personal banker

customer service representative

senior personal banker

inbound customer service representative

lead teller

Fifth Third Bank

Sounded so amazing in the interview. I Should have known better! From the interview to training, we were told 8:30 A - 5/5:30 P for first shift with occasional overtime as needed. Perfect. (They also have a four 10 hour days option, mid-shift option, and a "second shift" option) After training was completed, I can count on both hands in 8 months working there how often that actually occurred.

There were a handful of days we got to leave before 4pm, but 9 times out of 10, you were there 10-12+ hours a day. Not allowed to leave. "Work until the work is done." They do not care if you have a family or other obligations. I spent more time working than being at home.

My average work week was 52+ hours which wouldn't as bad if we had more space to work in. They are working on expanding the vault area, but it currently is cramped, dusty, dirty, full of teller trash and overall a depressing environment to work in. We had to beg to get the air conditioning to stay on past 5pm when all the other floors above us would leave for the day.

Vault processors are crammed next to one another with barely any space for the machines or themselves to process deposits that come in; the order processing area is just as bad. Not enough room for the people to fill the orders requested, let alone packing and placing finished orders. The whole vault was poorly designed to handle the amount of work that comes in. There are not enough people working there which is why we can never seem to leave, but they are going as slow as possible to remedy the situation.

I couldn't take it anymore. I had to leave. I spent 8 months barely seeing my family, missing events, birthdays, a death and a funeral. I lost sleep constantly, my body always felt like it was run over by a truck, my hands were always swollen, sore, and aching, and management didn't honestly care. They continued to take on new clients upping the workload to beyond capacity. A supervisor told us once that he felt, "They are going to keep adding clients until we break. They (upper management) wont stop until we cannot fulfill the promises they made and even then, we will all just get into trouble instead of fix the situation."

A Co-worker was told by our Manager that the reason he leaves at 4:30pm is because, "If I leave any later, my salary pay would not be beneficial enough to me based on the hours I would end up working." 

Management (Manager, Manager 2 (2nd shift) and Supervisors) spend more time sitting, going out to lunch, chatting/laughing in the receiving room with each other  than bothering to help get the work done. I wont say they NEVER helped, but they went out of their way to only help when they absolutely had too. The minute they could they would dip out.

Management treat the team leads (it's like being an assistant manager but on hourly pay still) like gophers/slaves. They run them until they practically drop doing the grunt work while they goof off. Management has lots of paperwork to do, meetings to attend, etc. I watched very carefully what they did daily. Their actual managerial work for the most part takes 3-4 hours in that consideration. They spend the rest doing anything but working.

Upper management loves to tell interested businesses that do a walk-through that we are, "their little processors! They just process, process process! That's all they know how to do! And they do it all day, everyday!" 

Upper management does not want to talk to you. Ever. If you complain, go to HR, you will get written up. They will refer to it as insubordination on the write up so that you cannot claim retaliation. 

HR does not care about you. If you try to discuss issues with the constant over-working, or working conditions in general, they will recite that the vault is, "a work until the job is done" type job, and they can legally make you work as long as is necessary. (Even though none of us were told this in our interviews. We were all given the 8 hours a day speech with only occasional overtime as needed.) Then HR will happily send an email to management as to why you were there. 

This job is not worth it. I've already gone on long enough about it. Trust me, you do NOT want to work here.

I enjoy working here and have been with the company for more than 4 years.  I would only leave if a good opportunity came along externally.  I hope a good opportunity comes along internally.

Wealth Management as a whole is responsible for less than 15% of firm revenue and it shows.  The processes, technology, and documents are lacking.  High amounts of inefficiency are willfully built into every step of the process.  It is an uphill battle to get anything done.  I have to use 3-5 different systems throughout the day, none of which communicate with one another. 

Great work/life balance, very low stress environment and I NEVER take work home with me.  8-5, M-F.  I have never worked a weekend. I enjoy what I do and the people I work with.

Management is partially open to change but only if it is small and easy to do.  If something will take more than a couple mouse clicks to implement, forget it.  Unable to make policy changes to improve customer experience even if the change is pretty minor.  Best example is that complicated forms are given to clients blank and we expect them to fill it out themselves.  I suggested the call center spend 5 minutes to fill the form out for the client or even just let them know that if there is a single error on the form it will be rejected, so call in if you get stuck.  Both were rejected,  instead we waste multiple departments, and thousands of clients time with thousands of rejections a month when all it would take is a 5 minute conversation to ensure its right in the first place.  Theyd rather save the 5 minutes on the phones.

They are making efforts to improve tech but the clearing firm they use is just plain bad and has no calendar or note-taking integration. Both are separate programs. It would be a monumental undertaking and expense for them to change that at this point.

My managers (Ive had 4) have all been good and easy to work with.  I can leave if I have an emergency and it doesn't feel like I am micromanaged or have people breathing down my neck.

I have received nothing below meeting expectations and have never received a raise above 1.8%.  the raises are insulting and management is hesitant to recognize above average effort because they have to write up a lengthy report if they rate anyone above a 3/5.   

Terrible internal promotion policy is not based on what a role should pay, but a raise based on prior salary.  People leave the bank all the time to go work somewhere else for a year or two then come back, they all say its the only way they could get 5/3 to pay them the market rate.   Turnover is relatively high (1-2 years) but it isn't because of stress, its because with the poor raises and internal promotion policy actively disincentivizes people from sticking around.

Months-long training, which initially seems like it would be setting you up for success, but the reality is the training covers so little of what you will actually be doing day-to-day.

Goals and metrics are constantly changing. At the beginning of the year, you will be told your performance  is measured on certain things, only for that to change a few months in. And then change again the next month, and so on. 

Departments are staffed thin, and there is not enough time or resources to complete all the work that is expected to be done. Customers are demanding, and at times, combative. This leads to fast burnout for employees resulting in high turnover. My department of 4 had 13 different people in less than 2 years. Most left within 6-9 months of finishing training.

There was a lot of micromanagement, much more so than at any other place I've worked. Every part of your day must be documented. There is so much focus on documentation that you have to ignore customers, emails or calls or even put off doing work that actually matters in order to complete this documentation because if it's not documented than the assumption is you didn't do it. 

Mananagement only cares about sales and more sales, despite trying to convince you that it's not about sales. The focus is not on providing good service as it's not considered good by company standards unless you sold something.

Technology from both the employee and customer perspectives is not great. The systems used are severely outdated and the process to accomplish basic tasks are complicated. Frustrating for both sides.

The pay is low for the workload and raises are small. Many former employees left for better paying positions elsewhere.

Depending on department, there's not a lot of flexibility in when, where, and how work gets done. And again, short-staffing issues persist so there's always stress and pressure. Not taking a lunch break was the norm most days.

Benefits are what you'd expect from a bank...PTO, paid holidays, 401K with match, health insurance, etc. Premiums were reasonable and probably in line with similar sized organizations.

They do have offerings to learn and develop skills, however, many of us did not have time to do that as the workload never ends. 

The overall environment was inclusive at my location and worked with a lot of great people who genuinely cared about doing a good job, but it's just not the best company that supports employees in doing so. They do encourage employees to volunteer in their communities and offer some paid time to do it, but many couldn't take advantage of this time because the department wasn't staffed enough to allow for it.

After working for Fifth Third Bank for over 6 years I am completely confident expressing my dissatisfaction in the way upper management is running the Customer Service Aspects of the company. 11 of my colleagues were demoted simply because there was not enough basic customer service employee coverage for the 1-800 phone number. The truth is that in late 2013 and early 2014 everything changed. We are constantly told it is because of business decisions but the truth is that our upper management/VP's have made bad decisions based on one man's great ideas, and let go of valued and successful customer service employees based on an unrealistic handle time goals. Also, we cannot be honest internally about how we feel about the company we work for. For every negative answer or comment I make, my direct manager is docked resulting in less of a bonus/pay increase for her. This is unfair because she is an incredible Manager and this policy promotes dishonesty.

Our company claims integrity but the bottom line is that they are not walking the walk though they talk the talk. As a person of integrity, I can no longer work for a company that does not value it's employees and makes us sacrifice while they collect their 6 figure bonuses. 

What once was a wonderful company to work for has become a place I dread going to every day. They have changed my job completely from the description which I interviewed for originally. If I had an opportunity to leave I would take it in a heartbeat.  I've had 5 promotions in 6 years and now have been "blacklisted" in my role with no hope of advancing any further. Why? Because I am so knowledgeable that they cannot afford to move me from my current role due to my experience. There is absolutely no honor/integrity to this decision, and I cannot remain working for a Company that purposefully sabotages successful representatives advancement just because they cannot get enough people interested in applying for their jobs. Perhaps if they focused on employee engagement, and not firing people for no reason, they would be more successful in retaining their employees.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The best part was leaving. Literally, everyone I've ever worked with at the company is stressed out, overwhelmed and worried about their job security daily due to experiencing microaggressions, unprovoked hostility, targeting and retaliation. Some have even experienced overt-discrimination and marginalization and have actually been told that they're too passionate about the job yet they've merely upheld the company's professed core values. It's the worst workplace environment I've ever experienced. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Dealing with being targeted for doing your job and actually holding the company to its word. Dealing with an HR department that is in no way shape or form an advocate for the company's employees unless you have influence and favor. Dealing with department heads that openly express that their strategy is to appear inefficient and understaffed so that they can have leverage when requesting additional resources rather than exceeding expectations to ensure SLA/Customer Satisfaction to warrant continued investment, which would create new opportunities. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Elitist. If you're the type of person that expects your performance to be the reason you're not only recognized in an official capacity, but expects it to be the reason you're empowered as well, surely you'll be disappointed when you realize that the people who are offered promotional opportunities are people who are opportunists; people who are not qualified for the position, but are qualified by the position; and people who are favored.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
The job is simple. You follow up with Clients, Client locations and or the internal representatives that manage their accounts to either resolve issues pertaining to their services or confirm the status of their account for a number of reasons. If you have any questions or need any assistance, feel free to ask yourself because most of the time, no one can answer your questions and or no one can or is willing to assist you.

A typical day at work for me is arriving at work on time at 8:30 am and begin to prep my work for the day. If I am doing payments for the day, then I will get the basket of payments that I received authorization for throughout the week. If I am presenting documents to customers, then I will get the basket of documents that came in the previous day. With presenting document, I have to OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control), in which I will input all parties from the documents received into a database and it will let me know if there are any trade sanctions that I would need to know about that could prevent me from processing documents. If there are no sanctions then I would enter all information need into a system we use called BankTrade. That will then generate what we would call a cover letter to present to our customer. Once presented, if they accepts the documents( no errors with the documents), then I will mail the documents to the customer. We have a three day SLA.
  While making payments, once the documents are accepted and mailed out to the customer, we will then make payment. We will debit our customers account for the amount of the invoice that we received along with the documents, plus our bank fees. We will also process payments through BankTrade that will debit the customers account and we will also send out a wire to a foreign bank so that they will be about to credit their customer what is owed to them.     
    Management assists and helps  when it is needed. They do whatever is needed for us to get our jobs done accurately and in a timely manner. They try to make our work environment a safe and also a fun one. For now, There are two of us on a team and my co-worker can be lazy and complain all of the time. I do not let my co-worker prevent me from getting work complete and done on time. 
   The hardest part of my job is working with someone that is not team oriented and the enjoyable part of my job is that I am constantly learning. Learning  the process of other jobs that needs to be done on my team and also outside of my team, learning more and more about the trade process outside of what we do at work and al learning more about my peers at work.

Company likes to say "We are here for the customer" and push loan sales, but doesn't seem to understand that strict lending standards does not make for explosive growth or morale boosts. Even if they say "We are not selling products to the customer," it is very clear that if you are not making sales it does not matter how good your service is, you will be having upper management breathing down your neck. Branches do not stand out due to poor location and landscaping choices so new households just literally drive past. Get ready to hear a lot of "I didn't even know this branch was here!" 

Do you like cold calling customers on a monthly basis so you can attempt to use an inane questioning sales tactic to squeeze every drop of money out of a customer? If not, don't be a banker. Cause if you're not meeting with a customer, it is expected that you are calling everybody and anybody to ask the same questions over and over again.

Branch management is hit or miss. But regional management and above seem to think that one great month should be the goal for every month. Tech is outdated and consistently just does not work. These are the same models of computers used in high schools over a decade ago.  There are good systems and then there are the rest of the systems. You have to jump from one to the other in order to do most tasks. Open an account? That's one system. Apply for a loan? Totally different system. Doing any teller transactions? Another system. If any one of these separate systems break down, the others are almost functionally useless.

On the plus side they do pay better than your average retail job, even on the teller side. Just don't expect any sales incentive or bonuses unless you're in a very busy branch. Which is amusing considering how much they push online/mobile banking and are getting rid of teller positions so everybody is a banker! Which is easy for them to do since turnover is so incredibly high!

pay ok benefits great. They don't value knowledge or experience. Favoritism is only way to advance. Almost a decade of experience there and the people I trained/mentored get advanced.  They want robots and yes men although they say they value original thoughts and opinions management gets offended even if u question a process or rule that they themselves came up with. Agents often know who is getting the promotion before interviews are even done. Favorites are known and if you aren't one of them they will use you up and throw you away when they feel like it. Commercial support center will prevent you from moving to another department as retaliation for not blindly doing things the way they want you too.  They want followers not leaders. If you have an opportunity for improvement and you make it they will search for something else they can use to hold you back.  Even if your scores/metrics are great they will audit all of your calls searching for a mistake so they can get rid of you.  Also FMLA is frowned upon. If you have it your chances to advance will be diminished even though they say it won't affect your opportunity. But legally they can't say that is the reason so they will search for any other mistake you might make to punish you for it. Keep your head down and don't speak up if you want to succeed at this company. Also they are all about good PR.  While they greatly increased starting wages recently to 18/hr, the veteran employees lost their bonus structure which was up to 750 a month to pay for it. They also did not get an increase in their pay so new hires were making almost as much as tenured agents who helped build and expand the department for past 10 years.

Perform daily office responsibilities, working with the Customer Services Manager, to maintain the efficient operation
of the office
•Maintain personally a balancing record that is in line with policy and have the ability to find and correct outages and to
enlist help as needed for more difficult errors.
•Maintain knowledge of the bank policies and financial center procedures, and take responsibility to keep up to date on
any changes.
•Handle consumer and business customer problems with professionalism, directing more complex issues seamlessly to
the Customer Services Manager, or other management as necessary.
•Demonstrate sound judgment in decision making, abiding appropriately to established guidelines and procedures. 

•Meet or exceed sales referrals as set by management.
•Continuously increase knowledge and skills through self-motivation, formal education, seminars and in-house training
•. Maintain a well-developed working knowledge of the complete line of products and services offered, taking
responsibility to keep up to date and request assistance for further development needs.
•Initiate conversations to uncover customer needs and be capable of effectively referring customers to business partners
for the selling and cross-selling bank products and services to customers, so that personal and Bank goals are consistently
met and/oBeing in management I have learned how to approach different situations and come up with a soulution that best fits the problem. I love my co- workers they are dedicted and hard working! The hardest part of my job is the is letting customers know something is wrong with thier account. The best part is all the different personalities I get to come into contact with!!!

My peers were like family to me. Relax time was lunch.
Productive, meetings and emails. My job consist of 24/ 7 network support, trouble shooting network outages. Designing new network infrastructure for new  and old offices, Ordering and seeking out new solutions to improve network reliability, ordering new network circuits, configuring Cisco system and installation. Designing the new office layout for the equipment placement. Filling the proper forms for changes that would effect other departments. Meeting with co-works that would be involved with the changes. I've been in the banking industry my whole carrier. The Comerica culture is a lot different than west coast. Once a year we were require to donate money from our pay checks to United Way and give money a banking advocate to help us keep our jobs. On my own I donate funds to Muscular Dystrophy. The hard part of the job was when I had to makes changes to the network infrastructure. It would take place sometimes during the week after my regular hours and at 1:00 AM and once I was done, I would sleep in my car and get back up at 5:00 AM for the support the east coast and make sure everything is running correctly and than do my normal work hours for the day. Since I lived 70 miles away, relocating closer financially out of the question. Vehicle's I used  at least 1/3 or more of my wages replace and maintain. And I could spend about up to 5 hours commuting to work. What I enjoyed was the family environment with my co workers. I never companied and I always supported my manager and kept everybody up to speed with my progress of my daily duties. I enjoyed the accomplishments of major projects from the beginning to the end. I was dedicated to all of my work, managers and the company to make operations to run smoother and save cost.

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