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I first met Stephanie Retchless when she became manager of the local branch of my bank. I was struck by the fact that not only was she a friendly smiling manager, but once she arrived, her staff changed and emulated these virtues too. They were noticeably cheerier – read, happier? - than before.

My business needs required regular meetings with my manager. Over the years, I never met Stephanie other than inside the bank, but when I married again a few years ago, she was not only invited but also sat at the top table as a close friend. How one can establish that level of friendship just over a counter or across a desk is still a matter of wonder to me, but we did.

My favorite story, which I have related to dozens of people, including other bank managers, to illustrate my idea of a first-class, problem-solving manager, involved my youngest son leaving home to work in a restaurant on Hamilton Island. At around 11 a.m. I received a call. He was in panic because all he had was an ATM withdrawal card and, as he told me, “They don't have a branch on Hammo.”

I told him to ring me back in an hour. I phoned Stephanie. Knowing there was no point in him remaining with a bank offering no access to funds on the island, she offered to withdraw the funds from his account, draw a bank cheque and, in her own time, walk across the road to another bank and persuade the manager, whom she knew personally, to open an account in my son's name on her guarantee. When Lachlan rang me an hour later, I assured him he would have funds by mid-afternoon. He did. Her performance almost certainly broke all the rules her employers expected of her, but what a hell of a performance! Older customers remember it nostalgically these days as ‘customer service’. Some say to me, “But she did that because you have this special friendship.” I tell them, “I have this special friendship because that’s what she does.”

Ask the guy who lost his wallet when he was in the Gobi desert. His own bank manager failed him, but he knew Stephanie was the manager at a different branch, so he gambled on a second ISD call from central Asia. Problem solved. That was her trademark. That’s why my account went with her wherever she was posted: Biloela to Birdsville, Coolangatta to the Cape or wherever.

In those days I used to enjoy Friday afternoon drinks at the Carindale tavern, as did several other local business people who were her clients in real estate, stationery, pharmacy and so on. Every now and again one of us had a ‘Stephanie’ story to tell. She was the unanimous choice as best customer service operator in the area.

Stephanie Retchless never believed that to increase efficiency you had to sacrifice service. Nor did she believe that the only loyalty in her office had to be to the employer and the shareholders. She set a standard of loyalty in the way she treated her staff and defended them to her own masters.

I personally place loyalty very high on the list of qualities I value in life. I give loyalty and I treasure it in others, as one does with any rare quality, especially when you have been bitten too often by the reverse. It is unfortunately a very rare quality. I am cynical about loyalty, probably because I have spent a great part of my life in and around politics and political organisations.

I was chairman of a hundred and thirty strong branch of a political party at nineteen and have experience in various roles since then, including a stint in Parliament, a longer stint on the Central Executive of a political party, and the past two and a half decades as a political lobbyist. From politics I learnt that loyalty almost always flows upwards. I also learnt, as did Stephanie in her career, that there is a corollary to that maxim. The fact that one of our bodily functions is often called ‘droppings’ is not just a mere observation of physical phenomena, it is also a law of bureaucracy because that particular commodity, even in the metaphorical sense, always falls downwards.

Sadly, in modern banking the customer is no longer at the top of the totem pole. The shareholder is, and that means the dollar is. Staff too, have been ruthlessly down-valued in the ever-increasing demand for greater productivity at less cost. Profits and share price are everything. The rule of “loyalty upward and ‘crap’ downward” has taken over.

It is no wonder the author of this book, with the value she placed upon customers and loyalty downward as well as upward, eventually fell foul of the system, or cistern, depending upon your view of the modern world of banking.

One last anecdote will illustrate both Stephanie’s commitment to problem solving and the value she places upon loyalty on the one hand and the ‘don’t care much’ attitude to even long-standing customers by the banks. For investment purposes, I recently sought an addition to my line of credit with the bank. I was rejected out of hand because I did not have a ‘regular’ income. It was age discrimination, but no one would admit it. I am sixty-three and retired. But since retiring seven years ago, my net worth (after living expenses) has increased by a satisfactory percentage every year. The bank discounted this as ‘risk’ income, crediting only conventional income, without which they were not interested in doing business with me. The fact that a rival bank offered all I wanted and more, provided I left my old bank, didn’t seem to stir them at all. I soon learnt that employees only get credit for finding new customers. Loans officers and bank managers are not much interested in satisfying the needs of long-standing, existing customers. First, it’s not their job, and second, even if they keep you with the bank, how do they prove it to their masters? There’s no change in statistics. There’s just no reward in it.

I learned from my now retired but loyal bank manager there is a special section called a ‘retention unit’. Sure enough, it was their job to hang onto old customers. Even then I had to wheedle and cajole and lie a little about what the rival bank was offering. After about six weeks I managed to win the fight to stay with the bank I had been with since I started a savings account as a kid at school. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around - them fighting to keep me? Yep. That’s what my ‘real’ bank manager said too. So once again I am indebted to her for solving yet another problem, albeit by proxy.

The bank may not miss Stephanie Retchless (or not that they are aware of, anyway) but many of her customers, and many staff who valued being valued by their boss, do. She was not necessarily one who broke the mould, but she sure broke most records for the sorts of things customers and workers at the coal face appreciate, and for that she paid a price. This book is indeed a necessary cathartic experience for her, but it will be a text book for the lay person well into the future. It is long overdue in coming and well worth the read. You can’t buy this sort of good advice in the regular marketplace.

Colin Lamont1

1 Colin Lamont left Australia to study at London University, was recruited by the then British Colonial Officer and trained and worked as a Detective Inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police before being seconded to British Intelligence, Far East. He returned to Australia and did a stint in Parliament and then became a professional political lobbyist. He has also owned his own newspaper and has written several books on history. He is now retired and living on the Gold Coast.