About 25 years ago, we lived in North Carolina and dealt with NCNB as our bank. At the time, they had a policy of providing customers with a $5 credit anytime something went wrong. Error on your statement? Five bucks. More than 5 minute wait in line or on the phone? Five bucks.
Now, banks aren’t in business to give away money, so why did NCNB do this?
First off, they wanted to back their service guarantee up with something real. Five dollars bought a whole lot more in 1986 than it does today, so it was a nice goodwill gesture. But more importantly, the bank’s accounting made sure that the department responsible for the error got charged for the error. Financial accountability for the payment helped align priorities for the people responsible for fixing things.
I received a call looking to renew my subscription to a service that I thought I renewed in mid-November. The agent said that they had no record of my November order and told me I would need to call customer care – she had no way to transfer the call.
I hate being told what I “need” to do. I need better service. I don’t need to call; I don’t want to call.
But I called customer care anyway and was told not to worry; everything is set for the next two years.
So now, I wasted my time on two calls: a call that shouldn’t have been made to me; and, a call that I shouldn’t have had to make. Following the NCNB model, I suggested that they add a year to my service and charge the subscription extension to the appropriate department.
Clearly, someone decided that it wasn’t worth it for IT to update the lists for the call centre. If the business case only looks at a few minutes of call centre time, maybe that is true; the customer impact wasn’t being included.
How do you value your customers’ time?