Stupid customer service tricks

Lest you think all I do is snark about my employer (and I don't; I'm more than willing to snark about anyone's employer albeit sometimes with the snarkee being anonymous), allow me to opine on two separate customer service experiences I've had recently, both automated and both telephonic.

Now I'm not usually a huge fan of automated customer service, not because I'm a technophobe, but because they're so rarely done well. I particularly hate voice mail trees. Oh sure they're sold internally as a customer service, "so that consumers are directed to the correct department", but we all know that they are usually extremely frustrating. The thing that galls me the most is the widely held opinion inside firms that everybody else's voice mail tree is voice mail hell, but ours is OK. If you don't like them when you call your phone company, why do you inflict the same thing on your customers?

OK, scenario one - the good one (change of pace!!) is CIGNA's Tel-drug prescription ordering system. Obviously someone took the time to actually use this before installing because it has just the right little touches and ease-of-use to be really good. Everything is logically explained, prompts make sense and actions are acknowledged. Additionally they add touches like "if you want to order another refill, press 1, if not, press 9"; normally it'd be press 1 for yes or 2 for no, but asking you to press 9 prevents you from accidentally pressing the wrong key. I know you're thinking "big deal", but when it come to things like automated customer service if you want people to use it and not feel abused by it, you really have to pay attention to the details.

Which brings us to scenario two - the bad one. Here I'll name names, Fidelity Investments, because I didn't ask to open an account there, my kid's 529 plans were moved there by the State of California. Never having done business with Fidelity before, I had a pretty good impression of them. Now, not so much.

First, I have two separate accounts for two separate children. Fidelity makes me activate each account before I can do anything. OK. I go through the 5 pages of information for the first one and the system blows up. Fine, glitches happen. Do it again - same result. I wait until the next day to try again and this time it works. Probably overloaded from everyone whose plan moved. I'm ready to start using my accounts - wait what's this? Only one is activated? Hmm. OK, I'll go through the steps again because surely all the information I filled out before (address, employer, etc) will be pre-filled, right? Wrong. Look, if I wasn't the same person that filled out the info before, why is this my account?

And I haven't got the telephony part yet. The on-line system doesn't let me do something fairly minor but asks me to call their 800 customer service line. You know the drill - "Please say or enter your social security number", cool- voice recognition! so after the pause I start to speak. She's not done speaking yet: "If you are using a customer identification number instead, you can enter that". Naturally since she and I are speaking at the same time my SS# isn't recognized. Now who inserts a pause long enough between those two phrases that the listener is faked out? So I do it again, correctly, after the second pause and after going through the tree and deciding that none of those options will fix my issue, they finally connect me to a rep. Who asks my account number.

Oh, and just one more - this one is short (I know I said two, sue me). I have about three or four different Earthlink accounts for different websites and such. Every once in a while they send an e-mail telling me account # such and such has a credit card expiring, please log on and fix it. Here's the thing - when you log on to Earthlink's My Account page there's nowhere to enter the account number - it asks for your e-mail address. Well my e-mail address points to only one of the accounts and there's no way to change that. Why bother to tell you to fix this account number on-line if you can't access it by account number?

Yes, automated systems can save money, but if you want customers to actually use them, rather than automatically hitting "0", you have spend some time to make them user-friendly, a greatly overused phrase but greatly underutilized action.