I deal with one of the big banks. I rely upon them to handle all of my financial transactions such as paying my bills and keeping my cash safe. For this pleasure I pay them a monthly fee and a chunk of interest when asked for. In the main their service is very good and everything works smoothly. I must be happy with them as I have been a customer for the last two millennia. But it is when something goes wrong that an organisation shows its true colours and something did.
Last week I was checking my online account to make sure I had enough in my current account. I don’t like to sail too close to the wind yet like to keep something in reserve. I noticed that a large bill had not been paid, nothing important, just my mortgage and on deeper investigation realised that no transactions had been accounted for over the last two days. This was worrying as I have never missed my mortgage payment before and was now not sure if I could trust the balance figure shown.
I tried refreshing the page, logged out and back in again but the figures remained stubbornly missing. I then rang the bank to be advised that there was a systems problem that had now been fixed but it would take a couple of days to resolve. I asked if she could confirm if my mortgage had been paid but was told that I would have to ring my provider direct. The agent then asked me if that was OK to which I replied ‘not really but what can I do?’
The prospect of not knowing if my balance was correct or if my mortgage had been paid for four days was disconcerting and so later that evening I rang them again. This time the agent gave me a similar story though she explained what had caused the problem and that my web pages would be refreshed by the morning. She also said that my mortgage payment had been requested and that she was pretty certain that it will have gone through. Again she finished the conversation with ‘Is that OK?’ and again I grudgingly replied ‘not really but what can I do?’
I then tweeted the organisation using their customer service Twitter address and in the morning received a response saying ‘That’s odd. Have you spoken to our Internet Banking Helpdesk about this?’ I replied that I had, twice and that the problem was now fixed to which I got this ‘Ok, glad to hear it has been resolved. Sorry again for the inconvenience. Have a great day’.
Four times I contacted the bank dissatisfied with the service. Four times they had the opportunity to help me out and delight me with their customer care and four times they did at best half a job. If only they had been able to confirm my balance, confirm my mortgage payment or take the initiative and ring me back it would have been a different story.
This wasn’t customer service, it was palliative customer service instead. So many organisations invest in process that appear to give good customer care but instead leave them frustrated and bitter and this cannot be good for anyone’s business.
pal·li·ate verb (used with object), pal·li·at·ed, pal·li·at·ing.
1. to relieve or lessen without curing; mitigate; alleviate.
2. to try to mitigate or conceal the gravity of (an offense) by excuses, apologies, etc.; extenuate.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
I had absolutely appalling service from Vodafone last year – and because I’d just upgraded my phone with them, I’ve been stuck with them. Its a terrible feeling. Mine wasn’t just palliative service – it was three or four steps beyond and went on for what seemed like months!
Hmmm, can’t say too much as we use them. It’s just they seem to put so much effort into something that looks like service rather than is service. Is that OK?
Phil,
No – and I think this is what gets people riled up. Mistakes can be forgiven if they are treated with the proper care, I ended up with a series of errors each compounding the last and several times I was told that the issue(s) had been resolved and asked ‘how did we do?’ when in fact the issue had in fact snowballed… It’s generally not the fault of the ‘company’ as such – I am sure companies don’t go out to mess up people’s accounts up on purpose but when it does it should go the extra mile to acknowledge responsibility and keep that customer.
Just had the same this am from an organisation’s call centre (closer to home to you this time 😉 ) – I have an issue that is remaining unresolved – and all I have is a blanket ‘i’ll pass a note to the back office’.
Frustrates me – in this day and age (and they re obviously using IT systems to log calls etc) that more can’t be done to recognize that when this is the fourth call in as many working days the issue should be escalated rather than giving a standard scripted answer – because well everyone knows it is a standard scripted answer.
Surely these days we can do better, can’t we?
(Just rather frustrated!!)
not just me then. I need to be careful that I don’t treat my customers that way.