CUSTOMER SERVICE: BE HAPPY TO HELP


This is a follow up to my earlier post (http://bit.ly/ld68wW) about my experience with the ING Bank.
The last time there was a person who was mistakenly ‘authorized’ for my mother’s account. So, we had to send in a form to have that person removed.

Yesterday I did go to the bank and I was in for a big surprise....... I was no longer authorized myself. Mistakenly they had removed me as well!
The person at this local branche had no explanation for this. The only suggestion was to restart up the whole authorization process from the beginning. Needless to say that I also couldn’t perform the transaction that I was supposed to do.

This is really an incredible experience. They can add and remove people who are authorized to your account, without your consent! I do think that trust is a very important cornerstone of the financial system. I told them that my trust was damaged and they totally understood. But they said that they could do nothing about it.

The message of empowering your employees to help customers wasn’t being heard in the ING HQ. Also there were no quality processes in place to check the actions.

I did ask whether I could use social media to complain about this, but the answer was ‘no’. I did find out that there was only one account (@ING_news) which they only use to broadcast their news. Clearly they had decided not to use social media to listen to customers.
Then I said that I wanted to file a formal complaint. The only way to do this was via the system, which the CSR used. So, he had to type in the complaint.

I would say that there is a structural disrespect for customers as well as for their own employees. Their employees were totally not empowered to satisfy customers or to help solve any issues. Everything is centralized and set up in a ‘broadcast’ only mode. ‘If we make it difficult to complain, customers will not complain.’ It looks like they have missed the profound market shift and that they are still living in the Stone Age. That attitude makes it very difficult to survive.

The only companies who will thrive are companies who are happy to help customers and who empower their employees to act accordingly.

Are you convinced that only happy employees can create happy customers?



GROW YOUR PEOPLE, GROW YOUR BUSINESS!

www.theproperway.com

Featured in Alltop

Popular posts from this blog

10 most common leadership shortcomings and how to resolve them

After scrutinizing 360-degree feedback data on over 11,000 leaders and evaluating the 10% considered the least effective, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman found the 10 most common leadership shortcomings . These are ranked according to the size of the difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders' scores; successful and failed leaders differed most significantly in their energy and enthusiasm.  Please find the listing below as well my suggestions on how to change them.   1.     Lack of energy and enthusiasm If you do your job just because you have to, if it feels like it is something you should do (rather than would like to do), then it drains your energy. If you are a leader mainly because you are attracted to the status, the power and the money, then you will lack the necessary enthusiasm. Your heart is not connected, so it just is an economic and rational activity. This activity is not fuelled by your enthusiasm. If you do work, which you love to do, if you foll
Read more

Do you feel like you’re running around in a straitjacket?

Image
  If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.  ~ Abraham Maslow Do you feel like you’re running around in a straitjacket? Or swimming in ice hockey gear? You probably think this sounds ridiculous. Still, that is what we all do, most of the time. We let beliefs limit us.  We believe that we are not good enough. We believe that we cannot change or grow. We believe everything that mass-media tells us. Most of the time, fear is driving our behavior . And fear definitely makes us risk-averse. When I ask people whether they are using their full potential, they look at me in a sad way. They immediately feel the pain of not living up to their own capabilities. Many people are suffering because they feel not seen and not good enough. As a consequence, they lack self-confidence and experience stress, burnout, depression or worse.  Why is this the case?  It is crucial to understand that parents, teach
Read more

AMAZON’S Backlog in Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

Image
Last week I did read an article in TechCrunch that Amazon now accepts American Express membership rewards points for purchases on Amazon.com. Well this is good news, I thought, as I have quite some points to use. So, I logged into the specific page on Amazon to link both accounts. I just had to fill in a few details regarding my American Express account and then hit the last button ‘Link rewards account’. But........ nothing happened, I expected a confirmation page which tells me that everything is linked now, but no reaction at all. I could only see that my cursor was back at the place where I first provided my details. So, I tried again and again, but every time no result. Pff, this was frustrating. While I was so happy with the possibility of buying books from my points. What to do next? I had to get in touch with customer service. This is where we get in an area where there is a huge opportunity for improvement. It is very difficult to find a way to email/contact customer serv
Read more