3 Stories of Customer Service Creating a Lifelong Customer and 3 Stories of Customer Service Creating a Mortal Enemy.
In superhero movies, there is usually that moment when the Supervillain becomes evil. The Joker has his face mutilated, the next thing you know he’s wearing clown makeup and trying to destroy society.
However, every action has a positive and equal reaction.
The moment a young Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered in the street he decided to take it out on every other criminal for the rest of his life.
I am not comparing my interaction with Citi Bank to watching my parents get murdered, but our psyche is nothing more than a series of experiences and lingering effects.
The following are 6 real stories that have affected my psyche and are now a part of me. It also illustrates why the trend towards the elimination of competent customer service of any kind is going to hurt some companies and help others. So investors, pay close attention.
APPLE
I bought my first MacBook Pro in 2008. And it was awesome. Software was amazing and intuitive, putting Word to shame. But the hardware was also amazing. Durable, stylish and it was 4 years before it started to show signs of age. In fact, I just pulled it out and turned it on, I don’t use it and it did get a new hard drive a while back, but it is still alive.
By 2013 I had Apple everything. I wouldn’t think of going back to P/C, but with my 5-year-old daily driver device, it seemed time to upgrade. So I purchased another $1860 MacBook Pro.
After 6 months the hard drive died. I figured it was an anomaly, it was under warranty and they replaced the device. Then the logic board died, followed by another hard drive within less than a year.
At that point, I contacted Apple and was told “tough shit”.
I was barely outside warranty, this was an obvious Apple problem with this generation of devices and I proceeded to bitch and moan until I convinced them to replace the hard drive again. I paid $400 (I think) to have them (cuz they have a cartel-like business model and don’t let others fix their stuff) replace the logic board. 6 more months until it died again and I called asking about a recall as this shouldn’t be happening. Customer service said it was “clearly my use” that was causing the problems.
I had a friend replace the HD with an aftermarket one and bought a Chromebook for $260. Someone I knew who worked for Apple told me that generation of Hard Drive was garbage and it was a massive problem. A problem MULTIPLE Customer Service reps blamed on me.
This was also when Apple would kill your iPhone battery after year 2. Which also happened to me, I called, they blamed me.
Conclusion: I have not purchased another Apple product, nor will I, ever. Culture works top-down and the CS reps I spoke to sucked as they were told to suck. Don’t blame the player, blame the game.
Google FI
After my dealings with Apple, I migrated to Google. Android, my first Chromebook, Google Wifi, I was all in. Not because I loved Google as much as my options were Apple or Windows.
But, I have to say, I was pretty happy. Things worked better than my Apple products, Samsung makes a much better phone than the iPhone and Android offers more options. I even moved my company’s Ihome to G-Suites. G-Suites totally sucks and their customer service has no idea what they are doing, are in Columbia and speak very poor English with an unusual specific accent. But, they have good attitudes and that goes a long way.
As I said, I was pretty happy and moved my phones to Google Fi as my last part of the transition. Google Fi was good until I had a hiccup. At which point I realized the phone service brought to you by the largest phone software company on the planet…..has no phone number or customer service if you have a problem that doesn’t fit in their bubble solutions.
That’s part of their business model. Problem is, if my Chromebook requires me to problem solve something the “Internet-link Chat” style support won’t work and I have to call Columbia. Not ideal, but we get the job done.
However, if they screw something up and you don’t have a phone (we all live in fear of our phones being compromised, or worse) because it was glitched by the carrier, there is no place to turn.
And that happened to me. Using my other phone I contacted Mint Mobile, found a phone number, and called a human. First thing I said was, “Oh, so I will be able to contact a human if I have a problem I can’t solve?” and the Mint person said, “Are you with Google FI currently?”.
I no longer trust Google across the board. I am still primarily Google, but I go out of my way to not use their services or buy their products if possible. Because if their customer interface is that poorly designed, do I want them to have all my data?
I mean, what kind of braindead executive decided to have a PHONE SERVICE PROVIDER, (WHO OWNS THE BRANDED OS RUNNING 3/4th’s OF THE WORLD’S PHONES) WITHOUT A PHONE NUMBER? The person who hired the person, who OK’d that should be fired on principal.
CITI BANK
I had a fully paid off Citi Bank credit card and I tried to get rid of it. 1st off the interest they wanted was literally criminal 20 years ago. 20+% is stupid if you own a home and have good credit, but that’s where it went after a 2-year free trial. I didn’t want it to be stolen, identity theft whatever, and run up, I have plenty of other cards and wanted it discontinued.
They wouldn’t do it. They found excuse after excuse to not cancel it. This went on for months until I walked into a branch, sat in front of a manager and refused to leave until it was canceled.
We called customer service together and the BANK MANAGER had to help convince customer service to cancel it.
I shit you not.
So, three companies that had and have lost (or are losing) my consumer dollars.
Now the good.
ASKU WASHERS AND DRYERS
Ever heard of them? Me either. I bought a VENTLESS DRYER (I didnt know that was a thing) it works well, but you have to clean out the lint (unsurprisingly) a lot.
The lint filter is in the door and set up sorta awkwardly. It also has a click-to-close design that stopped keeping it shut years ago. I tried to find a replacement but the whole filter setup was well over a $100, so I just lived with it.
The design has a clasp on top, so when you open the dryer it hits you in the head if are not careful.
Recently I decided it hit me in the face for the 10,000th time and that was enough. I called this little European company’s offices in Wisconsin and (although well out of warranty) as I wanted to tell them about their design flaws.
I was going to bitch at them, I was pissed and had a sore nose where the filter hit me, not my best moment.
Within a minute the person I reached said, “I’m sorry, I’ll send a replacement out right now”.
He was aware that part of the design wasn’t their best and easily turned my angst into the joy of a now (and going forward) lifelong ASKU customer. I will spend more for their products because I know how they stand behind them.
It wasn’t just the sending of the replacement, it was his acknowledgment that what they made had an issue.
90% of the time if someone just says, “I’m sorry that happened to you”, you are satisfied, but the ASKU rep just handled everything.
He even asked if I had other issues with the unit. Could you imagine Apple care saying, “now that we fixed your Bluetooth issue, are your Airpods working properly?”
MINT MOBILE
After leaving Google FI I had a hell of a time getting the Mint ap to work with my set up. The service was great, but the ap refused to let me sign in so I had no idea about billing, data use, etc.
After trying over and over to fix on my own I called them. They spent about 20 minutes trying things I couldn’t because I couldn’t get on the ap, and it’s fixed.
Nothing for free, nothing demonstrative, just someone whose 1st language was the same as mine patiently taking the time to fix it.
If your primary market is the US, it stands to reason you would have customer service in at least English and Spanish. I don’t blame the people in India, the Philippines or Columbia for being hard to understand, but it can be a problem. Localizing customer service is just smarter and gets faster results. It’s more expensive, but what is a customer worth?
I called BONVOY (Marriott) once and hit “French” instead of “English” (I speak some French, less than I thought I did) and had to hang up and reengage with another person in English. But that’s not on them, they provided a competent option, I was just too dense to utilize it.
BANK OF THE WEST
After Citi Bank, I found a “less monstrous, less branches, but you can go talk to a banker if you need”, bank. It’s awesome.
However, during the pandemic, I had a recurring problem and had to call the bank to get it fixed once a week. And they did not have enough staff. And didn’t hire more.
I would routinely wait for an hour on hold. I was losing my mind. This lasted for a few months.
However, they hired more people and fixed the problem. Later I found out one of the reasons they didn’t hire more people faster was the training they have their people do before engaging with customers. Covid made that more difficult I guess.
Which makes sense as I have to say, once you get them on the phone, they are fantastic.
When they explained that to me I got it. COVID was rough and although getting that together faster would have been nice, I was always amazed at how helpful and pleasant they were. They had to have had pissed off person after pissed off person all day.
In that case, all they had to do was not lie or mislead me. That feels like a low bar, yet Apple and Citi failed to reach it.
I have no intention of changing banks.
