Bank Teller Responsibilities
- Tellers are front-line customer service employees who must greet account holders as they enter the bank and attempt to assist them or direct them to other employees better able to handle their needs. Tellers are expected to provide high levels of customer service, and many banks employ outside firms to grade the level of customer service provided by tellers. Banks usually train tellers to use certain scripted customer greetings before handling transactions and to ensure that the customers' needs are met fully within a timely manner.
- Tellers process customer transactions, such as making deposits, cashing checks and accepting loan payments. Each teller has a cash drawer into which she stows cash deposits and from which she takes money to give to customers. Tellers must balance the cash drawer each day, and people who make errors and end up with too much or too little cash face disciplinary action up to and including termination. Tellers must also assist business customers by exchanging bills for coin and processing night-drop bags containing commercial deposits, which business owners drop off in a bank vault after regular business hours.
- Banks make money by writing loans and selling products and services. Since tellers have daily interactions with large numbers of both consumer and business customers, banks require tellers to make sales referrals. Tellers must proactively recommend that existing customers open additional accounts and noncustomers establish accounts. Banks normally set weekly, monthly and annual sales goals for tellers and in order to meet those goals, tellers must refer clients to bank sales staff to establish new accounts or services.
- Senior tellers are expected to provide training for new hires. Typically a new hire spends a few weeks working from a senior teller's cash drawer until the senior teller feels that the new hire can handle transactions without supervision. Each bank has a vault teller who manages a cash reserve from which tellers can buy and sell money from their cash drawers. Each bank has a cash limit and if high numbers of deposits mean the bank has excess funds, the vault teller has to arrange to have surplus funds shipped to the Federal Reserve. If the bank lacks cash, the vault teller has to arrange to order money from the Reserve.