Don't come in from the cold

It's been ridiculously cold this winter in Boston. Today, it got as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit, with a windchill factor of minus 15. In other words, stupid cold.

Speaking of stupid, some businesses have tried to combat this year's frigidity by taping Microsoft Word–written signs at their entrances, asking people to use only the revolving doors and to not hold the regular doors open. The most ridiculous set of signs I've seen is in my very own office building, where Sovereign Bank has a branch. The signs — which like most of these signs have goofy font choices, amateur boldface and all caps, and bizarre punctuation — implore people to keep the bank lobby warm by minimizing the door usage. Best of all is the sign on the control for the handicapped entrance (see photo), which says, "Help us retain heat. Please use only if necessary." Of course, that's kind of the point with a handicapped entrance — it is, by definition, necessary.

From a customer-service point of view, this trend to heat-retention signage shows that so many companies simply don't understand what's important. Here we're talking about Sovereign Bank, which was devastated by bad mortgages and had to be rescued by Spanish bank Banco Santander. Just over a month ago, Sovereign announced it was laying off 1,000 employees, including 131 here in icy Massachusetts.

At a time when the bank is reeling from bad lending decisions and a global credit crisis, do you really want the first thing customers see when they come to a branch to be a bunch of signs saying, in effect, "Keep Out"? Who cares if the tellers are chilly? Wear an extra sweater. Crank up the heat, or get a portable space heater. At a time when your company is floundering, the focus has to be on getting customers in the door, not keeping them out.

Before going to law school, I was a branch manager for a retail bank in Boston; I know firsthand about getting customers into branches. And if I was Banco Santander and owned Sovereign, and I walked over to the One Beacon Street branch and saw these signs, I would fire the branch manager on the spot. If geniuses like this are running our businesses, it will be a long time before our frozen economy begins to thaw.

[Update: Noon Friday — All the signs have now been taken down, just 14 hours after this post was published. To be fair, the temperature has risen to a balmy 22 degrees. But who knows: maybe someone at Sovereign has joined the Client Revolution. I guess there's hope for the economy after all.]