Why can’t your ATM remember what language you speak?
An amusing (and true) observation in a cantankerous article called Is Enterprise Software Failing The Innovation Test?
Yet with all this investment when I go to the ATM at my bank it still asks me in what language I want to be spoken to as I’m withdrawing my money. What!? It doesn’t know me? Despite all that equipment and data, the system can’t call up my preferences when I put my bankcard into the machine? I have millions of dollars in this bank!! In terms of innovation this industry definitely gets an “F.”
As the kind of guy who is usually more attuned to the lack of language support, I tend to overlook things like this. (I’m more likely to be counting the number of languages offered…)
But the author really makes a good point. Imagine if a localized website made you choose your language interface every time you logged in. Well, what would be the point of logging in?
And ATMs have access to a (supposedly) highly secure physical source of identification. Why don’t they remember your language preferences?
My HSBC account remembers what language I use [English, other options were Cantonese and Mandarin, no thanks] every time I log in on the web site [phew] or when I insert my bank card in the HSBC ATMs. At least in HK. In France the bloody ATM spoke French to me. Of course… I haven’t tried this in other countries, but it could be interesting.
Most of the major banks here offer Welsh on their ATMs these days, but you’re right, not one of them remembers which language you prefer, including HSBC (the one I use most often).
Maybe no-one has ever suggested it?
[...] Eto trwy Pat, sy’n tynnu cwestiwn diddorol ma’s o’r cyfweliad yma: pam bod rhaid i’r peiriant twll yn y wal ofyn “pa iaith dych chi’n siarad?” bob blydi tro dw i’n tynnu arian o’r banc? Yet with all this investment when I go to the ATM at my bank it still asks me in what language I want to be spoken to as I’m withdrawing my money. What!? It doesn’t know me? Despite all that equipment and data, the system can’t call up my preferences when I put my bankcard into the machine? I have millions of dollars in this bank!! In terms of innovation this industry definitely gets an “F.” [...]
The ATM doesn’t know who you are until you’ve authenticated! When you put your card in, it doesn’t know you’re the owner of the card until you’ve entered the correct PIN. So it won’t know your preferred language until after the authentication process, which will therefore always have to be in English.
It’s a more consistent UI design therefore to ask the language choice question at the very start, which is then used through the entire session.
In South Africa, at least one of our banks has done reasonably well to provide ATM’s with an interface in most of the official languages - I think currently about 8 out of the 11. So yes, it would be nice if it remembered, unless your language is not on the list, and you would like to know when your language is added to the list, otherwise you’ll keep on using the ATM in your second choice…
Thanks for all the interesting comments folks.
A thought on Dafydd’s comment: it’s certainly true that the app doesn’t know who you are until you authenticate.
But, if it’s also not possible to identify you by what language you speak. (Well okay, strictly speaking, there are exceptions.)
It’s not a security risk, is it, to say what languages I speak to an ATM? For the great majority of people, I don’t think there would be. For the others, it could be rolled back to the current system.
There are a number of problems that may occur in a transaction - you may have inserted the card incorrectly, the card may be scratched and unreadable, there may be a back-end authentication problem, your card may be ’swallowed’ because of a physical problem with the ATM or a security check might have been triggered because of a fault with the card. These kind of things don’t happen often but enough times to be a problem.
If you choose your language as the very first action, any of the above errors, and the instructions to resolve the issue would be in that language. Otherwise it would default to the local language.
So you either get your language choice 100% of the time by doing a single button press at the beginning, or on some occasions you have to fall back to the ‘local’ language. In Wales, where I am, this is a political issue, since Welsh and English are supposed to be treated equally, so who is the bank to decide the ‘local’ language? In other countries there might be a different situation - as well as in airports where you would expect ATMs to support a wide range of languages.
Although the ‘fallback’ may not occur that often, it would be annoying when it did, not to mention inconsistent. It is the same situation as when a bank or utilities company go out of their way to provide a Welsh-language telephone service. So you go ahead and use it, and more often than not, you get an English speaker saying “all the Welsh operators are busy” or “the Welsh speaker has just gone out to lunch”. It doesn’t give a good impression, and implies a tokenistic approach to supporting ‘non-majority’ languages.