Consumer Express

When Competition Is Not What It Is Perceived To Be

I feel really great having the opportunity of making this contribution to Consumer Express. It is a topic born out of a recent realization of a simple fact which dawned on me in the first few days of being on my new job – as a banker in the city of Lagos.

Yes, I am a banker. I recently changed jobs after a 7-year stint in one of the highest profile banks in Lagos. I always worked as a Sales person or what is today called a Relationship Manager in all of those years. Again, I worked in a number of branches across the bank in the same period all of which were on high street locations so I had the privilege of being at my very best in the face of very stiff competition from similar brands.

In a recent strategic move to a much less high profile bank (and sincerely in a bid to seek out new challenges and rejuvenate my skills), I quickly commenced work and hit the streets, deploying the best of skill acquired over the last few years. It was on one of those occasions I realized that the word “Competition” is a word which more often than not is misused simply by the fact that so-called competitors sell similar products or services.

It could easily be said that there are 23-25 banks, I mean Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria. Indeed, because there all sell the same range of products. But with the benefit of my new job, I soon realized the following:

• It was just a cheap way of some miserable contenders to rub shoulders with the high profile players in the industry claiming that they offer the same service.
• One will only be right to claim to be in competition not simply by virtue of displaying a similar product range but essentially by operating at the same level in terms of quality of product offering, in addition to the former.
• How dare I say I am in competition with another bank when it takes almost five weeks after account opening to provide a customer with its i-banking facility for effective account monitoring purpose or a customer has to give three days’ notice that he or she would like to make a cash withdrawal of about N7m…yes, some customers still do this level of cash business; or worse still, a customer walks in for a simple interbank funds transfer transaction only to find out five days later that the other bank had not received the funds, reason being that “our funds transfer platform had stopped working” yet no word was sent to the customer for all of five days?
• If you cannot come up with the same quality, you are simply out of competition. Stop pretending!

NB: This is a special dedication to the banks in particular and other service providers in Nigeria.

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We experienced another heavy downpour in Lagos again on Sunday exactly a week following the massive floods that ravaged homes in and around Lagos to varying extents. We could hardly lay our heads down to sleep even in the night but remained awake some of us on our knees praying for divine intervention for the rains to cease.

Expect to hear from us in the days ahead.