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I'm a 32-year old Bronx livin' sarcastic bastard. If you cross me, I'll shred you. I have no problems sharing my opinion whether you want to hear it or not, so get used to it. There's a lot of it going on here. Hang around if you'd like and comment if you dare.
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What Customer Service Really Means

Over the past two weeks, it would seem the focus of insignificant thoughts has been AOL. AOL this. AOL that. The reality is that the customer service I received was abhorrent and if I hadn’t documented it, you could bet your ass that AOL would be denying up down left right and center that it had even happened.

Today, however, I want to change tones a bit. I would like to talk about customer care in the opposite sense; the really good sense. Why? Because when a company does something right, they deserve to be praised and I realized when doing the marathon of media appearances, I had totally forgotten a few years ago to even write about this story, proving that it’s always easier to focus on the bad than the good.

Two years (give or take) ago, I signed up for an account with Audible. I figured audio books would be great either while driving or while on the train because sometimes it’s just too crowded for a paper book. I grabbed the credit card, signed up, and for the first two months, I used it. A lot. It was kinda fun grabbing audio books at will.

Then I just got bored with it. The concept. The site. The amount of content. Whatever it was, I stopped using it altogether, but I was just too lazy to cancel. Finally, after three months of complete inactivity, I had the time to call in and cancel. The conversation started out very much like the one with John at AOL.

First, the rep asked for my name, credit card digits, and username. Then he asked why I was cancelling. “Just not worth the money for me; I really don’t find myself wanting a whole lot of the content, etc.”

“Not a problem,” he replies, and starts reading account information back to me, including the astonishing (to him) fact that I hadn’t used my account in any capacity in three months. “Mr. Ferrari, let me tell you what I’m going to do.”

My brain was already starting to rot at the mere thought of a sales pitch. All I wanted to do was cancel the damned account.

“As of right now, your automatic billing has been disabled, and you won’t get billed anymore.”

Relief. That, however, was not the end of it.

He continued, “Since you haven’t used your account in 3 months, and you’ve already paid for those, we’re going to extend your membership, free of charge, an additional 3 months to make up for it. If, at the end of 3 months you choose to keep the service, simply re-enter your credit card information and your account will be re-activated. If not, just let the 3 months run out and you’ll never be billed again.”

I was stunned. It was the simplest deal, and yet it was so generous of them I couldn’t believe it.

“Thanks!” I said. I really knew I wasn’t going to use the account at all for the next three months, but the fact that they were willing to make up for me paying for a service I wasn’t satisfied with gave me a certain warm fuzzy feeling that’s hard to describe.

Fast forward to last year. Opie and Anthony start posting their shows on Audible.com. Knowing the positive nature of their business and the good experience I had already had with them, I signed up again without thinking twice. It was a no-brainer for me and I’ve been a happy subscriber ever since.

There’s a lesson here that AOL could take away. For Audible, it wasn’t just about not losing me as a customer; they realized correctly that the act of losing me had already happened. Instead, they made me comfortable with the choice and made me comfortable enough with them to come back in a year or so. They weren’t thinking short-term loss, they were thinking of keeping me happy so that one day I might return, and I did.

AOL could learn a lot from Audible.com, a much smaller company with a much smarter retention department. By honoring my request quickly and amicably, they made a customer for life.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Viewing 39 Comments

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    • v
    Nice to see you've had good customer service experiences. I often dread calling customer service. Sometimes the calls end well, others don't. Especially that time I called a credit card company and was redirected to a worker whose accent was so bad I couldn't understand what he said, and I wound up signing up for a program that I have yet to get the info for. He just wouldn't leave me alone.
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    • v
    Hear hear. I've been signing up with a lot of mainstream radio talk shows in the past few months in order to download their podcasts. Nothing beats being able to cancel my account online as I go through them. While they do usually include an open comment box for me to leave a parting suggestion, it's really one-click, and goodbye. I notice that between two of my subscriptions it's the same company handling the online billing. Because it's been fair and straightforward, I didn't cringe signing up with the second show. I had already signed up once and canceled, so did again without anxiety.

    This is going to sound like more AOL bashing but part of the problem is that at some level I don't think AOL ever really believed a large part of its success was ever due to providing a technical service. They saw themselves as marketers and played every mind game in the book to buy and keep subscribers. What they were selling, the online access and experience, isn't what made them huge - that was secondary. I really think they believe that, and in the end, that became the working reality. When you have to be shady to keep your base, it's all over.

    By the way, one of the shows I'm listening to is Glen Beck (I'm a leftist but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy his talent and the show's comedy). Today I made a point to download the MP3 of his comments on that show he made last week about your story. I'd had heard he did so someplace. It was incredible! They went back and forth and took a flurry of callers in hour 3. Vince, let me know if you heard it or not.

    Dave
    • ^
    • v
    I really get sick and tired of people who say that customer service reps like "John" was scapegoated and that the corporate heads are the ones to blame.

    As far as I'm concerned, "John" was responsible for his own actions. No one made him give you a hard time. He chose to give you a hard time just to promote himself with his employer. John deserved to be fired and I hope he stays on the unemployment line for a long time to come.

    Customer service in general has become lousy in recent years and customer service reps (not their supervisors) are to blame.
    • ^
    • v
    haha, abhorrent. You made it that way. You are such a phony. How do you live with yourself?
    • ^
    • v
    I will never forget when I called to cancell my family's account with AOL after my dad passed away very suddenly. This was about six months after the death. AOL said because the account was in his name they needed to talk to him to cancel it. We explained how difficult that may be considering the circumstance and they then had the nerve to tell my family they will not cancel it with out proper identification of the death such as a death certificate. They then even said that they billed my father for the six months each month. We had moved and never recieved these so we told them if they get the money from him to call us ASAP so we can witness a miracle. Even with all the information concerning the security provided with them they refused to cancel it.
    • ^
    • v
    I saw this news bit this morning, it made me laugh and say "yeah" all at once. I had the same thing happen to me last year, only the rep and I had difficulty communicating with each other to a certain extent because she had a think accent from another country, and apparently a northern NY accent is very hard for them to understand too (right!). I was annoyed by the hassle of cancelling the account itself, but even more annoyed at the time that this company's name is AMERICA online!! I'm so very tired of calling into a place that is american based and getting this especially when I asked to speak to an american speaking rep. I finally did get the account cancelled, it took me about 20 minutes also! Go figure!
    • ^
    • v
    Vinnie, I have had good and bad customer service experiences. The bad? MCI. I've had them twice now and both times I had to turn it off it's been pure hell. Both times after I cancelled, I still received bills from them for service I no longer have. This most recent time was this past March when Gary and I switched to Vonage (which we are happy with) so I called MCI and told them I didn't need their service anymore. Here it is, the end of June, and they just sent me a bill for $65 charging me for the last three months. I have the cancellation confirmation number and it still hasn't made a difference. They still want their money....

    Good experience? DirectTV and Verizon Wireless. I've had Verizon Wireless for over four years now and will never switch cellphone companies. They have treated us totally great over the years. Every time we have to call (which is extremely rare), we have been treated with great respect. DirectTV is the same. We've had them for over two years now and I'll never go back to a cable company again. Once we ordered PPV and sat down to watch the movie. Our electricity went off due to a storm. (We have some serious storms down here and so far have only lost signal once. This time it was the entire house that lost power, not the dish losing signal.) We called DirectTV to explain the situation to them and they gave us another viewing of the PPV movie free of charge! It was so easy!

    Because of the awsome way we have been treated by those two companies, we will continue to have use their services. As for MCI - we will never sign up with them again, ever.
    • ^
    • v
    Hey Vincent, Great that you did that! Kudos to you! I always record my calls to cancel something that has a chance to re-bill. Just for my own safety net. You seem like a very inteligent operson so what I can not figure out is why you had aol in the first place. aol is like the internet with training wheels or for 12 year olds learning the internet. Anyway keep up the great work!
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    • v
    I too think John was scapegoated, and probably not even fired. I'd been with AOL since the early 90s. Had some horrible tech support experiences with them, in which their "fixes" were just wrong, and it too me 3 hours to find someone who could fix the problem. Meanwhile, they'd never stay on the line while I saw if the fixes worked, and each time I called back, I had to wade through the automatic phone stuff and explain my problem and everything other techs had said and done.

    You'd think they'd at least be able to read my call record and let me save my breath.

    I too got a lot of crap when I tried to cancel my account (but I'd read all about it on the web, as AOL has a long history of doing this to people. It's not just John. They are trained to make it as difficult as possible for people to cancel).

    Now here's the thing. AOL charges at the beginning of each month BEFORE usage for that month. I cancelled my account mid-month (after telling the person I was talking to that I was going to join a class action suit if they didn't cancel my account). Then I got a bill from AOL stating that I owed them more money. I'd cancelled the card I was using on the AOL account, so they couldn't automatically withdraw the funds.

    They started calling me constantly demanding more money, and each time they called, I started telling them they were being recorded. They immediately hang up when I say that. Then they sent me a collection letter. I wrote them back detailing how much time I wasted trying fixes that didn't work, etc., and explained that I'm not paying a cancellation fee, nor am I paying an extra month, and because of my wasted time in dealing with them, I consider they owe ME money. Can you believe they are still calling me? Talk about harrassment.

    Really a dispicable company. They should be fined for putting customers through such aggravation and wasting our time.

    I'm so glad you got news coverage of this. And thank you for letting me vent.

    Have a gorgeous day.
    • ^
    • v
    YOU GO, VINCENT!
    I had minimal fuss when I cancelled AOHell. Sorry to see you had problems, but damn, that was funny!
    Oh, and IS your dad home?
    • ^
    • v
    I had a very similar experience when trying to cancel my Netscape ISP account. It was sort of a combination of your favorable experience with Audible and your nightmare with AOL. It did take me two long, annoying calls and a followup verification call to finally cancel my account with Netscape, but on the other hand they gave me one more month "free" before finally closing the account.
    Ironically, Netscape and AOL have merged so I have a feeling that in the future when it comes to cancelling accounts, Netscape will be more and more like AOL (in fact, my experience leads me to believe it already is).
    I sure like Jeanne Moos' offbeat reports on CNN. :D
    • ^
    • v
    Customer service has gone to you know where I'd say in the last decade. I've worked in customer service in a grocery store, and part of my job now working in a community college is customer service (I work in the Registrar's Office). It is NOTHING to be polite and empathetic towards a customer. You would be surprised at how appreciated a "How are you today" or "Thank you" is to some people. I agree with someone else that the customer service supervisors are not doing enough to ensure that the employees in their charge are giving concise, friendly service. More training needs to be done to make sure that customers feel like they are important and valued members of a business. It's not rocket science!
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    • v
    How ridiculous. I had posted in one of your earlier threads thinking great things of you and now reading your comments regarding audible has me realize that you are just as much after the mighty dollar as AOL is. I'm sure NO MONEY exchanged hands between you and audible for you to post your comments and links to their website. BAH! Just when you think the little guy is trying to stick it to the man, he proves he's just trying to get a cut as well.
    • ^
    • v
    Oh yeah sure. This is making me so rich. In fact, at night, when I sit here to write this stuff, I do it while sitting on bags of mon...

    wait...

    UMPH...

    Sorry... Got a nickel stuck in my ass.
    • ^
    • v
    I am so relieved that someone else had such a hard time cancelling their AOL account. I hadn't used my account in months and they still could not understand why I wanted to cancel my account. . . . after telling them over and over again they FINALLY cancelled my account. I will never ever deal with AOL again. :x
    • ^
    • v
    Vinny said: "They weren’t thinking short-term loss, they were thinking of keeping me happy so that one day I might return, and I did."

    You nailed it and I agree 100%. This is exactly how customer service should be done. Bullying and harassing a customer into keeping an account they don't want is not good or smart business.

    AOL's aggressive tactics do nothing to regain a lost customer at a future time. They lost a customer forever....and earned a million dollars' worth of bad publicity in the interim. Hope they thought it was worth it.

    Kudos to Audible for excellent customer service.
    • ^
    • v
    Sorry… Got a nickel stuck in my ass.

    like my old friend used to say: its a bad luck to have a nickel stuck in your ass ;)
    • ^
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    Kari,I have to ask this because I can't believe the utter stupidity of your comment. Where on earth do you get the idea that Vinny took money for his comments on Audible? If you are serious in making such an accusation, then you obviously DON'T know Vinny well at all.

    Either that or you're a complete moron.
    • ^
    • v
    Apparently some people aren't happy unless you're in a bad mood and bitching about stuff.