Customer service Archives - Page 4 of 8

More from Barclaycard Ring

I’ve now got a lot more insight into this card as the result of an online exchange with Product Manager Jared Young and a phone conversation with community manager Jen Hitchens. I didn’t get a clear answer as to how I happened to be solicited for the card—there were a number of test programs in place etc—but did glean some other insights of interest to marketers.

The Barclaycard Ring MasterCard grew out of an alpha experiment called Innovation Lab, as documented on the timeline of their Facebook page. Paul Wilmore, Managing Director-Consumer Markets, Barclaycard US, wanted to launch a new product that a/combats the low trust level of the banking industry b/leverages the popularity of social media and c/includes a financial literacy/education component. It evolved into Barclaycard Ring, which was launched in March 2012.

As I mentioned previously, I was looking for a new rewards card (Citi’s Thank You had changed its program and shafted me by expiring my nearly 400,000 points) and got a solicitation via email. But Jen says it’s not intended to be a rewards card. People are attracted by the low interest rate (currently 8% APR) and the transparency and they really enjoy talking about financial literacy topics on the community website.

In a post called “Community Share of Giveback™” (access for cardmembers only), Jared calculates that the average cardholder will earn $9 in giveback over a 6 month period. Assuming that cardmember averages $1000 a month in charges, that’s a much lower percentage than the 1% minimum that’s typical with rewards cards. So there have to be other benefits, and evidently there are.

Jen reports that the conversations have been almost universally positive on the forums so far—she’s got controls to handle negative or abusive posters but she’s never had to use them. The cardmembers are very happy to discuss arcane features of CILs (that’s credit line increase), nominate charities the community should support, and (especially) lend their recommendations about other card features they’d like to see. They also like to see the financial statements although I personally find them rather opaque.

Barclaycard Ring Community Stats June 2012 — *Active cardmembers were up 3% in June 2012.*

One concern I have is that all these folks are early adopters… there were only 1090 active cardmembers as of the June reporting period… and the community may change as more people join. But it’s a very interesting experiment with its heart in the right place. If you’re involved in social media, you should get this card just to keep up with what they’re doing. (That’s my referral code, of course…. it will generate Giveback™ to the community if you are accepted.)

Best practices (and not) for recovering account passwords online

Barclaycard forgot password page — Barclaycard Ring MasterCard “forgot password” page

[THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED.] Yesterday I mentioned a problem I was having with the Barclaycard Ring MasterCard “forgot password” page. Today I’m taking the extra step of showing the page because this is something I don’t think has a lot of customer service advantage. They’re using the same page whether you are setting up a new online persona OR you have forgotten your password in which case you simply have to choose a new username.

What else could Barclaycard have done? Send an email at the user’s request, with a unique URL that expires after a few hours. That way the account is secure, but the user stays in control of it. This is the nearly universal practice, and it’s interesting to see an exception and mull the pros and cons.

Requiring a new username is particularly onerous for Barclaycard Ring because it’s supposed to be a social networking community. If I change my username, what happens to the badges and contacts I’ve built up under my old username? But I think it’s not a very good practice in general, and this big international bank must be somehow very stretched for programming resources.

While I’m at it, here’s another not-best practice: confirming the new (or old) password by sending out an email that contains exactly that password in unencoded text. Yikes! What if I’m reading my email in Starbucks or an unsecured wireless hotspot at the airport? Even if I’m in the comfort and sanctity of my home, I’m still going to have to delete that email now. The merchant or marketer probably thought they were doing me a favor by sending me a handy reminder. In contrast to Barclaycard, this is one we’ve all seen, probably several times. Don’t do it.

UPDATE July 3: got a call from Meagan in the Barclaycard digital marketing department and she had a little difficulty reproducing the above page on a test account; possibly I had done something like enter the wrong password too many times that caused the system to “clear out my account”. What I should have seen was a reset page with my security image and with her help I was able to get to that. More important, she and I discovered that if, instead of creating a new user name in the screen captured above, I entered my current one (after confirming who I was with the challenge info above) the system would accept it.

The GOOD news was that when I finally got into my account my screen name had not changed at all; must be different from the username the system recognizes. So all my badges, if I had them, would be intact.

Meagan says this is the password reset procedure used for all Barclaycard products but she does understand how it might be a good idea to present it differently (and tell people they can keep their current username if they like) for the Ring cardmembers. Will be interested to see what they come up with.

I saw what you did

Years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I was walking near the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park when I saw an impeccably dressed man blow his nose and then toss his tissue into the manicured garden. I was outraged at this behavior and also by the realization that, since I myself was too meek to beard him, he was about to get away scott free.

It was at that moment I decided to create an online bulletin board where people could register outrageous things they saw other people do. On some level, miscreants like this could be brought to justice if only in the mind of the poster. I registered the domain name that day: isawwhatyoudid.com.

That was a nasty and brutish era where there was no Facebook, no Twitter (imagine!) which today could serve the purpose of venting my outrage. I never got around to doing anything more with the concept and after a couple of years I let my ownership of the domain lapse. It was immediately snatched up by Warner Brothers, probably as the website for a teen movie they were planning. But the movie never got off the planning stage, they in turn let their ownership expire, and I bought it back again.

I think this website could still be useful today, for a somewhat different purpose. Above is a photo of an outrageously worthless product I bought at my local CVS pharmacy. It’s a travel-size bottle to be filled with shampoo or whatever, and it’s an abomination because the screw top doesn’t seal. If I had taken this on a trip it would have leaked all over and made a mess when air pressure changed on the airplane.

At $1.99 my reasonable response would have been to just throw it away, but instead I took it to CVS and got a refund and asked the cashier, a competent woman named Jodi, if she would report it to corporate and ask them to stop carrying this defective product. She said she would but I have doubts how much difference it will make. So let’s suppose I also record my story on isawwhatyoudid.com. In its new configuration the site is not going to be an organized BBS, just a soup of angst where people can post whatever they like (except there will be an adult content filter) and it goes into a searchable database.

Thus, months after my experience, when another customer has their Louis Vuitton toilet bag ruined by one of these bottles and sees that CVS was asked to stop selling them but did not, then they will have some fodder for appropriate action. Make sense? There will also be a tag cloud documenting the frequency with which certain words or phrases are used…. Unlike the tag cloud on this blog, which is created manually, it will grow organically like a boil to reflect current topics. Commonly used words will be excluded from the tag cloud and there will be extra weight for recency so it’s constantly changing and relevant.

Actually, I’m probably going to be too busy to do anything with this for awhile. If any of my readers wants to take this project on, shoot me an email.

Happy birthday to my Prius battery

Marketing readers of this blog are probably unaware that there is a very active ongoing discussion, in the form of comments on several posts and reposting on car enthusiast blogs, about how long batteries should last in hybrid cars and what the manufacturer should do if they die prematurely.

Two years ago last month, the battery in my 2001 Prius quit, 8 months out of warranty but with just 70,000 miles on the car. I paid $3700 to replace it and lobbied Toyota Corporate to refund it without success. Two years ago this month, the good people at San Francisco Toyota informed me that they had gotten authorization through their retail dealer rep to refund the replacement cost in full.

I hope the two research physicians who purchased my Prius soon after that are enjoying their car; I expect it has many more years on its new battery. I hope that Toyota has gotten enough positive consideration to repay their investment in my vehicle; I expect that they have. And I hope that Doug Donnellan, who was then the manager of SF Toyota, has gotten further promotions; he is the kind of proactive, go-out-on-a-limb executive every company needs in these times, or any times.

If you want to know more about my Prius battery, the comments at the bottom of this post are a good place to start.

Welcome to the year of crappy customer service

2011 was a year I’m happy to be done with. So, I expect, are Netflix, Bank of America and Verizon, who saw their ill-advised attempts to insert a direct tap into their customers’ wallets flame out in 2 months, 5 weeks and 2 days respectively.

Doesn’t anybody do customer research any more? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to find out how your customers are going to react before you implement a toxic new policy? B of A and Verizon wanted to charge customers for using a debit card and paying a bill online; since those policies subsequently were reversed they’re fiscally in the same place as before but with bad press and a lot of pissed-off customers. Netflix soldiered on with its plan to separate its DVD delivery and streaming content, but paid a terrible price in subscribers and market value. How is any of this a benefit to the shareholders?

I guess it’s good news that the cycle of mea culpa is getting shorter, as noted above. But meanwhile I’ve noticed a couple of new assaults on my wallet from smaller companies and wonder if it’s part of a larger trend to put short term revenues ahead of longer term customer loyalty and common sense.

I previously wrote about Boingo and their “good news” that I could now download an updated version of their wireless roaming app that allowed me to use just two devices in my account rather than have unlimited access. I cancelled, but then I recently found myself in the BWI airport needing wireless access and was tempted by an offer to get a $25 American Express gift card after 2 months of service. So I re-upped, after discovering out something interesting: of the three different devices I was carrying, each received a different offer when I went to boingo.com. My laptop (where I’d received the email) told me I could join for $9.95 a month and made no mention of the gift card. My tablet offered the gift card and $9.95 a month. My Android had the gift card for the rate of $7.95 a month so that’s how I joined. But I don’t need a wireless service on my cell phone since it has an unlimited data plan so I went through the process of registering my laptop and tablet and was told oops, I’ve reached my 2 device limit.

Turns out the very act of signing up had registered the cell as one of my two devices and now my only option is to cancel it, effective at the end of the billing period one month hence. So I’m down to one device during this period and then can register my second device. Just way too much clunkiness for customer satisfaction and what makes it all more irritating is that Boingo has this breezy website where a message “oops… something has gone wrong” that pops up way too often and only serves to increase my irritation with that man behind the curtain.

A more disturbing revenue tactic was applied by Bill Me Later after I tried to take advantage of an offer for $15 off when I paid for an eBay transaction through their service. I was told online that, for unspecified reasons, they were unable to process my payment so fine, I paid through Paypal. I then started to get daily voicemails from somebody who left a message saying “This is the fraud department at ramamafoqw calling about a recent transaction…” They didn’t exactly say ramamafoqw but they did mumble the company name. After several calls I realized they were saying “Bill Me Later.” I called the number and got a message “we’re sorry, no one is available.” Finally their representative reached me live and it turned out the purpose of this “fraud alert” was to set up an account, but not offer me the $15 credit since that one had expired.

So that’s downright deceptive… using the fraud alert concept, which has struck terror into the heart of every consumer at one time or another, to make the customer pay attention so you can sell them a service. (And how did they get my number? Well, turns out Bill Me Later is owned by Paypal…) What this has in common with Boingo, and also the three giant companies mentioned above, is that nobody applied the sniff test. As in, “this will hopefully make us some money but is it going to make our customers more loyal and satisfied, or less?” If that question is no longer relevant, then it’s going to be a long year.

P.S. Reading over this post, my experiences do sound a bit down in the weeds and yes I do have better things to do than chasing after $25 gift cards. But these are the hooks marketers use to get customers and prospects involved, and if they don’t provide a satisfactory customer experience or are perceived as deceptive then sales will suffer and more than likely we in the marketing department will get the blame.

Good CSR, bad CSR

The other day I got hot under the collar about what was basically a trivial matter. The outsourced customer service function of American Express needed appropriate phrases to express appropriate reactions when a customer called because their credit card was declined. Quite possibly because of cultural differences, the scripted responses weren’t appropriate at all.

But why would a company even want to banter with the customer in the first place? This is not a marriage or personal relationship where you are trying to gain the upper hand. There’s a customer service policy in place to handle whatever concern the customer is contacting you about. Just deal with it, as efficiently is possible. Don’t embellish the dialog in a way that can turn a neutral situation into a negative.

At the other end of the spectrum, if the customer has a complaint or request and your policy is to honor it, there is nothing wrong with an additional coating of obsequiousness. An example is this response from amazon.com when I downloaded a Kindle book thinking it was free through the Prime lending library and discovered I was charged for it.

First, let me apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue. I do understand how frustrating this must have been to you. We value our customers’ trust above all else–it is the foundation upon which Amazon.com was built. Please know that this situation was the result of a combination of technical and human errors, and that in no way did we intend for this to happen.

Over the top? You bet. Did it cost Amazon any more than a simple notice that my charge had been reversed? Not a penny. Will this make me more likely to give more money to Amazon? Absolutely.

American Express customer service goes off the rails

Had a remarkable conversation with American Express customer service tonight regarding my account ending in 71000. (Amex, that’s so you can fix this if you are paying attention.) The card was rejected in a Cost Plus World Market store and while I am by no means a paragon of any type, I’ll say in my defense I have never missed a payment nor reported any kind of irregularity so it was a bit of a surprise.

When I got home there was an email, as opposed to the more urgent phone call you might expect. There was a number for me to call. I did… and was put on hold. WTF! I then had a conversation with an overseas CSR. I am not one of the “keep it in America” folks by kneejerk reaction, but in this case the language barrier might have kept her from realizing some of the script she was reading from was of a toxic nature.

I see you are calling from a number in your profile, you had a charge that was rejected because of our fraud prevention alerts. I asked why, since Cost Plus is a recognized national retailer. First surprise in her scripted answer: the larger the organization, the greater for the potential for fraud. Oh, says I, are you saying I should only shop at small stores from now on? Her response: I can see you were embarrassed sir, when your card was rejected. (WTF! I never said that!) I can understand that because of the prestige attached to the American Express card. (Yes, I’m a desperate striver who was accidentally approved for this card. Now my dirty laundry is out in public.)

I could have been reassured by this conversation, but instead I’m in doubt about my choice of shopping destinations and my worthiness to carry the card… which you can’t bet I won’t be doing much longer. Well, that’s not actually true because I have points to redeem. But you can bet this puppy is going to stay in my pocket the balance of this holiday shopping season. Don’t have time for this shit.

Mahatma Gandhi on customer service

I saw this on a poster at my local purveyor of Indian goods and had to check out its veracity:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

The quote is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Ludicrous. Or is it? A search turns up both corroboration and skepticism. My money is with the denier who reports the quote actually came from Zig Ziglar, who says Gandhi said it.

Gotta love the internets.

UPDATE: the reference to Zig Zigler is oddly gone from the skeptic link above, replaced by one attributing the quote to L.L. Bean. Also, several people have mentioned that the quote universally ascribed to a speech Gandhi made in South Africa in 1890, but he didn’t actually arrive in South Africa in 1893.

Is Reed Hastings a Quickster?

Since I’m still a Netflix customer (at least until 9/24 when the new pricing kicks in per my billing date) I was a recipient of the soon-to-become-infamous email from Reed Hastings in my in-box this morning, which opens “I messed up. I owe you an explanation.”

I would have liked “apology” which would indicate a price rollback but “explanation” carries no such connotation and indeed regarding the pricing, Hastings informs us “we’re done with that!” The explanation is of the rationale behind splitting the streaming and DVD-delivery services; the mess-up was in not explaining it properly to consumers, which he now does in the email and more extensively in his own blog.

The streaming video service is now Netflix and the DVDs are about to become “Quikster”, a new orphan brand, suggesting that the “familiar red envelope” is about to become the equivalent of “AOL dial-up”, an analogy Hastings uses in his message though not exactly in that way.

I am fascinated by this turn of events. It’s like that story of the backpacker who cuts off his own arm to escape and save his life. It’s like watching Wil. E. Coyote standing his ground as the roadrunner approaches at full speed. And I am especially fascinated by evidence the decision was not made with full benefit of research and reflection by one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Do a web search for “quickster” and “quikster” (results will be roughly the same) and right now the top two hits are for an Amway-related scandal involving a like-sounding product, and a rather risqué definition on urbandictionary.com. Look up quikster.com on the internet registries and you’ll find the registration changed just a couple of weeks ago and as of this morning quikster.net and quikster.org were still available for purchase, suggesting haste and confusion in the name-changing.

I plan to stay tuned…. Though perhaps not as a Quikster customer.

UPDATE: just a few hours later, those web search results have changed quite a bit… I hope you will take my word as to what they looked like about 7 am Eastern this morning. Also with more reflection, I want to point out a huge failing of Quikster as a brand identity: it does nothing to say what this product or service actually does, other than the fact that it’s fast. I’m guessing that QuickFlix and QuikFlix were taken?

Just die, Borders

Remember Borders? Several months ago they were a nationwide chain of bookstores where you could browse, cozy up with a cup of coffee, and discover a new author while listening to music or even a live reading.

My own Borders was one of the first scheduled for closing, and they’ve been gone for maybe four months. Like a zombie or a hand from the grave, my Borders Rewards membership kept reminding me of new offers which were no longer relevant until finally I clicked the CAN-SPAM link and killed it.

But today the corpse is risen anew. Some special set of rules allows the liquidators to send my email address a message that says:

Borders Rewards Perks has partnered with OO.com to ensure that you have access to your account, including your WOWPoints…

Your WOWPoints will be honored. They will be moved to OO.com over the next 30 days. Once there, you can use them just as you do now.

Um, no. I had a relationship with Borders, but I am not interested in you new guys whoever you are. Why is it so difficult to take a national brand with huge loyalty and do something for the customers which is also profitable when things go bad?

Just askin….