A couple of years ago, along with millions of other frustrated bank customers, I ditched my bank and moved to a credit union. I've been pretty happy with them up 'til I started setting up a trip to England which we intend to take next summer. At that point I bumped into the most provincial, 19th century process I've come across in a long time. Tucson Federal Credit Union does not appear to recognize the concept of international finance. Although I finally wrestled my transaction through using pure brute strength, it left me in need of providing feedback to the credit union. 

In keeping with my promise to blog on my ongoing customer service experiences, I give you the following missive which is being snail-mailed because...well...read the letter:

Tucson Federal Credit Union

Attn: Manager, Credit Card Fraud Dept.

PO Box 42435

Tucson, AZ 85733-2435

Dear Fraud Manager,

Your process is sadly in need of improvement.  In October I discovered, through a painful process of having transactions declined, the need to get pre-approval for a transaction outside the U.S.  Consequently, in anticipation of the need to pay for activities for an upcoming vacation in England next summer, I went into my local branch and had my card opened up for a $2,500 transaction to take place today (Friday December 12). 

•        Because of the time difference I called my English merchant at 6am this morning and gave them my credit card information (1^st contact).  I waited about an hour and checked my account online, and the available credit had not declined.
•         I called your contact center (1^st contact) and discovered that the merchant “fat-fingered” the expiration date with a “6” instead of a “5”, so the transaction was declined, and the ability to make the English transaction was terminated due to this failure. The agent with whom I spoke contacted your credit card folks, verified that this was not a fraudulent transaction and reopened the window to make the transaction. 
•          I called the merchant in England (2^nd contact)…credit card declined. 
•          Back to the call center (2^nd contact) to be told that it takes a little time to reopen the window for approval, but it should now be open.  Thanks – if I had known that on my first contact with your agent, I could have waited and saved my third call of the morning to England.
•          Once again I call England (3^rd contact). Tell them I will wait on hold while they process the information one more time.  Transaction clears…hooray!!

And so we’re done.  But wait.  I get home from running errands to be handed a phone message that I got an automated fraud message for the credit card. 

•          I call the fraud number and go through an automated process verifying my identification and then it starts asking me about transactions I made. 
•          It asks me did I make a transaction for $2471.xx?  Press one if you did. I press one. 
•          Then it asks did I make a transaction for $2471.xx?  Now I’m a little concerned – did this transaction process twice? But I press one.
•         Then it asks did I make a transaction for $2471.xx?  Now I’m really concerned – has this thing been processing every time we try and nobody knows? What the heck?  But if I say no, I may have to start the entire transaction process all over again, so I press one, and the automated system says: “Thank you. The hold on your account has now been lifted and you may continue using your card.” 

Wait a minute! Hold on the account?  Didn’t I go through multiple blankity-blank phone calls (not to mention the personal appearance with the original customer service rep at my branch that I thought would take care of the whole shootin’ match) to pre-approve and satisfy the fraud monster? Plus, at this point I don’t know what’s been processed, how many transactions – now I’m peeved.  So….

•          I call your call center (3rd contact). Your agent tells me that the fraud alert was triggered because of the size of the transaction, and this automatically put a hold on the account.  That being the case, help me understand why I went through an extremely long and annoying process to get this transaction set up, which included providing the amount of the transaction to you, so that there would not be any issues.

This activity has now cost me several hours of my time including (but not limited to), a personal visit to my local branch, 3 calls to England, 3 to your contact center, and my temper which I have lost completely.  TCFU and I appear to be complete idiots, and have no doubt perpetuated the ongoing mythology about provincial Americans and the wild, wild, west that is already pernicious across Europe.

At this point I have no faith in my ability to travel outside the US with this card. I am now actively looking for a Visa card that understands what century we are in, and is a bit more capable of managing my international travel without me spending the majority of my vacation on the phone with you trying to explain various transactions. Once I have another card – explain to me why I might want to keep yours.

And, oh by the way, what kind of an experience am I going to have with my TFCU debit card when I try and get cash in England or on the continent?  I moved to TFCU because I really don’t want to do business with banks, and I flat refuse to walk in the door of a money-center giant. But if this is the best I can expect in terms of lining up with my lifestyle, perhaps I need to start shopping for a local bank that can handle an occasional international sortie without locking down my financial life.

Yours in extreme frustration,

Stephanie Bader

Speak up - you never know what will happen

Having expanded this blog beyond the original specific economy of politics focus into the realm of why I (and perhaps you as well) might start or stop spending with a particular entity (thereby voting with your wallet), today I share a success story.  

I purchased tickets online recently (to a UofA Mount Lemmon SkyCenter evening - if you are in Tucson and haven't done this, run right out and sign up), and the transaction ran through a third party ticket sale application called Tix. I purchased 3 tickets, but when I went to print them I couldn't find a way to eliminate a page in between each one that printed only the Tix logo, and my 3 page print job therefore took 6 pages. Needless to say I found this annoying, and in the spirit of vocal activism decided to let Tix know about my experience.  I used their "contact us" link and sent them the following kind, gentle note:

Subject: Your print process is environmentally unfriendly and truly annoying

Dear Tix web people,

I purchased 3 tickets to an event today and could not find any way to print them in under 6 pages because you set up your system to print your logo all by itself on a separate page after each ticket.  So because you find your logo so enchanting that you need it not just on the header of the ticket page but also on a separate page in isolated splendor for each ticket, you wasted my paper, my toner (thereby also using twice the environmental resources necessary), and my patience.

If my next Tix experience still has the same annoying features, I will start sending notes to the underlying ticket issuers asking that they change to some other ticketing website and explaining why yours is nasty.

Thank you for your attention to the environment…and me.

Stephanie Bader

A week later I received the following reply:

Dear Stephanie Bader,

First of all, thank you for taking your time to bring this matter to our attention.  We do apologize for the inconvenience and wasting of resources.  Please do know, that Tix is very concerned about the environment.  We never intended for our logo to print on a separate page (regardless of how splendid it may be!) and that the extra page was due to a formatting issue.  This has now been corrected.

Thank you once again for your feedback.  Please let us know if you need any further assistance.

Tix Customer Service

The response was a satisfying positive for me on several levels. The first and most important being that by speaking up and pointing out a previously unidentified "undocumented feature" (Intuit in-joke) in the Tix printing process, I've struck a small blow for resource conservation. Second, all Tix customers going forward will have an improved experience. Third, in a world where the individual customer is all too often a speck of fly excrement on the map of corporate priorities - too small to even notice - this company took the time to read my complaint, understand the cause, fix it, and let me know - with an injection of humor included.

I am now a big fan of Tix. I don't know how I can promote their business, but I can publicize their good service. And should anyone in one of my entrepreneurship classes be setting up a business requiring ticketing, I will be sure to let them know about my positive opinion of Tix.

So take the time to speak up. You never know what will happen.  

Way to go Healthnet

I said I would post another blog entry if I got a response from Healthnet, and I did. I first got a form letter stating that my issue was in the hands of the "grievance process" which normally addresses coverage issues, and I figured that would be the end of it. I was prepared to be totally dissatisfied. But I'm not.

Yesterday I received a two-page letter in response.  I won't post it in its entirety  (it was a snail-mail response and I'm too damned lazy to re-enter or scan and manipulate), but they did a good job of reiterating each of the issues I raised and letting me what they are doing to address each one (i.e. feedback to the training dept. about rep's service skills, feedback to IVR group about the sub-optimal way they are using their technology and how they could improve, etc.). Whether or not their processes actually change is an open question, but at least I know that they care enough about me as a customer to address my issues individually and specifically. Way to go Healthnet.

Customer Support - some do...some don't

When I looked at the date of my last entry I was shocked at how long it's been since I posted to the blog. But I can't allow a piss-poor support experience to go unremarked, so I'm publishing the letter I have just sent to Health Net regarding my recent customer service experience, and I thought that since so many of my readers are in the support biz, you'd be interested in seeing what I had to say to the VP.  Should I receive a reply, I will post it here as well.  So here's the missive:

Ms. Juanell Hefner

Sr. VP of Customer & Technology Services

Health Net, Inc.

21650 Oxnard Street

Woodland Hills, CA 91367

Dear Ms. Hefner,

Yesterday I had the misfortune to call your contact center because I received an email indicating that your accounting department seems to have misplaced the payment made through my Health Net web portal for my April premium. The entire experience was a classic example of poor customer processes and poor service on any number of levels.  Having been director of customer support for a large, popular software offering, I am well aware of the challenges of providing phone support. I am also well aware of how policies, processes and people can either support or undermine your relationship with your customers, and yours are frankly awful. Specifically:

·         I was on hold for over 90 minutes. I head the same segment of a Mozart piano concerto several dozen times, interrupted at frequent intervals by a recording that assured me that “We know your time is valuable...” and “…we will be with you shortly.”

o   Even before I retired in 2009, IVR technology had wide-spread, affordable capabilities of informing customers how long the wait time is…to within a couple of minutes. Implementing this feature would have allowed me to make a sane choice to call back at another time.

o   I don’t know what your operational definition of “shortly” is, but 90 minutes is completely outside mine. And if you really think my time is valuable, may I please bill Health Net  at my current hourly consulting rate for my hold time?

o   Unless April 11 is your peak day of the year and you are purposely understaffing to  a specific volume peak, you really need to examine the system you are using to align staffing with arrival patterns. A 90 minute hold time in the middle of a normal month would have had my Sr. Operations Manager’s job on the line.

·         When I finally reached an agent…

o   First she did not apologize for the wait, although it was one of the first things I mentioned to her, and continued to mention throughout our conversation hoping for an acknowledgement and an apology. That’s basic customer service and it’s taught in agent training …or not (obviously).

o   Next I explained my issue and she tried to tell me that the fault was with my bank for failure to forward the payment I made through my bank’s website, and it would likely just take more time.  I explained to her a second time that I did not make the payment through the bank’s website but through Health Net’s, and frankly 10 business days should be more than adequate time to post a payment made with either method. She questioned my payment method yet again, at which point I logged into my bank account and read her the line showing an electronic funds transfer to Health Net on March 26, and into my Health Net account and read her the screen saying that I had made a payment on March 25.  She asked me for a confirmation number. But guess what?  The Health Net screen had no confirmation number on it, and no ability to link to any more detail.  These days every two-bit web interface I purchase from can provide a confirmation number and self-service tracking. As a technology executive you should be ashamed of a system so inadequate that customer activity disappears into the ether. You could save yourself a bunch of inbound phone volume by adding that feature.

o    When the agent finally understood the issue, her solution was to send an e-mail to “accounting” asking them to research the problem.  She informed me that if they could not find out what happened to my payment they would contact me, otherwise they would just reply to her letting her know that the issue was resolved. I requested that she then contact me either via phone or email to let me know that the issue had been resolved.  She told me she was unable to do either of those things, and recommended that I…wait for it…call back next week to find out whether you had found my payment.  Really?  Empower your agents to do so little that their only option is to suggest that I contribute to your inbound call volume issues? C’mon….

·         And then, of course there is the basic underlying issue – that your accounting system interface with your customer portal system is so crappity-dappity that you can lose an electronic funds transfer that was initiated through your own system. What’s up with that, anyway?

I purchased my insurance through the ACA website, and your offering, although it was obviously good enough to be my choice at the time, is now surfacing some basic flaws. I would be most interested to hear whether or not your organization cares enough about customers to keep them once you get them, as unless this experience is a total aberration I’ll be shopping for an alternative next year when open enrollment comes around.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Bader