Last week, I put in a round of calls to the largest U.S. banks to ask them if they had a response to the ongoing protests on Wall Street. By that point, demonstrators had swelled to the hundreds and arrests started to mount. But it was before this past weekends violent turn down in lower Manhattan, where video showed police using tasers and mace to battle some protestors.

The anti-establishment, anti-government, anti-business message got spread through social media. On Twitter, updates were reported breathlessly using the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet.

Yet one of the bank spokespeople who I was talking to on background was confused. “Which protests?” the representative asked.

That might seem like an unbelievable question, given the amount of media attention the demonstrations have garnered. But it doesn’t sound so unlikely when you consider the vast disconnect between banks and their customers, a gaping divide that has only been heightened in the last three years of financial turmoil.

A great example of this arrived in Seattle last week. A group of activists—part of an organization called Working Washington—convened in front of JPMorgan Chase’s skyscraper (formerly the headquarters of failed Washington Mutual) for a lunchtime demonstration. Protesters wore striped jailbird costumes and carried “Guilty as Charged” signs. They also interrupted a business conference going on at a nearby resort.

The problem was, JPMorgan wasn’t completely clear what the protest was about or what specific actions it was supposed to take to appease the crowd. Ahead of time, Phyllis Campbell, the New York-based bank’s chairwoman of the Pacific Northwest, had attempted to play crowd control. The group had written her a letter, demanding to know why JPMorgan was getting tax breaks, Campbell said. She reassured them that JPMorgan had paid $50 million in state and local taxes the year before, and reminded them that the bank was adding jobs in Washington state—another big complaint from the group.

The letter did little to help.

"Phyllis, Phyllis you can't hide; we can see your greedy side," the protesters chanted in front of JPMorgan. (A representative for Working Washington did not return an email for comment, and a phone number is not listed on the group's website.)

“I am really very serious about this,” said Campbell, who previously headed up Seattle's largest community foundation, the nonprofit Seattle Foundation. “I think we are out there to do the right thing in the community."

The problem seems to be in the messaging. Customers are tired, tired, tired of the big banks, and they’ve complained about them for so long that the laundry list of problems seems obvious to anyone paying attention, right? That’s just the point: They’ve complained about them for so long, that their collective voice appears to be growing weaker. That could also explain why protesters in New York were less than wowed by the media’s coverage. “1.000s (or millions?) of people around the world asking why the #mainstreammedia isn’t covering #occupywallstreet. So do we need 'em still?” read one Tweet.

In Seattle, a blogger for Working Washington summed up the general malaise under the headline “The CEOs Just Don’t Get It:” “We are having a hard time finding jobs. We are struggling to find work that treats us with respect and allows us to take care of our families. We are asking the question, ‘Where are the good jobs?’”

Campbell of JPMorgan understands this. “We’re all frustrated,” she said. Then she added, "The best way to move forward is to work together."