Recently a credit card company made a mistake with my account. They are very sorry … but they won’t fix it. Anticipating a heavy travel schedule last month, I decided to call in and make 2 payments. One payment for the current month, and another payment for the following month – paying it early. Too early. Instead of recording a payment for the current month, and another for the following month – they just put me down as making two payments for the current billing period. As far as they were concerned, instead of paying early – I missed a payment, which not only blemishes credit history but also comes with a late fee.
So I called them and explained the situation, “Let me give you the transaction confirmation number that your representative gave me.” Certainly that would clear it all up, because that’s what confirmation numbers are for – to confirm or prove that you have done something, right? Nope. In a bored monotone she answered, “Ma’am the confirmation number doesn’t matter (what?!), all that proves is that you gave us money. You shouldn’t have paid a bill for the next month until the current billing period was over. Everyone knows the system doesn’t work that way.” Apparently not the rep who took my money and gave me the useless confirmation number. Sadly, over the next 2 hours I had 7 nearly identical, frustrating & sometimes rude conversations as I went up the chain of command. Finally someone said they would listen to the conversation that had been recorded for customer service training purposes. Six days later they called to tell me that I was right, the rep had given me wrong info but they could not – would not correct the error because (get ready) … I should have known that I couldn’t make a payment early … even if their own employee didn’t know. Mind-numbing.
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Summarizing the customer experience in this situation:
- A customer intentionally did something positive and responsible.
- Working with an employee who does not know his own company’s rules & processes.
- The customer was told that the company gives out useless confirmation numbers that do not protect the customer.
- The company admittedly made a mistake, but will not make it right.
I have to believe that the above situation was not the objective & vision intended by the Executive Team, as the desired customer experience with their company.
The danger here is that many of us could confidently say, “That would never happen in my company.” Maybe not on the scale described above, but likely your organization’s processes and systems don’t account for every contingency or errors by well-meaning employees. Processes are very important & necessary, but if they took care of everything then you wouldn’t need employees – customers would simply interface with the processes directly. Chances are your team knows exactly where the sticky situations occur – and why it happens. Chances are good that they also have ideas about how to make it work better. How can you make it a priority to regularly review your processes to ensure that they aren’t making it hard for your customers to do business with you, and that your team members are empowered and encouraged to provide help and flexibility in the situations that may need it?
By the way I closed my account with that credit card company. The new company sent me a gift for opening my new account. I hope they don’t end up charging me for it and then refusing to take it off my bill …