The Customer Service Survey
Rants and Horror Stories
Will The Airline Industry Put Itself Out of Business with Bad Service?
Fri - April 11, 2008 02:11 PM
Yesterday, I took a sympathetic view towards all the American Airlines employees who are put in the miserable position today of trying to deal with the hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded by American's maintenance issues (which have--so far--cancelled over 3,000 flights this week).
Jeff Jarvis writes this morning that the airline business is fundamentally broken: the experience has become so completely and uniformly miserable that customers will disappear unless something radical happens.
I have to agree with Jeff on many points. I should be an ideal customer for air travel: I love to fly, I have a pilot's license, I often have out-of-state business, and I enjoy visiting other cities. But the past few years I've been avoiding air travel whenever possible. I haven't taken a family vacation in six years where we had to fly anywhere (instead, we go places we can drive or take a train), and I try to minimize business travel involving flying anywhere.
Commercial air travel has simply become a miserable experience. From check-in to security to the packed planes, the process is impersonal, unpleasant, and dehumanizing; and that's when nothing goes wrong. Things get even worse when flights are delayed or cancelled, or your plans change.
I lay the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the feet of the airlines themselves. For the past 30 years, they've been training travelers that the only thing that matters is price--despite the fact that many people can and do pay a premium for premium service (and the airlines depend on these customers to make ends meet). At the end of the day, though, there's only so much you can do to provide good service when two-thirds of the passengers on a given flight will always go for the cheapest ticket, no matter what.
Now that the price of jet fuel is soaring, the airlines are discovering just what this lowest-fare mentality is doing to them. They have very little ability to raise prices without losing huge market share, and four airlines have gone bankrupt in just the past two weeks.
As for myself, I gladly pay a 50% premium to fly on my favorite airline, Midwest, whenever I can. Those are the only flights I don't dread.
Posted by Peter Leppik
I have to agree with Jeff on many points. I should be an ideal customer for air travel: I love to fly, I have a pilot's license, I often have out-of-state business, and I enjoy visiting other cities. But the past few years I've been avoiding air travel whenever possible. I haven't taken a family vacation in six years where we had to fly anywhere (instead, we go places we can drive or take a train), and I try to minimize business travel involving flying anywhere.
Commercial air travel has simply become a miserable experience. From check-in to security to the packed planes, the process is impersonal, unpleasant, and dehumanizing; and that's when nothing goes wrong. Things get even worse when flights are delayed or cancelled, or your plans change.
I lay the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the feet of the airlines themselves. For the past 30 years, they've been training travelers that the only thing that matters is price--despite the fact that many people can and do pay a premium for premium service (and the airlines depend on these customers to make ends meet). At the end of the day, though, there's only so much you can do to provide good service when two-thirds of the passengers on a given flight will always go for the cheapest ticket, no matter what.
Now that the price of jet fuel is soaring, the airlines are discovering just what this lowest-fare mentality is doing to them. They have very little ability to raise prices without losing huge market share, and four airlines have gone bankrupt in just the past two weeks.
As for myself, I gladly pay a 50% premium to fly on my favorite airline, Midwest, whenever I can. Those are the only flights I don't dread.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Today's Funny Tech Support Stories
Thu - April 3, 2008 01:31 PM
Every now and then it's good to step back from the consumer horror stories about bad service and share some stories from the other side of the phone.
So here's a set of tech support stories from The Daily WTF. Next time you're stuck in voicemail jail, just remember that big companies don't have a monopoly on cluelessness.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
As if wedding planning wasn't stressful enough....
Wed - April 2, 2008 02:40 PM
It's been a long time since I got married, but I was always under the impression that part of the point of the preparations and what-not is to make every bride feel like she gets to be a princess for a short while. Of course, some brides take this too far (hence the "Bridezilla" phenomenon).
Someone at David's Bridal apparently didn't get the memo, though. Read on for the full story....
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
How Not To Sell Stuff Over the Phone
Fri - February 15, 2008 01:39 PM
The audio is apparently a few years old, but this video posted at The Consumerist is scary-funny nevertheless.
I know it's for real because I saw it on the Internet.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
$550 in bank fees for a free upgrade
Mon - January 14, 2008 07:40 PM
I'm traveling today (to Boston, where I got slowed down a bit by a little nor'easter), so here's a quick horror story...
One of the authors of the Breaking Windows blog bought a Blu-Ray DVD player from Best Buy on January 2nd. Four days later, Best Buy started offering the same player bundled with four free movies.
No problem, Best Buy provides a reasonable return policy. He returned the player for a refund, then turned around and bought the same player with the free movies for the same price. Easy, right?
Not so fast. A few days later, he went to the bank to deposit his paycheck, only to find his account overdrawn by $362. Huh?
This hapless consumer made the mistake of using a debit card (rather than a credit card) for the purchase-return-repurchase transaction--and with this bank, the purchases were withdrawn from his account immediately, but the credit for the return was held up two days.
During those critical two days, the account became overdrawn and started incurring an overdraft fee for each and every purchase. Apparently this debit card gets quite a bit of use, and those fees quickly amounted to hundreds of dollars. The bank credited back $243 as a "courtesy," but left something like $550 in fees on the account--probably far more than the Blu-Ray player cost in the first place.
Of course, had the credit for the return been applied just as fast as the original purchase, the account never would have overdrawn and none of these fees would have been applied.
There's a lesson in here, of course. Banks have been pushing "check cards" like crazy the past few years, and it's not because they want to support the manufacturers of plastic resin. Someone deep in the bowels of the bank calculated that they can make more money if customers get in the habit of using debit cards, and I'm guessing most of that extra profit comes in the form of "gotcha" fees on consumers who aren't paying quite enough attention.
Posted by Peter Leppik
No problem, Best Buy provides a reasonable return policy. He returned the player for a refund, then turned around and bought the same player with the free movies for the same price. Easy, right?
Not so fast. A few days later, he went to the bank to deposit his paycheck, only to find his account overdrawn by $362. Huh?
This hapless consumer made the mistake of using a debit card (rather than a credit card) for the purchase-return-repurchase transaction--and with this bank, the purchases were withdrawn from his account immediately, but the credit for the return was held up two days.
During those critical two days, the account became overdrawn and started incurring an overdraft fee for each and every purchase. Apparently this debit card gets quite a bit of use, and those fees quickly amounted to hundreds of dollars. The bank credited back $243 as a "courtesy," but left something like $550 in fees on the account--probably far more than the Blu-Ray player cost in the first place.
Of course, had the credit for the return been applied just as fast as the original purchase, the account never would have overdrawn and none of these fees would have been applied.
There's a lesson in here, of course. Banks have been pushing "check cards" like crazy the past few years, and it's not because they want to support the manufacturers of plastic resin. Someone deep in the bowels of the bank calculated that they can make more money if customers get in the habit of using debit cards, and I'm guessing most of that extra profit comes in the form of "gotcha" fees on consumers who aren't paying quite enough attention.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Back from Winter Break
Wed - January 2, 2008 02:35 PM
January 2nd, and everyone's back to work, including me. I had a nice and even somewhat relaxing break, thank you, and I found a wonderful horror story to kick of 2008.
This one comes from Palm, makers of the Treo, and gets juicy when the customer is told that repairing an in-warranty Treo will be more expensive than buying a new phone:
The first comment is also priceless:
Posted by Peter Leppik
So I asked employee C11329 to be transfered to her manager. She told me she was the most senior person at Palm. I asked her again politely to transfer me to her manager. She told me she had none. I asked to be transfered to the person that was reviewing her work, giving her assignments, etc.. I was told she had none. I told her I felt that was odd as, apart from the chairman and CEO, I didn't know of anyone in a company not having a manager. She told me she was the CEO.
For a second, I paused. "You're the CEO of Palm, Inc.?" I asked again, not really believing what I was hearing. "Yes, I am" she replied, now with a defiant tone. "So you're telling me you're Ed Colligan?" I asked. "I am the CEO and that's all you need to know."
The first comment is also priceless:
Tristan, what right do you have to complain? You got to speak to the CEO of the company! That's great service!
Posted by Peter Leppik
Online banking? More like online spanking.
Tue - November 27, 2007 03:12 PM
Online banking may be the wave of the future, but our company banker, Silicon Valley Bank, hasn't figured out which side of the surfboard goes up yet. Here's my story:
I'd not bothered to sign up for online banking for a long time, mostly because we don't have a high volume of checking account transactions and I didn't want to pay the fees. A couple months ago I decided to take the plunge, mostly because I thought it would be useful to have faster access to our account statement.
Silicon Valley Bank has been pushing its online banking service, eConnect, for several years. I've had good experiences with online banking for my personal accounts, and figured SVB's service would be comparable.
My troubles started with the signup process. I couldn't just call customer service and get hooked up: I had to fax documents, sign papers, and wait days. No problem, I figured, it's important to (especially on a business account) to be extra careful about enabling online account access. Even if all it lets me do is check the balance.
Then I tried to log in. SVB (like most places) requires a username and password for security, but for extra super-duper security they require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard on the screen. It takes about 30 seconds to enter an 8 character password, which is frustrating enough in itself.
The first time you sign in, however, you have to create a new password and enter it twice (for verification) along with the temporary password they created when setting up the account. So far that's about a minute and a half of clicking on a dorky little virtual keyboard (with the password blocked out, of course, so you can't see if you really hit the right button).
Then I got an error on my new password: "Passwords must be 8 characters in length and contain at least one number and at least one symbol." D'oh!
So I made up a new password safely longer than 8 characters with the required numbers and symbols, and spent another couple minutes re-entering my old password and blindly entering the new one (twice).
Just to get a repeat of the same error: "Passwords must be 8 characters blah blah blah."
Okay, that's weird, I thought it was. So I made up a third password and went through the laborious process again.
And got rejected again. I don't frustrate easily, but by this time I was about ready to throw my keyboard through the window. Finally I figured out that they wanted a password exactly 8 characters long, not 8 characters or longer (which is the more common requirement).
So finally I managed to log in--after about a half-hour of struggling with my password--and was able to read our account balance. Whoop-de-do.
That wasn't the end of the fun, though: a few weeks later I lost my password. I don't normally lose passwords, but the bizarre exactly-8-characters-plus-number-plus-symbol requirement forced me to create something utterly unmemorable, so I had to write it down (normally I never write down passwords, so there's a security problem right there) and--you guessed it--I lost the paper I'd written it down on.
That sent me on the adventure of the password recovery process. When you lose your password, SVB changes it to a new temporary password and e-mails the temporary password to you (by the way, this e-mail recovery process almost completely negates whatever security value they may have had with the strict password requirements and virtual keyboard).
But by that time, I'd forgotten the exactly-8-character requirement so painfully learned the last time, so I wound up going through the whole painful process again. When I finally figured out how to reset my password, it was an emotion-laden epithet directed at the evil genius who designed this unique implement of torture.
Now, how much would you pay for the pleasure of using this oh-so-effective online banking system? $19.95? $29.95? How about $50/month? Yes, SVB wanted to charge us six hundred dollars a year so we could go through an hour of frustration every time we want to check our account balance.
Amazingly, when I called to cancel our online banking, the agent said, "gosh, nobody's ever asked to cancel online banking before!"
P.S. In case you think this insane process is somehow required for security, that's not so. in my experience, both PayPal and Salesforce.com have implemented much more secure login processes which are far simpler and less obtrusive than this one. PayPal provided us with a physical "security key," and we have to enter a six-digit code from the key to log in. Salesforce.com just implemented a system which requires a user to log in from a trusted IP address or web browser, effectively locking a given user to a specific physical location or computer.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Silicon Valley Bank has been pushing its online banking service, eConnect, for several years. I've had good experiences with online banking for my personal accounts, and figured SVB's service would be comparable.
My troubles started with the signup process. I couldn't just call customer service and get hooked up: I had to fax documents, sign papers, and wait days. No problem, I figured, it's important to (especially on a business account) to be extra careful about enabling online account access. Even if all it lets me do is check the balance.
Then I tried to log in. SVB (like most places) requires a username and password for security, but for extra super-duper security they require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard on the screen. It takes about 30 seconds to enter an 8 character password, which is frustrating enough in itself.
The first time you sign in, however, you have to create a new password and enter it twice (for verification) along with the temporary password they created when setting up the account. So far that's about a minute and a half of clicking on a dorky little virtual keyboard (with the password blocked out, of course, so you can't see if you really hit the right button).
Then I got an error on my new password: "Passwords must be 8 characters in length and contain at least one number and at least one symbol." D'oh!
So I made up a new password safely longer than 8 characters with the required numbers and symbols, and spent another couple minutes re-entering my old password and blindly entering the new one (twice).
Just to get a repeat of the same error: "Passwords must be 8 characters blah blah blah."
Okay, that's weird, I thought it was. So I made up a third password and went through the laborious process again.
And got rejected again. I don't frustrate easily, but by this time I was about ready to throw my keyboard through the window. Finally I figured out that they wanted a password exactly 8 characters long, not 8 characters or longer (which is the more common requirement).
So finally I managed to log in--after about a half-hour of struggling with my password--and was able to read our account balance. Whoop-de-do.
That wasn't the end of the fun, though: a few weeks later I lost my password. I don't normally lose passwords, but the bizarre exactly-8-characters-plus-number-plus-symbol requirement forced me to create something utterly unmemorable, so I had to write it down (normally I never write down passwords, so there's a security problem right there) and--you guessed it--I lost the paper I'd written it down on.
That sent me on the adventure of the password recovery process. When you lose your password, SVB changes it to a new temporary password and e-mails the temporary password to you (by the way, this e-mail recovery process almost completely negates whatever security value they may have had with the strict password requirements and virtual keyboard).
But by that time, I'd forgotten the exactly-8-character requirement so painfully learned the last time, so I wound up going through the whole painful process again. When I finally figured out how to reset my password, it was an emotion-laden epithet directed at the evil genius who designed this unique implement of torture.
Now, how much would you pay for the pleasure of using this oh-so-effective online banking system? $19.95? $29.95? How about $50/month? Yes, SVB wanted to charge us six hundred dollars a year so we could go through an hour of frustration every time we want to check our account balance.
Amazingly, when I called to cancel our online banking, the agent said, "gosh, nobody's ever asked to cancel online banking before!"
P.S. In case you think this insane process is somehow required for security, that's not so. in my experience, both PayPal and Salesforce.com have implemented much more secure login processes which are far simpler and less obtrusive than this one. PayPal provided us with a physical "security key," and we have to enter a six-digit code from the key to log in. Salesforce.com just implemented a system which requires a user to log in from a trusted IP address or web browser, effectively locking a given user to a specific physical location or computer.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Polite, Courteous, Efficient...and Wrong
Thu - November 15, 2007 03:34 PM
Inspired by a report last year of a Verizon Wireless customer who was quoted a roaming rate over the phone which was 100x the actual price, an (apparently obsessive-compulsive) writer called Verizon Wireless 56 times over the course of two days (posing as a prospective customer) and asked two specific pricing questions (via Broadband Reports).
Only one customer service representative quoted the correct price for both questions.
Over half of the agents answered neither question correctly, and half of the wrong answers underquoted the actual price by a factor of 100 or more.
The message is clear: if you call Verizon Wireless and ask how much they charge for anything other than the most basic services, you're almost guaranteed to get the wrong answer. Furthermore, there's an excellent chance the answer you get will be grossly inaccurate.
I suspect that Verizon is not unique in this respect, and I doubt it's intentional on Verizon's part. All the major mobile phone companies have insanely complicated pricing schemes, with multiple plan levels, different types of fees and surcharges at each level, roaming rates which depend on time, geography, and usage, etc. Since the vast majority of customers never ask about these details, they probably figure they can get away with skimping on agent training when it comes to anything beyond the monthly rate and number of minutes included.
It's not clear what consumers can do about this. Some of these pricing details (at least in Verizon's case) are available online, albeit buried inside a huge block of IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONDITIONS which only a bored lawyer could love. Other details I couldn't easily find on Verizon's website. It seems that the only recourse a typical consumer would have is to record the agent quoting the price, and if the agent underquoted make a stink (or possibly a lawsuit) using the call recording as proof that you were misquoted.
In the end, there's really no excuse for a company to be consistently quoting customers the wrong price. Period.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Over half of the agents answered neither question correctly, and half of the wrong answers underquoted the actual price by a factor of 100 or more.
The message is clear: if you call Verizon Wireless and ask how much they charge for anything other than the most basic services, you're almost guaranteed to get the wrong answer. Furthermore, there's an excellent chance the answer you get will be grossly inaccurate.
I suspect that Verizon is not unique in this respect, and I doubt it's intentional on Verizon's part. All the major mobile phone companies have insanely complicated pricing schemes, with multiple plan levels, different types of fees and surcharges at each level, roaming rates which depend on time, geography, and usage, etc. Since the vast majority of customers never ask about these details, they probably figure they can get away with skimping on agent training when it comes to anything beyond the monthly rate and number of minutes included.
It's not clear what consumers can do about this. Some of these pricing details (at least in Verizon's case) are available online, albeit buried inside a huge block of IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONDITIONS which only a bored lawyer could love. Other details I couldn't easily find on Verizon's website. It seems that the only recourse a typical consumer would have is to record the agent quoting the price, and if the agent underquoted make a stink (or possibly a lawsuit) using the call recording as proof that you were misquoted.
In the end, there's really no excuse for a company to be consistently quoting customers the wrong price. Period.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Overincentivizing
Wed - November 14, 2007 04:04 PM
One point I've made a few times is that people tend to do what you give them an incentive to do, but the incentive isn't always what you think it is.
For example, if you give customer service reps a bonus if they score better on customer surveys, you might think you've given them an incentive to improve customer service. Not so: you've given them an incentive to improve survey scores, and if it's easier to manipulate the survey than actually provide better service, then manipulate the survey they will.
This effect becomes stronger the greater the penalty for underperformance, and can lead to some really perverse results.
Along those lines, here's an article claiming that some General Motors dealerships will refuse to serve customers who turned in less-than-perfect customer surveys. The incentive system (the author claims) is so punitive that it's cheaper for a dealer to "fire" a customer than risk anything less than perfection on the survey.
Somehow, I don't think that's the effect GM intended.
Posted by Peter Leppik
This effect becomes stronger the greater the penalty for underperformance, and can lead to some really perverse results.
Along those lines, here's an article claiming that some General Motors dealerships will refuse to serve customers who turned in less-than-perfect customer surveys. The incentive system (the author claims) is so punitive that it's cheaper for a dealer to "fire" a customer than risk anything less than perfection on the survey.
Somehow, I don't think that's the effect GM intended.
Posted by Peter Leppik
A Tale of Two Car Repairs
Wed - October 24, 2007 01:34 PM
I'd fallen slightly behind on regular maintenance of our family vehicles, so in my usual fashion I decided to get them all done at once.
Yesterday I took my old Audi in to the dealer for an oil change. Normally I'm not too keen taking a car to the dealer for service, but the Audi dealer is only two blocks from my office, and they've got a posh new facility with free coffee and WiFi in the waiting area. After I'd spent about 45 minutes sipping coffee and bandwidth, the service manager came out and presented me with a laundry list of items they'd found: a cracked coolant hose, badly worn serpentine belt, and deteriorating brake lines. The last, he solemnly assured me, was a serious safety issue.
My $30 oil change had suddenly morphed into over $700 worth of repairs.
Not being a car expert, I signed off on it--and to be fair, I had noticed that the coolant was leaking so that part was no great surprise. On the other hand, it's probably not something especially worth fixing on a car which is over ten years old and has almost 130,000 miles on it. You can buy a lot of antifreeze for what they charged to replace a couple hoses and the tank. Was it really so urgent, or could some of those items have been deferred? And somehow it seems like I can never get out of that dealer without plunking down a few Ben Franklins more than I expected to spend.
(On the other hand, old Audis are not exactly known for being cheap to maintain. I think the next car I buy will be a Honda.)
Today it was our minivan's turn. That vehicle is five years and 85,000 miles old, so while it's not as old as the Audi, it's no spring chicken either. In addition to an oil change, it had developed a belt squeal in wet weather and noise from the brakes. So I expected to be hit up for a new belt and a brake job.
The Dodge dealer where we bought the minivan is out of business, so we decided to take it to a local tire-and-car-repair place which we hadn't used before. I dropped off the van on my way to the office, and around lunchtime I got the call: the belt was just loose so they tightened it, and the brakes look fine (maybe we had a pebble stuck in there?).
The damage? My $400 list of repairs only cost $30. Including tax.
Again, not being a car expert, I have to take the mechanic's word that the brakes and belt really are OK, but I'm inclined to believe him. What's more, instead of going out of their way to look for extra stuff to fix, they actually found less expensive ways to fix the problems and declined to perform the costly repairs I was prepared to pay for.
So one the one hand, we have a dealer which consistently surprises me with repairs far more expensive than I expected. On the other hand, we have a local mechanic which (at least this once) surprised me with a bill only one-tenth what I was expecting.
Guess who's going to get my future business?
Posted by Peter Leppik
My $30 oil change had suddenly morphed into over $700 worth of repairs.
Not being a car expert, I signed off on it--and to be fair, I had noticed that the coolant was leaking so that part was no great surprise. On the other hand, it's probably not something especially worth fixing on a car which is over ten years old and has almost 130,000 miles on it. You can buy a lot of antifreeze for what they charged to replace a couple hoses and the tank. Was it really so urgent, or could some of those items have been deferred? And somehow it seems like I can never get out of that dealer without plunking down a few Ben Franklins more than I expected to spend.
(On the other hand, old Audis are not exactly known for being cheap to maintain. I think the next car I buy will be a Honda.)
Today it was our minivan's turn. That vehicle is five years and 85,000 miles old, so while it's not as old as the Audi, it's no spring chicken either. In addition to an oil change, it had developed a belt squeal in wet weather and noise from the brakes. So I expected to be hit up for a new belt and a brake job.
The Dodge dealer where we bought the minivan is out of business, so we decided to take it to a local tire-and-car-repair place which we hadn't used before. I dropped off the van on my way to the office, and around lunchtime I got the call: the belt was just loose so they tightened it, and the brakes look fine (maybe we had a pebble stuck in there?).
The damage? My $400 list of repairs only cost $30. Including tax.
Again, not being a car expert, I have to take the mechanic's word that the brakes and belt really are OK, but I'm inclined to believe him. What's more, instead of going out of their way to look for extra stuff to fix, they actually found less expensive ways to fix the problems and declined to perform the costly repairs I was prepared to pay for.
So one the one hand, we have a dealer which consistently surprises me with repairs far more expensive than I expected. On the other hand, we have a local mechanic which (at least this once) surprised me with a bill only one-tenth what I was expecting.
Guess who's going to get my future business?
Posted by Peter Leppik
"Sometimes I think about quitting"
Fri - October 19, 2007 02:55 PM
I haven't published a good customer service horror story in a little while, so here's one about T-Mobile.
It's the same familiar story: customer tries to get tech support (from T-Mobile in this case) and gets the major runaround and frustratingly indifferent service.
The best part comes after the customer has spent many hours on the phone over the course of several days, and even the supervisor can't get level-2 tech support to take the call.
Customer: How can you work in a place like that??
Supervisor: Sometimes I think about quitting.
Posted by Peter Leppik
The best part comes after the customer has spent many hours on the phone over the course of several days, and even the supervisor can't get level-2 tech support to take the call.
Customer: How can you work in a place like that??
Supervisor: Sometimes I think about quitting.
Posted by Peter Leppik
If I had a hammer....
Thu - October 18, 2007 03:16 PM
Lots of people get mad at the customer service they receive. Sometimes they even do something about it: write angry letters, yell at customer service agents, or post videos of them smashing the product on youTube.
Mona Shaw went one step further: she took her husband's hammer, drove to the local Comcast office, and started breaking stuff.
Her action was extreme, though neither the Washington Post, the author of ComcastMustDie.com, nor the judge seem to be tripping over themselves to condemn her actions (Mona was given a $345 fine, a suspended sentence, and a one-year restraining order prohibiting her from Comcast's office).
In this case, we know exactly what level of service drove Mona to take such direct action: Comcast had scheduled an installation of "triple play" service, but came two days late and left the job only half done. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all her service. So Mona drove to Comcast and asked to speak to a supervisor in person. Instead of promptly helping her, the Comcast employee told her to sit outside and wait. After two hours of sitting on a bench in the August heat, someone leans out the door and tells her the manager has left for the day.
The more interesting question is: how bad must Comcast's reputation be that the judge only told her "pay for some of the stuff you broke and don't do it again."?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Her action was extreme, though neither the Washington Post, the author of ComcastMustDie.com, nor the judge seem to be tripping over themselves to condemn her actions (Mona was given a $345 fine, a suspended sentence, and a one-year restraining order prohibiting her from Comcast's office).
In this case, we know exactly what level of service drove Mona to take such direct action: Comcast had scheduled an installation of "triple play" service, but came two days late and left the job only half done. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all her service. So Mona drove to Comcast and asked to speak to a supervisor in person. Instead of promptly helping her, the Comcast employee told her to sit outside and wait. After two hours of sitting on a bench in the August heat, someone leans out the door and tells her the manager has left for the day.
The more interesting question is: how bad must Comcast's reputation be that the judge only told her "pay for some of the stuff you broke and don't do it again."?
Posted by Peter Leppik
Arbitration
Mon - October 15, 2007 02:43 PM
This is a little far afield of my usual topics of survey technique, customer service, etc., but some consumer advocates have begun to notice the creeping ubiquity of binding arbitration clauses in customer agreements.
Ignoring for the moment the legal enforceability of many of these contracts (especially the "shrink wrap" type agreements), there have been a handful of court cases recently finding that binding arbitration clauses are unenforceable in certain consumer contracts on the theory that they are "unconscionable." In other words, if given a choice and fully informed of the implications, a rational consumer would never agree to mandatory binding arbitration.
It's not hard to understand why: binding arbitration is fine in theory--a fast, fair, and inexpensive way to resolve disputes--but in practice it heavily favors the more sophisticated party (which is always the company) and lacks many of the protections of the court system such as formal due process and the right of appeal. If the process is run well this might not matter, but in practice, well, it can go terribly awry (via Consumerist).
What does this have to do with customer service?
There are too many companies which have the attitude that their customers are the enemy, rather than equal partners in the company's success. You see this everywhere: IVR systems designed to "contain" customers rather than serve them; punitive return and exchange policies; indifferent support; "gotcha" fees; and heavily one-sided arbitration processes.
The irony is that many of these problems are not terribly expensive to fix, and they cause huge amounts of customer frustration and anger (along with the occasional lawsuit). Companies which have a reputation for customer friendly policies are able to command premium prices and fanatical customer loyalty.
Posted by Peter Leppik
It's not hard to understand why: binding arbitration is fine in theory--a fast, fair, and inexpensive way to resolve disputes--but in practice it heavily favors the more sophisticated party (which is always the company) and lacks many of the protections of the court system such as formal due process and the right of appeal. If the process is run well this might not matter, but in practice, well, it can go terribly awry (via Consumerist).
What does this have to do with customer service?
There are too many companies which have the attitude that their customers are the enemy, rather than equal partners in the company's success. You see this everywhere: IVR systems designed to "contain" customers rather than serve them; punitive return and exchange policies; indifferent support; "gotcha" fees; and heavily one-sided arbitration processes.
The irony is that many of these problems are not terribly expensive to fix, and they cause huge amounts of customer frustration and anger (along with the occasional lawsuit). Companies which have a reputation for customer friendly policies are able to command premium prices and fanatical customer loyalty.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Dishonesty
Thu - October 4, 2007 03:45 PM
Dishonest customers are huge problems for many companies, and shoplifting costs U.S. retailers something like $50 billion a year. Of course, you have to view that in the context of total retail sales, which are on the order of $4 trillion a year. (Employee theft, by the way, costs retailers about the same amount as shoplifting, so it's not just the customers who rip off companies.)
Controlling customer theft and dishonesty seems to drive a lot of customer-hostile service policies, and I've occasionally observed a "they're all trying to rip us off" attitude among some retail employees and call center agents.
"If some people didn't abuse it, we could have a more liberal return policy," is a common refrain (substitute "repair policy," "warranty," or "customer service" for "return policy" as needed).
Using bad behavior to justify bad behavior tends to lead to a downward spiral: I've heard consumers use "they screwed me because they wouldn't take back my broken laptop" or "they extended my contract without telling me" to justify their abuse of company policies.
Some companies--for example, Apple--seem to have taken the approach of higher service levels even if it risks some customer abuse. Apple is famous for being willing to fix computers out of warranty and accept returns even when the customer probably abused the product. Costco has a similarly liberal return policy, and both companies enjoy a reputation as an easy place to do business--and they probably charge slightly higher prices to support the customer abuse.
Other companies, like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, seem to be willing to sacrifice the customer experience for some incremental improvement in loss prevention. Purchase anything in a big box from Best Buy and you're likely to get hassled on the way out by a security guard, even if you're the only customer in the entire store and the guard watched you pay for it.
There's no way to eliminate dishonest or abusive customers: it comes with the territory of doing business with the general public. The key is to recognize that only a tiny fraction of customers are thieves, and strike a balance between limiting loss and annoying the vast majority of honest customers.
Posted by Peter Leppik
"If some people didn't abuse it, we could have a more liberal return policy," is a common refrain (substitute "repair policy," "warranty," or "customer service" for "return policy" as needed).
Using bad behavior to justify bad behavior tends to lead to a downward spiral: I've heard consumers use "they screwed me because they wouldn't take back my broken laptop" or "they extended my contract without telling me" to justify their abuse of company policies.
Some companies--for example, Apple--seem to have taken the approach of higher service levels even if it risks some customer abuse. Apple is famous for being willing to fix computers out of warranty and accept returns even when the customer probably abused the product. Costco has a similarly liberal return policy, and both companies enjoy a reputation as an easy place to do business--and they probably charge slightly higher prices to support the customer abuse.
Other companies, like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, seem to be willing to sacrifice the customer experience for some incremental improvement in loss prevention. Purchase anything in a big box from Best Buy and you're likely to get hassled on the way out by a security guard, even if you're the only customer in the entire store and the guard watched you pay for it.
There's no way to eliminate dishonest or abusive customers: it comes with the territory of doing business with the general public. The key is to recognize that only a tiny fraction of customers are thieves, and strike a balance between limiting loss and annoying the vast majority of honest customers.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Retention through Poor Service
Tue - September 25, 2007 02:09 PM
Customer: I'd like to cancel my service.
Rep: You'll have to go through our retention department.
Customer: I don't want to be "retained," I want to cancel.
Rep: I can't cancel your account. Only our retention department can do that.
Customer: Okay, then, connect me to the retention department.
Rep: Nobody's available in the retention department. You'll have to call back.
The rest of the story is fairly predictable. The only real question is why do companies insist on playing these games, and do they really think they work?
I've had my share of obnoxious cancellation policies, and I've developed a sure-fire, never fails strategy which avoids a lot of the headache of these stunningly wrongheaded policies.
My approach is simple: if I can't cancel my account within a single phone call of reasonable duration, I simply write a letter to the company canceling my account. If I pay via automatic credit card payments (which I avoid whenever possible), I also write a letter to the credit card company stating that the company is no longer authorized to make charges to my card.
Then I mail those letters. If I think there might be further problems, I send the letters via overnight or with delivery confirmation so I have proof that the company received them.
It takes less than five minutes to write a cancellation letter (it really only needs to be one sentence: "I am canceling my account effective immediately" and include the account number), which is less time than it often takes to argue with a "retention specialist." Once the company has received my letter, and assuming I'm paid up through that date, any further attempt to contact me by the company can be safely ignored.
If I'm particularly irritated at the cancellation process, I might mention that in the letter: "Your customer-hostile 'retention' process has left me feeling upset and annoyed, and I likely will not be doing business with your company in the future."
Odds are nobody will actually read that, but you never know.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Customer: I don't want to be "retained," I want to cancel.
Rep: I can't cancel your account. Only our retention department can do that.
Customer: Okay, then, connect me to the retention department.
Rep: Nobody's available in the retention department. You'll have to call back.
The rest of the story is fairly predictable. The only real question is why do companies insist on playing these games, and do they really think they work?
I've had my share of obnoxious cancellation policies, and I've developed a sure-fire, never fails strategy which avoids a lot of the headache of these stunningly wrongheaded policies.
My approach is simple: if I can't cancel my account within a single phone call of reasonable duration, I simply write a letter to the company canceling my account. If I pay via automatic credit card payments (which I avoid whenever possible), I also write a letter to the credit card company stating that the company is no longer authorized to make charges to my card.
Then I mail those letters. If I think there might be further problems, I send the letters via overnight or with delivery confirmation so I have proof that the company received them.
It takes less than five minutes to write a cancellation letter (it really only needs to be one sentence: "I am canceling my account effective immediately" and include the account number), which is less time than it often takes to argue with a "retention specialist." Once the company has received my letter, and assuming I'm paid up through that date, any further attempt to contact me by the company can be safely ignored.
If I'm particularly irritated at the cancellation process, I might mention that in the letter: "Your customer-hostile 'retention' process has left me feeling upset and annoyed, and I likely will not be doing business with your company in the future."
Odds are nobody will actually read that, but you never know.
Posted by Peter Leppik