Reaching Through
An astonishingly poor customer experience I recently had, my reaction to it, and its subsequent resolution all had me thinking of how the immense changes wrought by the internet are shifting even the stodgiest of businesses.
Recently, a State of Israel bond that was purchased for me on my bar mitzvah some years ago came due. The bond was purchased in my own name, as well as the names of my mother and grandmother. Alas, my grandmother passed away some 6 years ago, and so it was necessary to ensure that the check which would come with from the redemption of those bonds wouldn’t have her name on it.
This required three phone calls to the local bond booster’s office, a notarized affidavit, an original copy of a death certificate, a certified letter to be sent to The Bank of New York’s Corporate Trust Division.
Several weeks after I sent the bond in for redemption I received a check for back interest owed. That check had my grandmother’s name on it, and the ensuing battle to have this rectified had taught me a few things about customer service:
- There is always someone higher up who can be called upon to resolve a situation
- Policies are meant to service your customers, not to thwart them
- It pays to know someone who works in an inbound phone room, and knows the tricks that customer service representatives will pull to get you to go away
After receiving the back interest check, I got another check for the full value of the bonds that were redeemed, and this one didn’t have my grandmother’s name on it. So it seemed that what I wanted – a check with only the names of living people who could endorse it printed on its face – wasn’t too terrible a burden to impose on the Bank of New York.
To resolve the back interest check that was incorrect, I made another call to the local bond booster’s office, and at their instruction sent this check off with a notarized affidavit, a copy of a death certificate, a letter of instruction, and a certified letter off to BONY.
Four weeks after the U.S. Postal Office told me the letter was received, I still hadn’t heard back from the Bank, so I called. In the ensuing 6 telephone calls I was:
- Instructed to fax a letter with the check number to them
- Told that since the check was issued before my grandmother died (actually it was issued 6 years afterwards) it could not be reissued
- Informed that “it is the responsibility of the bearer of the check to prove to his bank that a payee on the check is deceased”
- Disconnected 4 times
- Repeatedly refused the full names or direct telephone numbers of the operators who were assisting me or their supervisors
- Refused an explanation as to when the check in question might be returneed to me, along with the original copies of my grandmother’s death certificates
- Really, really pissed off
The whole experience reminded me of that scene in the Simpsons where Bill Gates offers to “buy out” Homer’s company, “Hyper-Global-Meg-Anon.” Homer accepts Gates’ offer, whereupon two goons proceed to smash Homer’s desk and business acoutrements. Homer begs for an explanation, and Gates responds, “I didn’t get rich by writing a bunch of checks.”
Indeed.
Duly annoyed, and with Amber’s aide, I proceeded to email every corporate vice president and senior vice president I could find an address for on the Bank of New York’s Corporate Trust website.
Customers used to get pissed off and write a letter to the Better Business Bureau, which isn’t a small deal, but it isn’t a huge deal either – big corporations have established channels for dealing with complaints like that, and they can afford to bear the burden of tying up a dispute for months or years if the consequence is just the loss of one small customer who can’t do much harm. But nowadays, even the smallest customer can find your website and the contact information of a dozen people whose jobs are something other than dealing with him. Reaching through the organization, even the tiniest fish can gum up the works of a major banking institution bad enough to get the butts of a few corporate V.P.’s in gear.
The proof is in the pudding: A day after sending the email, the funds in question have been wired electronically to my bank account. Though this was one of the options I presented as a solution that would be satisfactory to me, the fact that it was executed so quickly deserves commendation.
And from all of this, I can deduce the following lessons:
- Customers: if you have what you believe to be a legitimate grievance, and you can think of a way that the company you’re doing business with can solve it, it pays to complain as loudly as possible to as many people as you can find.
- Companies: You will wind up providing good customer service, for two reasons: the customers who don’t need to do business with you now have little incentive to keep doing so, and the customers who have no choice but to do business with you can make your life very difficult, fairly easily.
More than anything, I think the internet has tipped the balance in favor of the small fry. Information has no choice but to be free, and the heretofore least siginificant ones out there are the ones who recognize the greatest gain from that new found flow of information. A rising tide lifts all boats, but it lifts the smallest ones the most quickly.
Big Business, it’s time to get the message: make the experience great, or face the consequences.
