Bank of England — Local services in London

This is a review of the Note Exchange Service only.

I needed to exchange some old bank notes and so visited the Bank of England’s Note Exchange Service. When I arrived at the window, the Bank Teller asked me if I had ever used the service before. I replied “No and I never will again”…this is why.

Whilst the Bank of England makes much of its austere brand, with its high quality livery and mostly well dressed staff, it truly needs to improve its service to its walk in note exchange customers – who may be a minority concern in its day to day business but it is so poor as to be an embarrassment to the Governor.

Having arrived in the entrance lobby, I was greeted by “concierge” staff, who were both polite and well dressed – However, insisting I get my money out and show them in the doorway of the bank did seem ill thought through but I soon learned that the whole service seems ill thought through from the customer perspective. The main issue was the lack of resource to deal with customer demand and the staff’s lack of ability or concern to actually change anything.

The concierge staff gave me a form which, once completed, they helpfully checked for me before ushering me into a queue that took AN HOUR AND A HALF to reach the front of. At no time did anyone mention a long wait nor was there any signage explaining this. Whilst I stood in the queue I witnessed an old lady three times go up to the counter and ask why she was waiting over two hours for her query to be resolved. I also noted that not all the counters were open all the time which didn’t impressed the other unhappy customers in this really long queue.

Once I had completed my transaction, which itself took only a couple of minutes, I asked the teller how I could complain about the poor customer service. He said he wasn’t sure and said I should speak to the "Helpdesk" staff behind me. So, I went over to them and explained. The young lady on that desk looked rather shocked and said she was just a receptionist and wanted to know who had told me to speak to her. She then rang a number on the wall telephone and handed me the handset and I spoke to someone called Rachel (who apparently is the only Rachel in the Bank of England so she didn’t need to tell me her surname) who after putting me on hold transferred me to the supervisor who was walking around behind the teller who had originally served me – so why he couldn’t just turn around and ask her to speak to me I don’t know.

This lady apologised and said there was nothing she could do. I suggested that they could put more tellers on duty. She told me that all the serving positions were in use which they weren’t all of the time. I asked her why they didn’t have more serving positions – She said this wasn’t possible but wasn’t able to say why this wasn’t possible. Perhaps there is a law that says they can only have four serving positions – other than that I would have thought it was up to them how many they have.

She went on to explain that Mondays were always busy – I asked why this information wasn’t on their website and if they knew this why they don’t have more staff on customer service duty on Monday – I was again told they couldn’t do that. Another meaningless response.

She did say though that she thought putting the “Monday is busy” note on the website was a good suggestion – I won’t hold my breath though.

Given the better service at the Museum – Why don’t they just issue a numbered ticket so folks can walk around the building to the Museum whilst they are waiting – the bank could even be far sighted enough to put a ticket counter in the Museum itself (it’s the same building) so folks could make more use of this dead time.

So, all in all, a very unprofessional approach to customer service. Do avoid this service unless you have...

They do their best, but thtings like (truly terrible) forward guidance and their inability to read the market always means they react too late (and as a result) too hard.

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While the clerk who served us (counter 4 at 1pm on 1/1/24) was absolutely lovely, her colleagues were spectacularly terrible to watch from the hour-long queue. So many customers were tourists like us, with no UK bank account therefore not able to use a regular bank or post office, who just needed to swap some banknotes over from previous trips and be on our way. Unlike us, most of these people weren’t native English speakers.

Listening to the idiotic questions posed by some of the clerks showed a deep lack of training by the Bank of England to help facilitate the process. The clerks’ lack of training is a major drag on productivity. They take ages to communicate with customers, adding considerable extra time to the already ridiculously long queue.

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This cannot be an isolated experience and it’s extraordinary that the Bank has done nothing to address it. There were numerous inclusive signs about disability along the counter. Yet this kind of language accessibility is clearly not on the...