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[kapitankraut]

In typical fashion, the "chat with the girl in Operations" never quite came off. Initially, she'd got her calendar round the wrong way (how does that happen?) and it had to be the next week. Then she managed to lose her calendar to a computer crash and go out for lunch instead

Comments

[pappubahry]

"Unity" launched at Westpac.
Does this have anything to do with the new ATM format?

[kapitankraut]

Not at all, actually. The ATM revamp was a separate thing.

[sixth_light]

Suddenly, inexplicably long bank phonecalls make sense. (Not that I've ever been a Westpac customer, but I assume similar situations apply at other banks.)

[kapitankraut]

Hard to say about other banks. One thing that's always stuck with me from my early days with Westpac was when we were comparing our systems with St George (a regional bank here that we took over just before I joined). I don't know how truthful the claim is, but apparently "98% of calls to St George can be dealt with on 2 screens" - which prompted the joke that at Westpac "2% of calls were dealt with on 98 screens, the remainder required more". We've heard "up to 45 systems" more recently.
So the moral of the story is that some banks actually made things simple before we did.