By Gareth Vaughan
ANZ says it's 31 branches short of where it said it would be when the National Bank brand was axed because it has merged more branches than initially planned, sometimes at the request of staff, and because building safety concerns were identified at some others.
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4 Comments
Maybe the missing 800 ANZ staff (including the manager we dealt with for 11 years) and 31 closed branches could affect customer service.
No maybe for ourselves. Simple requests were repeatedly ignored.
We simply followed our old National Bank - no no no - ANZ bank manager to his new employer. Superb personal service again.
Finding him was simple. Googled his name and town. Thanks Google.
Standard pattern for large company takeover.
1 Pretend no jobs will be lost or services or products cut.
2 Conduct review of company to find out what you have really bought. This takes a while, particularly if the business you have bought is large.
3 Cut jobs, services or products as you see fit.
It is rather depressing and it follows a very bureaucratic, central planning and control based script. Customers who enjoyed the unique characteristics of the old business have to put up with the bland alternative of the acquirer. It is a sort of Corporate Communism. where everything is dumbed down in the name of efficiency.
The process can only be fought by attacking the regulations that favour size over diversity. Large corporate behemoths can often only exist because more nimble competitors are denied access by well meaning but counterproductive regulations.
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