Most of us live in Bangkok. Most of us speak Thai very poorly. Almost all of us hold accounts with Thai banks.
One thing we probably all agree on is that the customer care one receives from banks in Bangkok is unquestionably better than back home.
Transferring money is easy and free, those transactions are completed in real time, and if something goes wrong you can get a human on the phone in a relatively short amount of time and the assistance you receive from them – and inside bank branches – is friendly and efficient.
But another thing we probably all agree on is that Thai banks could improve in one specific area.
We love that we can have a conversation about Thai banks without using their names.
For example, if I said that I have a business bank account at the purple one, my salary gets deposited into the navy blue one, and my bills get paid online through the yellow one, everyone here would know what I mean.
Now, imagine if everyone said, “But the green one has the best English.”
If that were the case, the green one would get ALL the expats as customers!
They’d get the recently arrived expats, they’d get the long-term expats, they’d get the expat-owned companies, and they’d probably get the Thai-owned companies that employ expats (and want to make things easy for them).
This is simple behavioral economics: Consumers don’t necessarily always want the best, we want the thing that has the least chance of being terrible.
To be fair, most bank tellers and desk agents at Bangkok’s colorful bank branches speak English reasonably well. This is especially true at big malls in the high-traffic areas of the city and in the business districts like Sukhumvit, Silom/Sathorn, etc.
And, the navy blue one does something cool. When you “take a number,” not only can you choose between English and Thai language on the machine, but when they call your number the announcement comes over the PA in the language of your ticket.
But if we non-Thai-speaking expats (Westerners, Japanese, Chinese, whoever) consistently hear that the green bank has the best English speakers assisting you – and with all else being equal, which it pretty much is – then we’re going to choose the green bank whenever possible.
That’s a lot of ฿ that needs to be held in a lot of accounts!
We hear a lot about multiculturalism being a strength, but what about multilingualism?
The traditional thing is to provide Business English courses to employees.
Another possibility is to start an initiative at the top, with coaching for Executives and Management personnel so they can lead by example.
