Would you pay for better service?

It has been a weird summer for me and my checking accounts.  Both my primary and secondary accounts were breached over the past few weeks.   Nothing serious happened.  I didn’t lose any money, but each bank handled the ATM card replacement very differently.

I have a free checking account with Ally, and a regular account with Citibank where there is a minimum balance to avoid service charges.

Citibank Experience (primary account):

I received a call on a Friday evening, around 5:30 or 6pm.

• Agent: Hi, I am calling from Citibank. Unfortunately your credit card number has been breached.  We will need to get you a new ATM card and immediately deactivate your current one.
• Me: Do you know how it happened?
• Agent: No, I do not know the circumstances of the breach.  You should let us know if you see any strange charges.  Do I have your OK to cancel your card and send you a new one.  We’ll send out the replacement card immediately.
• Me:  When should it arrive, I am going on a trip on the following Tuesday and I will be gone for a week.
• Agent: I’ll process this request immediately. I think we are before the deadline to get this delivered on Monday.  Let me confirm with my colleagues that this is the case. …
• Agent:  I have confirmed this will be sent via priority mail for a Monday AM delivery.
• Me: What happens if it doesn’t arrive on time.
• Agent: You can always go into a branch and get a temporary card to use for a trip.  It won’t have a Visa logo, but you can use it to get cash.
• Me: Great thanks for your help.

** The card delivery was attempted on Monday, but that’s another story.  I ended up getting the card on Tuesday after the delivery issues.

Ally Experience (secondary account):

I got a call on a Saturday afternoon from Ally’s fraud service.

• Agent: Hi, I am calling on behalf of Ally on a potential fraud issue.  We have some suspected charges.
• Me: OK, what are the details?
• Agent: Charge A in PEnsylvania, Charge B in Deleware, Charge C in California.
• Me: Charges A and B are not mine, C is valid.
• Agent: Do you have the card in your possession?
• Me: Yes, it has never been out of my possession.
• Agent: We can put a block on your card, but you will need to call Ally in order to get a new card issued.
• Me: OK
• Me: Hi, I am calling because it looks like my ATM card number has been stolen.  I have also noticed suspicious activity on my account.
• Agent: We can issue a provisional credit for the suscpicious activity while we will conduct an investigation.
• Me: I thought my card had been blocked, so I am puzzled this new charge appeared.
• Agent: Yes, your card has been blocked.  No more charges will go through.
• Me: Can I get a replacement card?
• Agent: Yes.  It will take 7-10 business days in order to receive the card.  The PIN will arrive a few days after that.
• Me: Is there a way to get the card sooner, that seems like a really long time.
• Agent: Yes, the rush fee is $15, and the card will be delivered in 2-3 business days.
• Me: Even though the reason to replace the card is fraud?
• Agent: Yes, unfortunately the fee to rush is $15.  Do you want to do the rush?
• Me: No thanks.  Can you process the replacement request?
• Agent: You should receive your card in 7-10 days.  Thank you for banking with Ally.

A few days later I received a letter from Ally to dispute the charges with the typical dispute reasons. IT asked me to attach an affidavit on why the charges were invalid etc.

Customer Service Comparison:

Citibank: The entire process happened in one phone call and a replacement card was received one business day after the initial contact (even though things started on a weekend).

• Incoming Phone Calls: 1
• Outgoing Phone Calls: 0
• Total Days: 4 (including the weekend, and delivery delay)

Ally: After the issue was reported, I needed to make a phone call in order to get a new card.  At this point, I am not sure if my claim has been approved, although the money has been credited to my account.

• Incoming Phone Calls: 1
• Outgoing Phone Calls: 1
• Total Days: 2 weeks and counting

I have banked with Ally for about a year, and it has been a good experience.  The phone lines are open 24/7 and the agents are friendly.  I love the live chat.  The online banking UI is pretty good.  I have been testing them out to see if I’d want to ditch my mainstream bank for an online only bank.  After this experience, I am not sure I am ready to ditch the branch.  If Ally was my only account, I’d have no way to access my accounts or money while waiting the 7 or 3 business days for a new card to arrive.  I also needed to be proactive to get the replacement.  Since the bank had outsourced the fraud monitoring, the phone agents didn’t have access to the systems to generate new ATM cards.  I needed to make an additional call to get a new card issued.  This is a lot of work for something that wasn’t my fault.

With my Citi account the entire process was completed within one phone call.  I also had the opportunity to go to the branch for cash or a temporary card.

A couple of years ago, my Washington Mutual account was impacted by a similar breach where ATM card numbers were stolen.  Wamu was much less proactive than Citibank.  I received a letter in the mail to the affect of: your card number was possibly stolen, we are sending you a new card in the next couple of days.  Please activate it immediately, your existing card will be cancelled on XXX (a few days after the new card was due to arrive).

Honestly, if I hadn’t had the Ally experience, I wouldn’t have bothered to write about this experience.  But Citi is offers superior service and proactive customer support here.  Washington Mutual did not handle a similar situation with the same sense or urgency.

For the average consumer, all banks are the same.  You only differentiate the banks on convenience, price, and services. When everyone looks pretty equivalent on paper, how do you choose?

You tell me, how much is better service worth for you?  Are you willing to pay a premium for premium service?  Do you appreciate premium service when you get it?

Lead Nurturing gone horribly wrong

I just returned from a trip east to my family reunion.  My trip started with a little bit of tourist-ing in Charelston, SC.  Along the way, we had a bit of debate on picking a hotel.  I booked one hotel, and ended up canceling the reservation to try my luck at Hotwire (it was a success).  Unfortunately the original hotel didn’t get the memo that I canceled my reservation.

I canceled my reservation about 1 week after placing it, and about a month before my trip.  I booked the wrong dates on the original reservation (oops) and canceled for that reason.  About a week before I was scheduled to arrive, i received an email “we can’t wait for you to stay with us, here are a few resources and coupons for your trip.”  I was understandably alarmed, because I had canceled my reservation!  So I called to confirm that the reservation was canceled :

• me:  Hi, I canceled my reservation a few weeks ago and I want to make sure it was really canceled since I received a “look forward to your arrival email.”
• reservation agent: Oh don’t worry about that, everyone gets that email even if you cancel.
• me: OK, thanks for the clarification

What kind of nurturing is that?!?!?! I ended up with 3 totally relevant emails: look forward to welcoming you, welcome, and a post stay survey.  This hotel was probably perfectly nice, but they have solidified the fact that I won’t be staying there.  How hard is it to remove people from the lead nurturing program?

So here is a friendly reminder: if you are automating your marketing don’t forget about the remove button.  No customer wants an email that says,  ”save 20% on all purchases this week,” when you finished shopping last week.  Or a message about continuing to research options when you’ve already decided a product and are in the negotiation phase.

</rant>

The Farmer’s Market meets Social Media

I typically visit the farmer’s market weekly.  Last summer, or maybe the summer before I discovered Blue Chair Fruit, a local jam/spread/marmalade maker.   They make the best jam I’ve ever tasted, I am sure I am know to the Blue Chair team as the girl who stops by every week to try all of the samples.  (I like the stone fruit and berries the best so far.)

I’ve chatted with the owner/creator, Rachel, regularly about her upcoming book, all of the flavors and the typical banter.  It’s great to be able to meet the purveyors, and that is one of the main reasons I go to the market (and of course the fact that is fresher and tastier).

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Blue Chair was on twitter and facebook.  I “liked-ed” them on Facebook and the next week when I was at the farmer’s market,  Rachael commented “Hey, you are our newest facebook fan!”

Facebook moved from online to reality!

A few weeks later, I gave Blue Chair a shout on twitter.

And sure enough, at the market I met Jamie, and she was holding 2 jars for me. 

We all know twitter is a great way to connect with people online, but it great to take that connection offline too. If you have a business where you meet your customers in person, encourage them to follow you online and off.  And reward them for participating in the conversation.  Your customers (and your revenues) will thank you.

Easy and Smart Use of Auto-Responders

Over the past few months I’ve noticed many of my doctors are trying to go online:

• Websites
• Online Appointments
• Online Portals

Obviously this can be really expensive, time consuming and resource intensive.  I switched to a new primary care physician.  I wanted to make an appointment, and I sent an email.

The email auto-responder included links to her policies, pricing (co-pays, no co-pays…), hours.  And even availability over the next 2-3 weeks:  Mornings on Tuesday, Afternoons on Wednesday and so on.  The response also of course let’s you know when they’ll respond to your request.  But with a simple auto-responder and a couple of links, the family practice has practically created a self-service portal.  You can reply with a preferred time for appointment, and her staff updates the auto-responder accordingly.

This is simple, effective and cheap.  Win-win for everyone.

How to lose a customer (or a few) in 3 easy steps

OK, I have been neglecting my blog a bit.  It has been a busy summer.  Transitioning into a new position and a lot of fun over the summer.  Look for more regular posts from me, and I hope to return to 1X/week posts.

I wanted to recount my coworkers experience, over the past week, with Dell.  This was so egregious, I felt is was appropriate to name names.

My coworker has a Dell notebook that is a couple years old.  It has been super slow and flaky lately.  We aren’t really sure why it is misbehaving, but the battery is completely dead right now, and it could be causing a few of the issues.

He decided to contact Dell to order a replacement battery.  He calls Dell support, sits on hold (typical) and eventually places an order for a replacement battery.  His computer was no longer under warranty, so he had to pay for the battery with his credit card.  The customer service representative said “we’ll ship this overnight, so you should have it tomorrow.”  My coworker was happy, because it looked like the resolution was on the way.  This was last Thursday.

On Monday he comes into the office, no battery arrived on Friday or over the weekend.  He calls the Dell team to check on his battery. This time around customer service wasn’t so friendly:

• My coworker: Hi, I called last week and ordered a battery, the service rep told me to expect it in 24 hours.  It has been three days and it is not here.
• Dell customer “care”:  Please check with UPS, here is the tracking number.  [End Call]

My coworker calls UPS to find out where his package is:

• UPS customer service:  Dell did not use overnight shipping.  The package is currently in IL, and there is nothing we can do to expedite this, it will arrive on Thursday.

Organization design: functional or phase based departments?

So I was pondering the other day about how organizations are sectioned off.  Most organizations are  grouped by department: sales, marketing, finance, engineering, and operations.  This is convenient for the organizations, less so for the customer.   As social media emerges as a primary vehicle for communications: for marketing, sales and customer service, organizations are struggling to build a communications group, for all stages of the customer lifecycle.

Some companies assign a team to a customer.  So they’ll interface with one account manager, one service person and so on throughout their relationship with the organization.  This is a great customer friendly model, but for smaller organizations, it is pretty impossible to implement while you have limited resources.

For most organizations, the primary goal is to find customers, engage them and keep them as long as possible.  Why aren’t our organizations structured around these phases of the customer relationship?  What if instead we organized our business around stages in the customer lifecycle.  Some roles would have more representation in one stage or another, but the metrics for the organization would be based on performance in the stage?

Here’s a basic lifecycle:

lifecycle

Identification:  finding new prospects, potential customers. Nurturing them until they are ready to progress the relationship with a purchasing cycle.  In this “department” staff would be weighted around communicators.  In a tech company this would include conventional marketing and communications people.  Perhaps pre-sales technical resources.  A market researcher. And a lead qualification team.  The market researcher would pass feedback to the product development team on what prospective customers are looking for.  This team would be graded on the number of prospects they find, and perhaps brand awareness.  This team would be focused on though leadership and making the brand feel “warm and fuzzy.” A key metric would be related to conversion rates between this stage to Acquisition. They’d also focus on understanding the market and the target customer.

Matching your appearance to your ideals

Leather shoes + vegan = not consistent

Source: Indexed Blog

So this cracked me up when I saw it.  Because it so true.  Raise your hand if you’ve met a leather wearing vegan?  Dear leather purse-carrying animal rights’ activist: don’t tell me you care about the animal’s plight, refuse to eat meat because it is animal torture.  Because skinning them is equivalently torturous. (Full disclosure, I eat meat and wear leather)

So keep this in mind in your own messaging.  How many companies who are “going green” continue to waste paper in many ways, from refusing to offer electronic copies of notifications or just printing out every email?  Or how about a cutting edge technology company who is using the green screen terminal to manage inventory?

So here’s the point.  Your message and actions should match perfectly.  Otherwise, you’ll lose credibiity.  But this index card said it a lot more eloquently than I could!

– Jame Ervin

Best Buy still not being transparent ….

I went to Best Buy, to pick up a couple of little gift for my coworkers.  Flash drives.  Everyone needs those, right?  Well at first I was planning to pick it up at Target, but i decided to check bestbuy.com to see if there were any deals to be had.  Score.  A 3-pack on sale for $17.99.  I checed to see if it was available in store, and it was.  Yeah!

So I went to the computer section of my local best buy, and found the flash drives.  In the locked case the three pack was there.  For $29.99.  Huh?

So I thought I was hallucinating so I rechecked online in one of the computers.  My cheap price was correct.  I found an associate, and explained the situation.  He logged in into the kiosk, and when to the link entitled “In-store Bestbuy.com.”  I was afraid I would get dissed, especially since there was a second link labeled “Bestbuy.com”

But the prices did match.  And the associate started to ring me up.  It required a “competitor override.”  Since when is bestbuy.com a competitor to Best Buy? And ten he completed the override.  It required a manager’s approval.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waiting.  It took 30 minutes to get this simple visit to BBY done.

That’s sad.  I don’t think BBY has learned its lesson after getting sued, and is still being misleading to consumers.  If you don’t do your research first, you may get overcharged.  To the tune of 40%. 

Leveraging the brand, or just plain crazy?

Last night, while VH1′s sister station, MTV was airing the VMAs (Video Music Awards — I am hard pressed to understand how they still have awards since seeing a video on MTV is as rare as seeing Yeti), VH1 had an ad.  Of course they always have ads.  But this time half of the screen was covered with a sponsor logo.  25% was showing a mini video clip of the VMAs.  And the rest said….we are watching the VMAs and you should be too!

This is the first time I could recall such blatant cross promotion on these channels since the early days.   I guess in a way it was tongue in cheek, like all of the new shows.  But it was a little strange.  Especially since in essence, they were showing the VMAs.

So the lesson here?  As many interactions as possible should showcase your brand.  Are you funny?  Customer oriented? Staid? Traditional?  Honest?  Represent that whenever you can.  In your white papers, in your email communications.  Everywhere.

The big reason I started my blog was because I felt like I was losing my voice.  After being surrounded on all sides by marketing-speak…it was taking over my thoughts!  Blogging has helped me loosen up, and start putting more personality in my content.  I hope you can find the same. 

Don’t forget who you are representing

A couple weeks ago I was in Las Vegas.  Jose Canseco was signing autographs in my hotel.  I know he has been trying really hard to drum up publicity for his book and overcome his mortgage crisis.  When I was in elementary school, he was the most popular player around, so I thought I’d grab an autograph for nostalgia’s sake.  Here is what happened:

The autograph session had started a few minutes before, and Canseco was busy pre-signing a few items and chatting with his “entourage.”  There were ZERO people in line.  I grabbed two pictures, one for me and one for my sister.  As I headed over to the table with my two images, the organizer said:  “Sorry only one picture per person.”

So maybe that was the rule, but with the empty line I thought they could make an exception.  When I walked up to Canseco, he didn’t look in my direction, smile or say hello.  He quickly signed with the photo and actually just looked irritated I interrupted him.

Wow!  Isn’t the point of an autograph session to connect with your fans.  I guess I am confused, because apparently the goal is to leave a bad impression.

Later that afternoon I was walking by with my sister.  This was approximately 5-10 minutes after the session was supposed to be over.  Canseco was still sitting at the table, and the paraphernalia was still on the table, so my sister grabbed a photo and walked up to the table.  She was at the table, and Canseco was busy chatting.  The organizer walked up and said, “this event is over, no more autographs.”

Wow a 2nd rude encounter.  Obviously Jose Canseco couldn’t be bothered to loook up during this encounter as well.

The moral here:  if you are supposed to be dealing with public, at least pretend to be happy about it.  And of course, you are always representing Brand YOU, so leave a good impression.