Question: Before the Web provided a channel for customer service, If you had a problem with making phone calls on your home telephone how would you reach the phone company to tell them you had a problem? I found myself asking that question after an experience I had this week when a transfer from my wife's BofA account never made it to my other bank account. Since it was after hours, we logged into her account to see the status of the transfer (why money transfers take days to complete is the subject of another blog). In our attempt to lookup this transfer status, the message on her screen indicated that the transfer function had been locked and presented a link to contact customer service. Clicking the link to customer service took us to a page of FAQs and other info that still did not answer our question. Luckily, during this "search and rescue" operation a pop-up window appeared offering us to chat instantly. I thought to myself, +1 for BofA, maybe we could resolve this issue without having to find time during the busy workday to make this support call.
And so the horror began. After passing several security checks, I was introduced to a person who would help solve my problem. Side note: why is it when using these chat systems, you see the message "person typing message" for almost 2 minutes only to see a 5 word sentence come back. I described my problem to this person, only for them to come back minutes later with a message that essentially said that I could not get online support for online banking issues. Well, I almost fell out of my chair.
Of all the businesses that I have to call because I can't get things resolved online, banks have to be at the top of the list. I completely understand that the security measures and complexity of ensuring your money will always be there is mind numbing; but banks should just be more upfront on what really can and can't be done online. On the error page that indicated my account was locked; they should have just said, "Look, call this number, because something really bad has happened and it can't be resolved online." I look forward to the day, when everything can be resolved online, but this probably won't happen in my lifetime. So at some point next week I'll squeeze a minute in between meetings to call BofA so that a live person can look into another computer system to tell me what has happened. During that support call I will hear something about it just taking a minute, because their computers are running really slow that day.
Good customer service shouldn't be a surprise and Bank of America was so close to making me a big fan.
I would be willing to give up all computers if every company had 24x7 live phone support. My schedule doesn't allow for many calls/web transactions during the day so I am the guy (yes, that guy) doing web transactions 3am in the morning. Unfortunately, almost every issue that needs a live person to resolve can't be done at those hours in the morning. We have moved into an always on world that doesn't include always on support - the Web tries to bridge this support gap, but it truly is a mask when it comes to many issues.
My web host provider is an example of a company that gets it right. I submit trouble tickets through their online ticketing system which may be only 2-3 times per year. But when I do, no matter what time of day, usually within 3 hours a real person is emailing me back (not an auto-response). For all I know, it could be some guy with a Wi-Fi connection off the coast of Australia answering my support request, but it doesn't matter, from my perspective I have a great SLA, 24x7. 9 out of 10 times my problem is always resolved within 1-2 email exchanges and I am done.
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