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"Fun" with customer service
2004-12-02 12:05 pmSpent an hour and a half on the phone with Wells Fargo this morning: half an hour booking a flight using points from their credit card reward program, and an hour trying to explain to someone why I couldn't used their website to do it last night. This required five phone calls, including two botched transfers, a wrong callback number, and a total of at least half an hour on hold.
Unusually for me, I managed to remain cheerful during the entire process, in part because I actually got the flight booked during the first call, but mainly I think because my main reaction to all the incompetence was amusement rather than annoyance. Not to mention being enormously grateful that I don't have a checking account there, considering that their (obnoxiously slow) website seems to be running entirely on Microsoft software.
The voice recognition software on their phone system, on the other hand, was quite impressive -- it captured my account number and other information without asking me to repeat anything. (The rest of the system was less impressive; I had to wait through the same three interminable prompts every time before finally getting to a human. At least I could get to a human, even if many of them were clearly out of their depth. At least they knew it, and were finally able to track down somebody who at least claimed to be able to pass the information on to the right people.)
Not that I expect the website's user experience to actually improve as a result of all this. I'm a pessimist: that means I prefer pleasant surprises.
Unusually for me, I managed to remain cheerful during the entire process, in part because I actually got the flight booked during the first call, but mainly I think because my main reaction to all the incompetence was amusement rather than annoyance. Not to mention being enormously grateful that I don't have a checking account there, considering that their (obnoxiously slow) website seems to be running entirely on Microsoft software.
The voice recognition software on their phone system, on the other hand, was quite impressive -- it captured my account number and other information without asking me to repeat anything. (The rest of the system was less impressive; I had to wait through the same three interminable prompts every time before finally getting to a human. At least I could get to a human, even if many of them were clearly out of their depth. At least they knew it, and were finally able to track down somebody who at least claimed to be able to pass the information on to the right people.)
Not that I expect the website's user experience to actually improve as a result of all this. I'm a pessimist: that means I prefer pleasant surprises.
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