I was at a gtbank branch in Benin City and observed the Lady at the Instant Card Desk was just not smiling to customers she seemed very off and a bit saucy to boot and sadly i lashed out at her . “At least Smile” . she said nothing and was still in her automaton form still working like a robot efficiently . then it dawned on me She is Overworked !
It was now obvious she was the ONLY one serving customers for Instant Credit Card .Gtbanks New Product and i wondered how Low Gauranty Trust Bank had got from the Days of The War Against Access Bank Who were The GEnuine Slavetraders of Yore To This Point. I motioned to speak to the Branch Manager and He Matter of Factly said there is nothing He could do !
this piece below is from techcabal
Overworked staff, mass exits: The inside story of GTBank’s mobile app and USSD transaction failures
Image source: Techcabal
On April 29, Mayowa, 32, was distraught when he couldn’t pay for a 19km Uber ride he had taken to visit a friend in Park View Estate, a well known residential community in the highbrow area of Ikoyi, Lagos. His orange branded Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) app had not launched as he tried severally to make a transfer from his current account to the empty savings account linked to the debit card on his Uber app.
Thinking his MTN data service was the problem, he tried punching his bank’s *737# short code to make the transfer but he got an unresponsive code message.
He tried again, and again and again without success. Frustrated, he made a last attempt accessing his account through GTB’s mobile website, but it took forever to load. To make matters worse, Mayowa’s buddy was away from home, at a dragging management meeting and wouldn’t pick up his frantic calls.
“Ten minutes had passed by now. The Uber driver was looking at me funny. It was embarrassing. I had to plead with him to have some patience,” a laughing Mayowa shared.
Out of Service
Mayowa is one of many GTB customers who suffered embarrassment, inconvenience or loss of opportunity, as downtimes on the bank’s USSD or mobile banking services became frequent in the first half of 2021, sometimes stretching days on end.
A comparative analysis conducted by TC Insights, of customer complaints on Twitter about the mobile app and USSD services between the first half of 2020 and 2021, showed a 54% spike.
A customer representative with the company explained under anonymity that most of the complaints this year have been about the USSD platform, mobile application, unexplainable SMS charges and lately, One Time Password (OTP) issues.
“These are the recurring problems and complaints. Just ask any GTB customer. They will share some bitter experiences,” she said.
Seven years ago, Guaranty Trust Bank, Nigeria’s third-largest lender, increased the popularity of mobile banking with its *737# USSD service in Nigeria, introducing a new level of ease to customers.
Today, other banks have adopted it and an estimated 40 million Nigerians use USSD services for mobile banking. According to the GTB’s financial report, its revenue from USSD fees was ₦2.13 billion ($5.3m) in 2019, a significant 34% increase from the ₦1.58 billion ($3.9m) made in 2018.
GTB didn’t reveal its USSD revenue for 2020 but it disclosed that the total amount it processed via USSD was ₦3.89 trillion, a 9.4% increase from the ₦3.55 trillion processed in 2019. Its mobile app also has over a million downloads on the Google play store alone.
Staff churn and delayed promotions
TechCabal has learnt, from interviews with 19 former and current employees of the bank’s IT division, that the division has suffered a spike in attrition within the last six months. It has resulted in technical gaps and work overload for current employees.
According to these sources, the absence of promotions in 2020 for already overworked employees who felt they were deserving triggered the first wave of exits into the labour market which had attractive offers for their talent. The shortage in talent began compounding into increased workload and mounting pressure for remaining IT employees.
At least ten team members resigned this year from the application development team, a unit which often consists of 20 members, according to a former software developer with the bank .
“I was handling one application then it doubled as a result,” Stanley* said.
“There’s a particular team where three members left in the space of one month. Now, four people’s responsibilities are being juggled by one person,” another employee, at the time of the interview in May, shared.
“The pressure is crazy. One person is doing three people’s jobs all in the name of efficiency. That’s why our cost to income ratio will always be the lowest in the industry,” Michael*, an ex-employee exclaimed.