Jun 26 2006
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.
Technorati Tags: audible.com, audible, customer service, customer care, retention
June 26th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
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.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Hurray for Audible!!
Companies where I have experienced excellent service — and where if I should “cancel” (or whatever would be the equivalent) there is a likelihood I’ll come back in the future, and, where, in the meantime, I’ll be enthusiastically referring friends and family:
Enterprise Rental Car
Amica Insurance
Trader Joe’s
Southwest Airlines
Midwest Airlines
(And I’ve found American Airlines to also be reasonably good.)
…and a number of smaller businesses and some sole proprietorships that are less well known (including a mom-and-pop ISP).
(While I know you want to keep things positive, for this topic, but my Hall of Shame — for lousy customer service — would include: AOL, Best Buy, Huntington Banks, SBC (for pushing spyware with their DSL), AT&T calling cards (for their deceptive fee structure), Albertson’s, Days Inn, Circuit City, and Network Solutions. Did I mention Best Buy? Cookie-demanding Best Buy. Best Buy and AOL seem to share that short-term thinking, screw the customer, anti-social mindset.)
(And re Disneyland: Pleasant employees, fun experience, but their food prices are criminal — highway robbery of a completely captive market. There should be a law against such abuse of consumers. The worst job in Disneyland is the cashier at the pizza place. The customers hate you because they are duly appalled at how much money they have to pay for a slice of pizza and a soda. It’s trickery.)
June 27th, 2006 at 12:11 am
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
June 27th, 2006 at 3:46 am
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 4:37 am
haha, abhorrent. You made it that way. You are such a phony. How do you live with yourself?
June 27th, 2006 at 6:05 am
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:04 am
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!
June 27th, 2006 at 7:05 am
When Your Customers Blog… : Business Blog Consulting
[...] By the way, if you think Ferrari is just a crank about customer service, read this recent post on his experience with Audible. Technorati Tags: aol, Customer Service, Vincent Ferrari Filed under: Consumer Products, Customer Service Blogs, Dangers of Blogging aol Customer Service Vincent Ferrari : Permalink [...]
June 27th, 2006 at 9:04 am
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:17 am
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!
June 27th, 2006 at 10:24 am
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 11:57 am
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?
June 27th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
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!
June 27th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
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
June 27th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
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.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Apparently some people aren’t happy unless you’re in a bad mood and bitching about stuff.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Vinny, thats my brother’s middle name…anyway, I can’t stand how some people act as if you did something wrong. I am glad that there are people, like you and I, just common folks who get the edge on big corporation. Don’t worry, the majority of clear thinking adults see that you did the right thing. My site is devoted to explaining issues that most Americans don’t see or bother to pay attention to. Wake up U.S. http://anthonylemons.blogspot.com
June 27th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
I’ll try to keep this short,which I wish my conversation with AOL would’ve been. My experience was relived when I viewed your recorded phone call online. It has been 4-5 months since I cancelled and I still get angry. I have NEVER in my life experienced such a hellish phone call as I did that day when I cancelled. Within 2-3 minutes of the “actual” phone call, not the waiting part, the customer service rep. upset me so much that I knew I would never subscribe to them again or ever recommend them. I was astonished at how angry I became over the phone. It was “NOT ME.” Just keyboarding this comment makes my stomach turn all over again. My husband listened to me during the conversation and looked at me wondering: Why is this cancellation taking so long?, Where is AOL coming from and treating a long time customer like crap?, Is this my wife, I’ve never seen her so riled up during a phone call?, and so on. This comment gives me the opportunity to vent. Thanks for sharing your experience so I know I’m not the only one, and this certainly is an issue. AOL certainly has gone too far. I’ve never been treated so rudely in my life!! All 44 years!!
June 27th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Hi. My name is Jeremy, Kathryn’s nephew. I think what you’ve done is wonderful. You proved that AOL is REALLY tough to cancel and I think that is great. You’ve had lots of interviews and all of them have interested me. I like what you’ve done so much that I want your autograph. Bye.
June 27th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Hey Vinnie, I live in Chicago and heard you on the loop talking about AOL. I recently was one of 12 litigants in a class action suit against AOL for double billing customers due to “spin off ” accounts. Aol settled for $25 million dollars. The scam was they would spin off a sub account without permission and charge your credit card or checking account for it. I was double billed to the tune of $635 for over 2 years unknowingly. I used my checking account for my billing method and they would bill me at the begining of each month for my main account and as I found out they billed me at the end of the month for the “spin off” account. I didn’t realize this till I called to cancel my Aol account ( which was an adventure in itself) and 2 months later after I bounced a check I noticed I was still being billed for a 2nd account which I never authorized. You think it was tough cancelling your account, try cancelling a spin off account and trying to get a hold of thier fraud department. I was told I could not cancel the spin off account and that the fraud department had to do it. I called the fraud department 4 seperate times and was on hold for an average of 1 hour each time and I never was able to talk to anybody. Thats when I found out about a class action suit that was forming for the double billing practice Aol had and got onboard. Aol just settled in February of this year(2006)and if you or anyone who reads your site was double billed they are entitled to some monetary compensation from Aol. I was told it could range from $60 to $80 dollars or ( hold onto your hat) 6 months free Aol (LOL). The lawsuit went on for almost 2 years before it was settled. I also had a very interesting taped deposition but there’s not enough space to write that here.
June 28th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Vinny, I never said you got rich off of your comments, all I said was you got paid, which makes it even more disgraceful that you would sell out for just a few bucks.
Yes, if it takes a moron to figure this out then what does that make you Belf for not realizing it? The proof is in his writing. To begin, I first heard edited versions of the AOL call and applauded Vinny’s effort, but later I was bothered by Vinny’s tone when I listened to the WHOLE recording. Vinny knew that he wanted the call to blow up and basically egged the AOL rep on. From the very beginning of the call Vinny was rude and confrontatious with an aggressive tone. MANY people would have acted the way the AOL rep acted when someone confronts them the way Vinny did. Unfortunately, regardless of how big an a$$ a customer is, a company employee should always be polite… but morally, a customer should be polite as well.
So after reading his latest, I’ve realized that instead of being this “hero”, Vinny is simply manipulating circumstances to meet his needs. So now his writing tone has changed and he LOVES customer service people- “Especially those from http://www.audible.com, where you can pick up any variety of your favorite audio books. Pick up a membership for your mom, or a friend… audio books make a perfect wedding present. I cancelled my membership once and I cried myself to sleep every night. But recently I have renewed my membership and have lost weight and even grown fuller thicker hair.”
By the way Belf, you’ll notice that Vinny hasn’t denied receiving “pitch” money.
June 28th, 2006 at 6:29 am
Whether he got paid or not, I don’t care. That is Vinny’s business. My AOL experience was 95% exactly like his was. I don’t know how many times I had to re-express my intention to cancel. I was very pleased with AOL for many years and I was expecting to be treated in a civilized manner.
I don’t have any particular opinion of “customer service people” except that I expect to be treated with respect. Some days service is extraordinary (bigger tip) and some days it is poor (little or no tip).
I don’t believe you egged anyone on. The AOL rep. just didn’t “get it.” You wanted to cancel your account. It shouldn’t take more than a few moments to make changes in their database and show appreciation for your loyalty for so long. Boom, done!
June 28th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Kari must me an AOL rep. No one else would react like that.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Kari, you’re a moron.
I did not accept any money from Audible. Consumerist, in their post about them doing an interview with me, left the question for their readers “What would you like to ask Vincent?”
One of the readers mentioned they would like to hear any good experiences since we’ve been harping on the bad (read comment #2 here if you’re able to read). The question made me think, and I came up with Audible.
And by the way Keri, the only difference between the entire call that I’ve posted here and the 2 minute shorter on they played on TV is the part where I said he was annoying the shit out of me after he wasn’t listening, and he replied “That goes both way, my friend,” something played on CNN, CNBC, and most of the radio shows I was on.
Oh, and one more thing Kari you twit. Belf!!! is my wife. If I took any money, she’d know. Yet another shining example of your unmitigated stupidity.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:48 am
Vincent, dude, you brought the topic of AOL this AOL that upon yourself? You didn’t let Jon help you, instead you badgered him and provoked him into acting the way he did. His customer service wasn’t abhorrent, your behavior as a human being was abhorrent towards someone who was trying to help you. You were abrasive, unfriendly, and totally rude towards him. Then you went to the media and acted as though you did nothing wrong. That’s pathetic dude!
June 28th, 2006 at 7:51 am
I find it interesting that the only posts on this site are aol bashing and that posting a comment is no guarantee of it’s publication….a tell tale sign that someone has something to hide or has an alterior motive.
June 28th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Kari is probably an AOL stockholder — ha ha ha.
June 28th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Oh, and we’ve had excellent customer service over many years by Southwest Airlines as well.
June 28th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Thank you for bringing this out into the open regarding AOL. A few years ago I too had a real disheartening experience with AOL. I was given the run around, first it was not the name on the original account (which it was as I was the only one in the household) then it was not the right card number (as I had changed that over the years), but they were still getting payments from the same account). I gave them the name and address, everything they needed to verify the account.
I was so frusterated at the end of the phone call I ended up cancelling my bank account over an automatic payment of less than $30.00.You know what we have to do everytime we cancel a bank accout.
I have been in Customer Service/Sales for many years and I know all about quotas, still sometimes we have to step back in order to move forward. Thanks again.
June 28th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Alright, this is for all of the unintelligent people who think that Vinny provoked the sour conversation. Vinny said:”I would like to cancel my account” That was provacation? Only an idiot would consider them fighting words. The AOL pitchman should have responded with: “no, problem sir, this will take just a minute to deactivate your account”. That is not how the AOL drone answered. The employee purposely backed Vinny into a verbal corner, and I will tell you, I would come out swinging. Vinny, keep the New York pride my man. Wake up U.S. http;//anthonylemons.blogspot.com
June 28th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Good customer service experiences:
Andersen Windows
Southwest Airlines
Two very large companies, two very different products. What they have in common is that they treat both their employees and their customers as people deserving respect.
Vinny, thank you for now giving us a chance to share positive customer service experiences.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for standing up to the corporate tyrants! Way to go.
June 28th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Kari,
Since (according to you) Vinny got paid to promote Audible, I assume you have a copy of the contract he would have had to sign. Please post it so we can all be as enlightened as you are on this topic. Thanks. Moron!
Jon,
You (along with all the other idiots who think Vinny provoked a CSR into giving bad service) are just a moron. I’m getting really tired of hearing people accuse Vinny of provoking Jon into bullying him, harassing him, being condescending to him, and just plain being rude to him. Vinny called to cancel his account and made that clear from the get go. He did not antagonize Jon, nor was he rude in any way. He simply stated the reason for the call up front and got 20 minutes of crap handed to him by someone who was supposed to help him.
Tammy,
If you bothered to actually read anything else on this site, you would know that there are FOUR AND A HALF YEARS’ worth of posts that AREN’T about bashing AOL. So it seems that you’re a moron too.
Any other morons wanna come out into the open with their utter and complete stupidity?
June 29th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
What I find amusing is the fact that not a lot of people mention the 15+ mins Vinny had to spend first going through the automated menus / on hold.
After that I’d be ready to be a little beligerent… if anything he was probably a bit more polite than I could expect
June 30th, 2006 at 12:22 am
Kari, I think you need to learn how to read. (I learned how in 1st grade, isn’t it a shame you didn’t…)
Your comment (#27) makes no sense at all. You must have a very low I.Q to think that Vincent’s comments about this AOL situation was generalized to mean *all* CSR’s. Really now, that’s a really pathetic attempt, on your part to discredit Vincent.
I hope you realize (before you continue to post here and further embarass yourself) that only people with lower IQ’s than you will believe your BS…doesn’t leave you with much support at your end of the Bell Curve.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:26 am
I couldn’t agree more. Well put Vinny.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Blog do livro Blog Corporativo » Blog Archive » Seu cliente pode ter um blog
[...] Ele virou notícia de TV e a AOL pediu desculpas oficiais a ele, informando que o telefonista já havia sido mandado embora. Ontem, depois de 5 dias de ter aparecido na TV, Ferrari postou uma experiência boa com outra empresa, dando duas faces a um blogueiro: o de envangelista de marcas, e o de destruidor de marcas. [...]