When a customer hears the same apology for the third time, the problem may no longer lie with the employee handling the complaint. Someone with the authority to resolve it needs to become involved.

The Customer Who Kept Hearing Sorry

My replacement credit card was supposed to arrive at my home in Karachi. I had held an account with the bank for years, and my address had not changed. Yet the delivery turned into a dispute involving the bank and its courier.

I contacted both organisations. The courier eventually claimed that the bank had printed an incorrect address. I questioned that explanation because the bank had used my address for years. I wanted someone to check the delivery records and establish what had actually happened.

I did not need another polite conversation. I needed my card.

The experience reminded me of something I have observed during my banking career. A customer reports a problem, and the employee handling the complaint expresses regret. The matter moves to another department, where another employee may have to explain the same delay.

The customer becomes frustrated while the employee absorbs the anger. Somewhere inside the organisation, the original problem remains unresolved.

Who is actually accountable?

An Apology Cannot Replace a Working System

I recently read John Annenberg’s Medium article, “The Apology Paradox: Why Saying ‘Sorry’ Destroys Your Leverage (And What to Do Instead).”

Annenberg argues that people apologise too frequently, sometimes because they want to relieve their own guilt. He encourages readers to replace unnecessary apologies with corrective action. Rather than explaining how terrible they feel, people should examine what went wrong and prevent the mistake from happening again.

I agree with the importance of taking responsibility. Saying sorry does not automatically repair the damage caused by a mistake.

But his argument leaves out an important part of the workplace.

What happens when an employee apologises for a problem that someone else has caused? What should the employee do when the solution requires authority that management has not given them?

A customer-service representative may have no control over a bank’s payment-processing system. An airline employee may have to explain a flight cancellation caused by an operational decision made elsewhere.

Both employees represent their organisations. Customers expect them to provide answers, even when the problem lies outside their control.

Annenberg’s advice makes sense when the person apologising has the ability to correct the mistake. It becomes less useful when an employee can only report the problem to someone else.

The distinction matters.

An employee does not have to cause a problem to become responsible for handling it. A representative who ignores a complaint has failed in a duty within their control. Another representative may escalate the complaint correctly but receive no response from the responsible department.

Management should not treat these situations as identical.

The first requires an examination of the employee’s conduct. The second raises questions about how the organisation handles complaints after employees refer them to the appropriate department.

A bank may have an excellent customer-service team and still operate a poor complaint-handling system.

The employee’s apology cannot compensate for that failure.

What My Banking Experience Has Taught Me About Accountability

I have worked with SWIFT payment systems for years. A cross-border payment may involve several banks before the beneficiary receives the funds.

When a customer reports a delay, the employee receiving the complaint may not have direct access to every institution involved in the transaction.

The employee can examine the available payment records and initiate an investigation. The bank may need to contact another institution to establish where the payment stands.

A delay does not automatically mean that someone has made a mistake. Compliance checks can affect processing times, and an intermediary bank may require additional information before releasing a payment.

A responsible employee should not promise that every delayed payment will reach its beneficiary immediately.

The bank should, however, have a clear procedure for investigating the delay and providing the customer with accurate information.

Suppose a customer calls because a payment has not arrived.

The first employee reviews the available information and forwards the complaint to the relevant team. The customer calls again the next morning, but the next representative cannot see what happened after the initial escalation.

The customer must explain the problem again.

An apology may help maintain a respectful conversation. It does not solve the information gap.

Without a named complaint owner and a reliable update process, the representative has little useful information to offer when the customer calls again.

I would not judge that employee’s performance solely by the customer’s dissatisfaction.

The employee may have followed every prescribed procedure. Management must examine whether those procedures actually work.

A 2019 study in the International Journal of Operations & Production Management examined the relationship between frontline employee empowerment and service-recovery processes. The researchers surveyed 253 bank customers and conducted two laboratory experiments involving 354 students.

They found that giving employees greater decision-making authority did not improve customer satisfaction under every condition. The design of the recovery process also mattered, particularly when customers held the service provider responsible for resolving the problem.

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The finding is relevant to banking.

Employees cannot bypass established financial controls simply to satisfy an angry customer. They need clearly defined authority and access to the information required for their assigned duties.

A representative who has permission to investigate a payment should know which team handles the next stage. If that team cannot resolve the problem, the organisation needs another authorised route for escalation.

Giving an employee responsibility without establishing these arrangements does not create accountability.

It creates frustration for the customer and leaves the employee exposed to complaints that may be beyond their control.

Why the Third Apology Often Fails

I understand why organisations train employees to apologise.

An angry customer wants to know that someone has listened. A respectful response can prevent an already difficult conversation from becoming worse.

Research does not support the idea that apologies are inherently ineffective.

In 2004, Jochen Wirtz and Anna Mattila published a study examining how customers responded to service failures. Their experiment considered situations in which consumers did not incur monetary losses.

They found that apologies worked together with the speed and outcome of service recovery to influence customer satisfaction. A delayed response without an apology could leave customers dissatisfied even when the organisation offered compensation.

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The findings suggest that organisations should not treat polite communication and corrective action as competing alternatives.

Both can matter.

But what happens when the organisation keeps apologising without improving the service?

A study by Zheng Fang, Xueming Luo and Minghua Jiang provides another perspective. Their research examined customer satisfaction in China’s mobile phone markets. The study appeared online in May 2012 and was published in the August 2013 issue of the Journal of Service Research.

The researchers found that apology-based recovery efforts had relatively short-lived effects on customer satisfaction. Service-quality improvements produced more sustained benefits in the market they studied.

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The research does not establish that every banking customer will respond in the same way. It does, however, support a useful distinction between making a customer feel heard and correcting the problem that prompted the complaint.

My credit card delivery dispute brought that distinction into focus.

I wanted the bank to investigate the conflicting information about my address. A meaningful response would have established what happened to the card and how the bank intended to complete the delivery.

I would not expect a call-centre representative to inspect the courier’s internal records personally.

The bank needed a process through which the representative could obtain a verified answer from the responsible department.

Without that process, a polite employee may have little choice but to offer another apology.

I have no reason to assume that every unresolved complaint reflects deliberate misconduct by management. Delivery failures can occur despite reasonable controls.

The question is what the organisation does when those controls fail.

An apology can begin the recovery process. It cannot serve as the entire response.

The HR Problem: Employees Cannot Own What They Cannot Control

My interest in human resource management makes me look at this problem from another angle.

Consider a customer-service representative whose performance appraisal includes customer satisfaction.

The representative receives a complaint about a failed delivery. The courier controls the delivery process, while another department manages the bank’s relationship with that courier.

The representative cannot correct the courier’s records or authorise a replacement card without following the bank’s procedures.

Yet the customer may give the employee a poor satisfaction rating because the complaint remains unresolved.

Should that rating count against the employee?

I would want an HR manager to examine what the representative could actually do before treating the complaint as evidence of poor performance.

An employee who ignores a complaint must accept responsibility for that conduct. Someone who follows the prescribed process but receives no response from another department faces a different problem.

The employee’s performance should be assessed within the limits of the job.

Management also needs to examine whether employees receive sufficient support to fulfil their responsibilities.

I am not suggesting that every frontline employee should have unlimited decision-making authority. In banking, certain decisions require specialist approval. Financial controls exist for good reasons.

But an employee should know who can authorise the next step when a complaint moves beyond their authority.

HR departments can support this approach through training that explains the limits of employee discretion. Performance evaluations should also distinguish an employee’s conduct from an unresolved organisational failure.

If management expects employees to take ownership of customer complaints, it must give them a reliable process through which they can act.

Otherwise, accountability becomes little more than a performance target that employees cannot fully control.

What Pakistan’s Banking Regulator Expects

Pakistan’s banking regulations provide a useful institutional perspective.

On October 17, 2025, the State Bank of Pakistan issued its Business Conduct and Fair Treatment of Consumers Regulatory Framework.

The framework took effect immediately for covered financial institutions, excluding Electronic Money Institutions. Its governance and oversight provisions under Pillar 1 of Part II became effective on January 1, 2026. The same January date applied to implementation of the framework by Electronic Money Institutions.

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The framework places consumer treatment within the responsibilities of financial institutions.

A customer’s complaint is therefore not merely a test of how politely an employee answers the telephone. It is also a matter of institutional governance.

The State Bank’s December 29, 2023 circular introducing the Sunwai complaint-management service reinforces this point.

It requires financial institutions to update complaint records accurately and in a timely manner. Senior management must regularly review complaint trends and breaches of prescribed resolution times, then take appropriate corrective measures.

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The instruction is significant.

If customers repeatedly complain about failed card deliveries, the bank should examine the delivery arrangement. If customers cannot obtain payment updates, management should investigate how the relevant departments exchange information.

Complaint records can reveal weaknesses that individual conversations fail to resolve.

Pakistan also has a formal process for escalating unresolved banking complaints.

Following a 2024 amendment to the Banking Companies Ordinance, banks have 30 days to respond to customer grievances. A dissatisfied customer, or one who receives no response within that period, may approach the Banking Mohtasib within the further period prescribed by law. The Mohtasib may condone a delay in filing where sufficient grounds exist.

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The 30-day period should not be confused with a guarantee that every dispute will reach a final resolution within that time.

Customers can also use the State Bank’s Sunwai portal  to submit complaints through the applicable channels and track their status.

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These arrangements do not mean that every customer complaint is justified or that every bank must agree with a customer’s demand.

A bank may investigate a dispute and conclude that the available evidence does not support the complaint.

But it should provide a response through the applicable process.

The employee’s courtesy cannot replace that institutional responsibility.

The Third Apology Should Reach Management

I return to my replacement credit card.

I did not expect the employee handling my complaint to investigate the courier’s records personally. Nor would I want a bank representative to bypass security procedures simply to satisfy my request.

I wanted the bank to establish what had happened and arrange a reliable way to deliver my card.

That required someone with the authority to act.

Annenberg’s article encourages individuals to replace unnecessary apologies with corrective action. I agree with that principle. But I would extend it to the organisations that employ them.

An employee should acknowledge a mistake and take responsibility for work within their control. Management must examine failures in the processes that employees depend on.

An apology has a legitimate place in professional life. It recognises that someone has experienced inconvenience or harm.

I do not consider it a sign of weakness.

But when the same customer hears the same apology for the third time, I begin to wonder whether the conversation has reached the wrong person.

The employee may have done everything the organisation permits.

Perhaps the next apology should come from someone who has the authority to change what happens next.