The word "con" is apt to describe PNC. I've worked here for over two years and was lured in based on my customer service and small-peas management experience with the promise of health insurance and a steady paycheck in return for giving the customer what amounts to completely inexperienced financial advice and a difficult time at the teller line- which will likely be understaffed or moving slowly because we need to relay “insights” to customers during their transaction. You might be told to “hold the receipt hostage” depending on how desperate the branch manager is to keep up with goals.
You will get approximately 2 weeks of training, after which you will be responsible for recognizing literally any and all of the thousand red-flags of potential fraudulent transactions as well as little to no help from the giant pile of garbage that is their 'intranet'. It’s hilarious; they literally have an entire department devoted to searching their own intranet when you call for help because you can't find a procedure or guide for your particular situation; what they email you is 50% likely to even remotely answer the question.
There are also too many internal departments to name. I have a cheat sheet currently in my desk that is two pages, 12-font Times New Roman of contact info. Your best hope is to be working with someone who's been there long enough to compile a working folder of internal contact numbers or email addresses to use... which, depending on which way the breeze blows, could arbitrarily be of no use because human logic doesn't necessarily flow alongside PNC logic. Be prepared for a customer’s request for service to somehow take 4 hours out of your day just to find out how to do a thing the way PNC wants it to be done.
They don’t want the customer in the branch so they can cut costs but then they realized that by pushing customers out that they were missing out on investment and credit card opportunities so now their business model of branch employee sales is more brutal and unrealistic with PNC reaping all the reward and none of the risk. On the flipside, the branch employee’s reward is $6 for the sale and the risk of any and all legal, ethical or dubious policy ramifications.
The "financial well-being" cult vibe is a bit surreal. They will attempt to force-feed you a strange new PNC language and actually admit to employing psychological tactics that they contract outside companies to tailor to the PNC brand and model as a way to brainwash you into thinking it’s acceptable for PNC to thrust any and all risk onto your shoulders and want you to be glad for it when you should run screaming. They want you to sell but they tell you to use different phrases so they don't get in hot water with consumer watch-dog groups. You'll be tasked with cold-calling people but they will dub it "multi-channel calls" and (though they hand you a script and say "this is only what you're allowed to say” for legal coverage) you'll be under immense pressure by all forms of management to deviate from script to get people in your office... to sell them anything and everything regardless of what reasoning you tell your customer they need to come in. If you are not a sociopath, desperate or even if you just desire to FOLLOW WHAT THEY THEMSELVES SAY ABOUT ETHICAL SALES…you will likely show up on multiple naughty reports that get forwarded in vast email chains to your (as well as your co-worker's) embarrassment -usually highlighted in a bright Disappointment-Red. I roughly receive 6 emails a day about the double-digit regional credit card goals, where we are with it and chain-email demands of almost every employee in the region cc’d to make the goal. Goal Goal GOAL GOAL GOAL CREDIT CARD credit card CREDIT CARD EVERYBODY NEEDS A CREDIT CARD even if they don’t know it yet, etc.
When you take this job you just have to make an important decision: Which way do you prefer to fail? If your wish was to excel in honest customer service then you’ll likely be disappointed because you actually don’t have any authority to take ownership of a problem 90% of the time. If you wish to excel in sales then good luck having the time in the day, an appropriately staffed branch and using multiple software programs they require you to input every action you’ve taken per customer (you’d get alcohol poisoning if you drank every time you had to document the same information). If you wish to not get fired for violating one of many policy, fraud, loss prevention or ethical sales practice rules then-I’m just kidding! There isn’t a real choice in that scenario because if you work there long enough you’re getting fired because you’ll have violated something you were unaware of or you will accidently have missed that a check you deposited for someone was in some way fraudulent or you should have known that a customer had fallen victim to a scam or (in a co-worker’s case) you didn’t click a box in the service browser that the entire branch staff was unaware was a requirement since we didn’t have a manager for several months to hover over our every waking breath.
