Poor customer service, irresponsibility on HBL’s end or just another angry customer? We will let you decide.
Recently, Hira Najam, an HBL customer, took to Twitter to express her anger and frustration when the bank failed to resolve her concerns for the better part of a week. Her story has gone viral over social media for the better part of the week.
Apparently, going by her version of events, HBL misplaced an enormous amount of Rs. 150,000 that she had transferred from her account and no one knows where it went.
In such a situation, she tried what any other banking customer could do – she contacted their ‘helpline’.
Here’s her complete account of how things went with the HBL helpline:
8 days ago, Hira Najam tweeted this, summing up her issue with HBL and their helpline:
Even after the passage of 3 days, no progress was made. She even tagged the official Twitter handle of HBL Pakistan in the hopes that someone could take notice of her issue over social media.
Another Pakistani tweep had a helpful suggestion for her. To this Hira laid out how many times she had to attempt to get in touch with their customer service helpline. Her phone log said it all:
HBL’s helpline, when it actually could respond to Hira, had one standard answer for her whenever she called them -‘to please be patient as they figure it out’.
Hira, seeing as how she was getting nowhere with the helpline, started building her case against HBL as confirmed by this tweet.
A week passed and no one at HBL has any idea what happened to the money she transferred.
She does have a point here:
Since it has been more than a week and all she’s got in return are vague requests to be patient while HBL figures out what went wrong, another Twitter user suggested that she exercise her rights by complaining to SBP’s Banking Ombudsman.
If all else fails, she has been advised to visit her branch and go face to face with banking officials:
This whole Twitter exchange has illustrated how important it is for companies in the 21st century to listen to their customers. Seeing as how HBL’s Twitter account hasn’t replied to her queries yet, this reflects poorly on one of the largest banks in Pakistan.
Right now we only have one social media user’s version of events as they happened so it is not too far-fetched to assume that HBL’s bureaucracy and lacklustre reputation management social media management skills may have made a non-issue a huge PR headache for the company. They might know the answer to where the money went. But then again, given their shoddy helpline and social media skills who is to blame here?
