Janne Ohtonen’s depressing but diligently documented online credit card application experience.
“Anthony was kind enough to tell me how he had no problems certifying his documents somewhere in Scotland in another bank. I suggested that it's a bit too far to go to Scotland for me to get that done.”
Apart from reinforcing my scepticism about the state of customer service processes in general, this is an excellent example of an organisation that “gets customer-focussed-services” and one that really doesn’t. In it, Ohtonen documents how two leading retailers handled the same online application for a credit card, a process involving a complex mix of interactive customer, financial and IT processes, supported by online technology.
The end result is one retailer lost the initial advantage and eventually the customer as well: all because it didn’t understand the environment, the processes required and didn’t respect the customer needs. It has also attracted negative publicity which will be difficult to counteract.
The second retailer, on the other hand, gained a new customer and some nice publicity by performing the same task competently and meeting the customer needs.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know who led each of these initiatives in each company: IT or non-IT?
Read Janne Ohtonen’s post here