By Art Gillis

I have a feeling that I am not the only customer whose accounts my bank chose not to integrate into my customer portfolio. After all, I have been a careful and responsible customer for 10 years. And with 13 accounts assembled from personal, family members and business, it’s certainly no systems challenge (using any one of my 10 favorite core vendors) to put all accounts together.

Vendor systems claim they can handle up to 99 relationships. But here’s the rub. Only one of my accounts distinguishes me as a member of the 1% Club, and that’s my retirement plan. The other 12 are working accounts that do the job every day, but don’t do much for my bank’s P&L. So what’s the problem? They can’t connect my big account to my customer portfolio. So if ever an employee wants to see who Art Gillis is, they see only the cats and dogs.

A couple of years ago, I made a phone call to see if I could connect the big guy, and after several prompts, I finally reached Bangalore. There was a bit of a problem using the word “integration.” Apparently, in India, the word has greater significance than just the systems definition. So I gave up and prepared myself for a visit to the branch where I had opened most of the accounts. I usually get a nose bleed whenever I enter a branch, but it was OK this time. I asked for Cindy, who had opened my accounts 10 years ago, and I got the familiar blank look as if I had asked for Marilyn Monroe. Finally, when I was introduced to a man who was wearing a tie, I knew I was in good hands. When I mentioned the big account, he related instantly with, “Oh that’s out in Plano, we can’t do that.” That in itself didn’t bother me because I hardly ever go to Plano also. But when you think of a global bank, certainly 7.5 miles from Dallas shouldn’t present a serious hurdle.

Tom Friedman makes a very good case about how flat the world is now. But if Tip O’Neill were around he could have written his version of how local some things are since he was credited with the saying, “All politics is local.” I never got my big account connected, but when I last made a deposit at a drive-up teller, the tube sent back a little white tin container with several jelly beans in it. I ate them all. That’s when I knew I was in good hands at my bank. And Tom, you guessed it, the tin container was made in China. Account relationships are like the family kind. They’re very important, and if you ignore one, they’ll let you know about it, with a lot of attitude.

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