E & PP - New Business support from the banks
For our final Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice module we conducted a field trip in Cardiff city centre to find out how we might be received if we were genuinely looking for a new business account. We agreed to split up in groups to cover all the bank branches in the area. Lee and I decided to visit the Lloyds TSB Business branch and a branch of the Cooperative. We arrived at the special Business branch of Lloyds and I gave my spiel about a fledging design company we were planning to set up in Cardiff only to be told that the man we were looking for, the New Business Advisor had just left for the normal branch and we should take the short walk there to find him. The receptionist we met there seemed very pleased we were considering them and gave me the impression that they would welcome our business with open arms. She also told us that the man we needed to talk to was in a meeting but that we should come back later for a proper chat. She took our names and arranged a time which certainly made me feel that we were being taken seriously, even on the back of such a speculative enquiry. In the half an hour before we were due for our meeting we visited the Cooperative to see if they would be as helpful as Lloyds had been. In short, they didn’t. We would need to call their customer service centre as business banking was oddly enough not available from their high street branches. I was given a leaflet with the call centre number and scant information about their services and banking charges. We arrived back at Lloyds where the receptionist was very sorry but we wouldn’t be able to meet the New Business Advisor on that day after all. It turns out he had had to rush off for an emergency dental appointment. As much we were a little suspicious that he didn’t want to waste time meeting us when he had more important matters to attend to the receptionist seemed genuine. We were given an armful of leaflets pushing their competitive business banking rates and the elusive New Business Advisor’s business card so that we could call to arrange an appointment sometime soon. I understand from what the other DFIMers had to report after our excursion that they had all had mixed success in actually managing to speak to someone helpful. If our man at Lloyds really had chipped a denture chewing a pen or lost some teeth in a lunchtime bar brawl then Lloyds had still succeeded in giving us a personal contact who wanted to meet us in person. I feel that I would choose to bank with the branch who I felt would start and continue offering face to face support over one with slightly cheaper rates. A specialist’s knowledge and assistance through the inevitable mistakes made during a new business venture would likely be more valuable in the long run then a few percent differences in banking rates.
