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Double Indemnity
Author: Bill Cusick
August 30, 2004
By the way, I love that movie - Fred MacMurray talking super fast, Barbara Stanwyck emoting evil, Edward G. chomping a cigar…anyways, this isn’t a life insurance/murder scheme, but it is about life insurance/confusion.
Here’s the shorthand version: bought life insurance; set up automatic payment of premium through my bank account; changed banks; changed automatic payment. What’s this? Late notice on life insurance premium in the mail. Call the company, send in the missed payment - from the account changeover - and everything’s settled. Wait, no, another late notice. Talk on the phone again, send in the “catch up” premium, and we’re set. No. Another late payment. Sick of this yet? I was. Here’s the gist: when I switched banks, I fell behind one payment. But every time I sent a new payment in, the system saw it as this month’s payment, and so failed to take the automatic payment from the bank. So I’m perpetually in arrears. How’d we fix it? There was a lot of talking on the phone, and they finally caught me up by forcing the system to take two automatic payments in the same month. Now I’m set. The lesson learned: it’s great to have processes and systems to handle 98% of your customer transactions, but it’s those two percent you need to pay extra attention to, because that’s where you’ll create something we call “customer dissonance” (i.e. anger).
Tell Me about Your Experience
Author: Bill Cusick
August 23, 2004
Customers don’t want choices; they want exactly what they want. - Joseph Pine, Author
Have you ever had a customer service “professional” yawn and stare blankly at you as you’re asking a question? (yes, it happened to me.) How about receiving a letter from your insurance company that states you must contact them immediately or risk losing your coverage, and there’s no phone number on the letter? Ok, one more: you try to sign up on your bank’s website so you can pay your bills online, and the process is so ponderous and convoluted, you just give up and go back to writing checks?
I want to know! Tell me everything! Everything, that is, that makes you nuts as a customer. I’m interested in how you feel about the companies you associate with, and I want to hear about your experiences. While we primarily work in the financial services arena (mainly insurance companies and banks) I’d love to find out about what makes you feel special as a customer, and what makes you head for the door at the first opportunity - no matter what type of company.
Tell me all of it! Email me at bill@voxinc.com. If you’ve got a good story, we’ll send you a shiny coin or something.
A Rolex in Chinatown
Author: Bill Cusick
August 17, 2004
It’s sweaty and overcrowded - a melting pot of aggressive pedestrians from everywhere - all on a mission, all milling through tiny spaces. People are yelling to each other, and when a cop strolls by vendors chatter to each other on their Nextel two-ways, as bags of “special” merchandise get quickly tucked away.
I really hate crowds. And I hate shopping. And yet here I was, over the weekend in New York’s Chinatown with my wife, Marti (a professional bargain hunter and adventurer). She was in search of all things Prada and Louis Vuitton. I had a hankering for a real fake Rolex. And a customer experience was born.
To find our prey, we needed to look beyond the items displayed on the walls and in the glass cases. After wandering about and getting my bearings, I strolled up to an Asian gentleman who was finishing a spirited negotiation with a prospect about a very splashy, bejeweled watch: “for you I’ll cut it to $50…” but the sucker was gone. Enter me. “Do you have Rolex?” I asked innocently. The man almost disappeared, reaching deep into a nearby cabinet, and pulled out three different models. They started at $120, he said, and began extolling the virtues of each. I started to walk away, and he grabbed my sleeve. We talked more, and the negotiations ended with two of the watches for $30 each. (On the advice of legal counsel - my own - I’ll leave it to your imagination on whether I consummated the purchase.)
This was not a textbook customer experience: the merchandise was hard to locate (it was, chances are, also a knock-off, but who’s to say?), no warranty, and there’s no way to know what kind of deal you’re really getting. But, on the other hand, there was real sport to it, the seller was flexible, and it was different. Sometimes different is bad, and sometimes different is why people buy, or stay.
Oh, and Marti totally scored on the designer handbags.
Do the Right Thing?
Author: Bill Cusick
August 10, 2004
When is selling a customer another product a benefit, and when is it just self serving - and ultimately a long-term problem? Consider this Fast Company article describing how Capital One approaches serving its customers who call in:
A woman from Miami, who has called to find out if she has to pay her $39 annual fee every year, cheerfully signs up to pay $59.95 a year for Privacy Guard, a service that helps you check your credit report. “That’s called a sale!” says Brannon. “That’s called fattening your paycheck. Give me more calls!”
Carolyn from Illinois, whose credit history has won her a Visa with a $200 limit and a $59 annual fee, calls to find out how to get a cash advance. After answering that question, Brannon warns Carolyn that her Visa has less than $100 of credit available. Then she offers Privacy Guard to Carolyn. The cost: $59.95. “If you want to get your credit report, this is the way to do it,” Brannon says. “This is what you need.” (Actually, if your Visa has a $200 limit and a $59 annual fee, you don’t really need a credit report.) Says Carolyn: “Yes, I would like to try that.”
I don’t know about you, but to me these don’t seem like customer advocates. Capital One has the right idea in terms of exploiting its tremendous database, but maybe the goal should be reexamined.
Bank on Personal Service
Author: Bill Cusick
August 2, 2004
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I used to get incredibly frustrated with my old bank, which I won’t name…ok, it was Fifth Third Bank. It seemed that every other week, we were dealing with some problem: they weren’t letting the paycheck clear because it was a slightly different amount from the last check, they seemed to be on the hunt for service charges, their employees were defensive, confusing, or worse when we sought out information. Even closing the account took several personal visits and more service charges. In short: we grew to hate the institution.
Here’s a bank, on the other hand, that eschews a “systems approach” for personal interaction and reassurance - with every one of their 50,000 customers. The September issue of Inc. Magazine spotlights Burke and Herbert, the oldest bank in Virginia, which not only refuses to embrace the high-volume, consolidation mantra of the banking industry, but goes against the grain by offering no-interest checking accounts, promoting family members (husband/wife, mother/daughter) to manage the bank branches, and pushing most loan decisions down to the branch level.
The results are impressive: an efficiency ratio (the percentage of revenues soaked up by expenses, with lower being better) of 43.3% versus the industry average of 56.4%. They ranked highest of Washington, D.C. area banks in customer satisfaction, and are also considered one of the 10 safest banks in the country, as well as one of the 10 most profitable.
And ultimately, what is their secret? They treat their individual customers like individual customers, with respect and caring and flexibility to their needs. Rocket science? I don’t think so.
