Tag Archives: Customer service

January 7, 2013 · 11:15 am

Take My Money…PLEASE!

Another week, another horror tale from the world of stupid online corporate tricks.

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(Photo credit: wuji9981)

Today we bring you the sad and somewhat horrifying story of the phone company that won’t take your money.  Trust me – I wish I could report that it was out of some philanthropic urge it had to give us all a break.  Not so.  Instead, it’s (yet another) example of how letting programmers, lawyers, and designers do things without input from the real world can spell disaster.

Here at Ritter Media World Headquarters we have a land line as our primary business phone.  It’s from AT&T (yep, them again) and on the bill is also my internet service.  Generally I send them an electronic check once a month but that takes a couple of days to get to them from the bank (a great topic for another post – why the hell should they hold the money for two business days?).  As sometimes happens, the bill got buried in a pile of paper and rather than be late I thought I’d go right to the ATT website and pay the bill directly via credit card.

That was what I thought I’d do.  Unfortunately, after spending 20 minutes on the website, I still couldn’t figure out how to link primary account (it’s the only landline account) to my email and I couldn’t pay the bill.  I tried linking it my ATT Wireless accounts – neither of those worked.  I tried the ATT email they assigned me (but never use) – that didn’t work.  I finally gave up and called them – no time on hold, one layer of menus, type in the credit card, done.

Obviously ATT is a lot more experienced with phones than they are with websites.  Paying via the telephone was a snap.  If someone like me – who is on the web almost 12 hours a day and breathes digital – can’t figure out how to use the web service portal, imagine how someone who can barely send a text will feel.  There are a couple of points here.  First, I wonder how many “civilians” ATT put on the site to test navigation and usability?  Did they give them 3 or 4 tasks – like pay your bill! – and observe them?  Second, stories such as this are why there is still a long way to go with a large segment of the population with respect to making them accept technology into their lives.

Have a horror story to share?  We’re listening!

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December 17, 2012 · 1:48 pm

Learning From Hospice

I’ve written many times here on the screed about customer-focused business behavior. I want to tell you about several professionals who exemplify what I think is the ultimate in customer focus.  These are the people who provide hospice and palliative care.  While it may sound a little cold to look at what they do as a business (and it’s a lot more than that, I know), there are a few really important things we can learn from them.

First, we often focus on the lifetime value of a customer and we prioritize the kind of service we deliver predicated on that.  After all, the new customer who walks in to take advantage of a GroupOn offer is very different from the loyal customer who comes in once a week.  How do you prioritize your customers when the entire reason you’re there is that you’re going to lose them in the near future?  The answer is to do it as they do – deliver an incredibly high standard of service to everyone, looking at them as if they’ll be customers for life.

We all have customers who are demanding.  Imagine a customer who can’t do much of anything for themselves.  While we might talk about our jobs as 24/7 situations, very few of us actually live with our customers.  These folks do, and they are on duty 24 hours a day for several days at a time.   That might make anyone a little cranky, but part of the job is maintaining a positive attitude in the face of a lot of negativity (terminal illnesses tend to breed bad vibes…).  Something to consider, perhaps, the next time we have a 30 minute meeting with an unhappy client or a customer rep who needs to engage an angry consumer on the telephone for an hour?

I can list a bunch of other comparisons here but the entire point is to change your perspective a bit as mine was changed over the last few months.  A family member was fortunate (strange word to use when anyone needs this) to have had some excellent care from professionals providing hospice and palliative services.  The way they went about their jobs, even when their customer was grumpy and difficult – was inspiring.  It opened my eyes and hopefully I can pass that along.

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November 26, 2012 · 12:12 pm

The Fine Print

Here we are again in the holiday season, which really means “primary spending time” both for consumers and retailers. The flyers bundled with my newspaper on Thursday had many more pages than did the paper itself. While they’re not as offensive as political ads, the frequency of ads for “Black Friday Deals!” on all programming was at week-before-the-election levels.  Numbing…

What bothers me about quite a few of these ads is not really restricted to this season but since everyone’s mind is on shopping I thought I’d put it out there today.  I have a huge distrust of fine print.  You know – the things about the stuff in big type that are written in tiny type and make the great deal not so great.  On radio ads it’s when the announcer starts talking very fast and unintelligibly.  As Consumer Reports pointed out, it’s getting a “free” download of antivirus software with a recent purchase. By the way,  free has a time limit — six months – and then you get billed for $49.99 after that if you don’t happen to cancel.  You might see it on a brand’s Facebook page – “like” us and get a coupon for $5.  Of course, the coupon is only good when you purchase $25 worth of stuff.  Book some hotel rooms online and you’ll probably miss the fine print about “resort charges” or “safe fees” that are positioned as optional but which are anything but.  I’ve never heard of anyone getting them removed from the bill.  My phone’s “unlimited” data plan allows me the use of unlimited amounts of data but after I get to some point the speed is throttled, making the plan limited in other ways.

I have to think that the revenues gained from these offers is offset to some degree (one hopes to a very large one) by the costs of customer service and refunds generated by the fine print.  Think for a minute about how we behave as individuals.  We don’t extend offers to our friends with fine print, at least not if we expect to keep them as friends.  “Let’s go to the movies” doesn’t come with “unless I can find a better option with someone else” or “of course, you’ll buy all the popcorn.”  Why would we behave differently as a brand?

Fine print, except as mandated by law, is a bad idea.  No fine print from me on that.  How about from you?

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