Amazing company with great potential for a great career!
Pros
- Great team. - Great opportunities for personal and career development. - Varied day to day working. Many different areas in which you are trained on. - Really great fast paced environment. - Great benefits as a full time member of staff which make the staff feel valued such as performance related bonus. - Really enjoyable place to work once you are trained, as there is a lot of knowledge to learn and job fulfilment. - A great job for someone who really enjoys making a difference. - Some of the more senior staff are really supportive. - Great company ethics concerning female empowerment and morals. A really supportive company for women who want to further their career goals. - Great culture day to day with management support if a customer is particularly difficult which is a great aspect of management.
Cons
- Often lots of customer pressure based on you if you are in the banking hall as you are often the first point of call. - Left feeling overwhelmed and untrained at the beginning of the job - training should be longer and more in-depth. The online training does not prepare you for the job as much as it should and there should be longer practical training to enable best customer service. - As a temp, there were no benefits including no sick pay or holiday pay. - Management often place lots of pressure on the front of house staff off the back of MPS customer service calls. We are often told conflicting ideas to approach customer service i.e. We must man Zone A (meet&greet zone) then told after customers say we aren't helping enough to not man Zone A. Told to encourage customers to use Assisted Service Counters, but often getting feedback that as customer service providers we are too pushy/intrusive. The zonal system does not work and needs to be reworked by people who have actually been party to the first line of defence within customer service as they have the best idea of day to day service and know how there banking hall works best. - MPS system for customer feedback is poor as the questions are open ended and long which results in discrepancies between MPS calls due to differential customer opinion on good customer service. Essential bankers often facing the brunt of this and not getting their good work recognised. - Management are not pro-active enough and do not show banking hall presence - often showing a begrudging attitude to being asked to cover the banking hall- therefore it is often condescending to staff to be told how to improve their service as management do not know the day to day running of the banking hall and thus can not devise plans. - All staff should be trained on all aspects of the business before progressing as often it leaves the banking hall short as people can not cover the counter and therefore leaves people alone in the banking hall - which is not only dangerous in case of emergency but also reflects poorly on customer service. - Some staff are on old contracts which is unfair to other members of staff. Staff often got to leave early or not work saturdays because of their old contract - this should be updated to ensure there are enough staff provisions for the whole day - not only part of the day as it forces pressure on the staff who complete the whole day. - Management encourage competition between staff which creates an uneasy atmosphere. Praise is often not given on merit - as managers often have their favourites (which is not unique to barclays but should nevertheless be worked upon to ensure all staff feel satisfaction within their job.) Cohesiveness of the team would also improve alongside a healthier working environment if this was fixed and looked at. - Technology at Barclays is among the best within the banking sector, however often it fails which is not only embarrassing but also reflects poorly on customer service. Barclays should enable all technology is piloted and works well before rolling it out in to all their branches. For example the Kiosk and its software& privacy must be looked at and improved upon to improve customer service. Counter software should be updated and easier to use. iPad's should be able to action prompts and the software should be improved to ensure it doesn't time out constantly which results in poor customer service as often staff take customers out of the counter queue to help them but due to technological error have to place the customer back in to the queue. -Marketing also needs to be improved upon. Often posters are released with poor wording regarding branch closure or hour reduction which results in unhappy customers. Again, essential bankers face the brunt of this. Marketing should ask essential bankers their opinions or create a poll in some instances - or even take someone on who has had front line experience because the company would benefit from correct wording and knowledge of someone who has dealt with customers on a day to day business.