're typically inclined to follow up - not necessarily to invite me to speak at their next annual meeting, but they'll take my call. My Dad taught me this trick, and it's a good one.

There. I'm confident, not nutty.