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Bad
Data Means Atrocious Service
I have just had the worst
treatment I’ve ever had from any organisation – a bank! It is all to do with data
and process, not people, in particular, the inability of routine systems to handle
complex cases. In summer 2001, my daughter split up from her husband. Soon she
was with a new man. In December 2001 she moved to Italy where he had just been
posted. Just before she went, we both went to the bank with a power of attorney.
I kept her flat for a bit, selling it in late spring 2002, when I went to the
bank, closed her current account (which I’d maintained to pay various property
outgoings like council tax), closed all her other accounts except a loan account,
for which I took over the payments. We told the bank that all further correspondence
about her was to be sent to me. We bank at the same branch, so they knew me already.
In April 2004, a threatening
letter arrived from a collections agency, sent to my daughter at my address. It
said she owed over £4000 to the bank. I called the agency to ask what it was for.
They could not tell me the details as I was not my daughter. Of course, the bank
had not told them about my power of attorney. They told me to go to the bank to
find out (which was fair advice). I popped in on my way to a late morning meeting.
I only (mercifully) queued for 15 minutes. I asked to see what the problem was,
having made clear that if they got this wrong I would tell the whole world about
it. The assistant logged on and found the record of many letters to the flat that
we had sold two years ago. I asked to see the screen. The assistant refused, despite
the fact that I had the original power of attorney document and my passport to
prove that I was the same customer with 36 years of banking with this bank, over
6 figures on deposit and whose wife was a shareholder. She called the branch in
the group where the power of attorney had been lodged. Did they have it? No. Current
account closure meant it was now with central customer service (nothing scanned
in of course). The loan account is still registered to this same branch, but of
course that’s on a different system. I told the assistant, call your collection
agency off, and write to me giving me proper chapter and verse, and time to respond.
She took a copy of the collection letter, my statement showing I had been paying
off the loan, and the power of attorney (more unscanned paper!).
At the end of the day, I
called the collection agency to ask whether they had heard from the bank. Of course
not. The agent was sympathetic, saying they had suspended the action, but asked
me to write to them stating the situation as I saw it and sending a copy of the
power of attorney. I did (it took 2 hours to check all the details, so 3 hours
already that day). I complimented them on their customer service, but reiterated
the threat to the bank if the situation was not managed perfectly thereafter,
and copied my letter to the branch manager and the CEO of the bank. Of course,
I don’t know whether there was additional incompetence (my payments not being
credited), or whether there were real additional debts – I suspect a combination.
I wait with interest. No doubt the agency was proud at having tracked my daughter
down, because the bank clearly had not linked our records on the database, despite
clearly having a legal document to support such a link. I doubt if their database
is capable of making the link.
Most customers leave large
suppliers due to atrocious service, not poor service. My case was complex, though
not unduly. Complex cases are a subset of problem cases – likely to go wrong and
cause high costs or brand damage. But they are rarely unusual cases – they can
be identified, they can be predicted by some of their early attributes, and they
can be managed from early on by following simple processes. In my case, the obvious
thing to do would have been to key into my daughter’s record some text comments
about her contactability via me, and the existence of the power of attorney. Is
all this important? Yes, if customer attrition is a problem and if service problems
are an important reason for attrition. It’s important if you’ve got customers
like me, who on the whole are pretty good, but can turn really nasty. And this
is going to be nasty, because I thought of my poor daughter, her generally sensitive
state, her (then) hopelessness at handling money (she has learnt since), and what
she would have felt if she had received the letter herself (it was after all addressed
to her). Thank goodness I opened it, as I have the right to do.
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