Category Archives: Dumb systems at work

Not. Exemplary Customer Relationship

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Has this ever happened to you?

 

You get a letter in the mail.  You open it, and it reads:

 

Dear Member:

Thank you for being a loyal customer.

 

Immediately followed by, Yakity-yak, very long boring time suck of a sentence, yada, yada, yada.

 

This type of letter irritates me, insults my intelligence, and demonstrates that large bureaucratic organization communication is alive and well.  Those are it’s good qualities.

It shows that they don’t know my name and likely could care less who I am, anyway.  It wastes my time attempting to position the coming message, before it gets around to delivering what is almost always “not good news” manifesting itself as send us more money for the privilege of us serving you.

 

Then again, maybe it was just sent to the wrong address.

How Does Bank of America Define “Relationship?”

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BoA offers a “relationship” pin number so you can avoid answering a gazillion questions when you call in.  Sounds good to me.  I hear about this during a call I made to a customer service representative (supervisor) in connection with a $29.95 monthly maintenance fee I just incurred. They require a $3000.00 minimum in business checking accounts to avoid this fee.  I say, speaking of relationships I keep about $500,000.00 with your bank between, business, investment, and personal so why doesn’t that count toward the $3000.00 minimum? “Because there is no way to link the business to the other accounts,” I’m told.   I then ask, how do you guys define “relationship?”  The
answer, “Our system can’t do that a present.  So then I ask about signing up for the relationship pin which I suggested should be called the “hassle avoidance” pin instead.  “Unfortunately that can be done only on a different inbound call” (which means I have to answer all the questions that I’m trying to avoid by signing up for the relationship PIN!).  So it’s as if none of this 24 minute conversation ever took place?  “I’m afraid so.”

Does that sound like a relationship to you?

All this from the bank that says they want my business; strange way of showing it.