This is not an affiliated link; this is just praise for what I view as exceptional customer service and a model for other large companies to follow.
To coincide with leaving my job in December, my wife and I procured new health insurance, and I rolled my 401(k) into my Vanguard IRA. We also recently bought a car after the engine in my wife’s 2003 Ford Escape blew up for no discernible reason. (We’re happy with our new Subaru.)
With all of this going on, we’ve been dealing with quite a few customer service departments, most of them faulty (and as such will be unnamed here). My new health insurance program left off our dental insurance, even though our broker had submitted the application requesting a dental rider. I called our insurance company, and they wanted me to fax them my original application. (Incidentally, they also wanted me to fax them a copy of a bank statement so I could enroll in automatic billpay.)
Fax? Um, excuse me, 1985 called, and it wants its technology back.
Meanwhile, my wife has been dealing with her physician’s administrator’s to get her prescription information updated with our new insurer. It took at least two phone calls to two separate office administrators, plus a physical visit to the office, and it may or may not be taken care of.
Meanwhile, she’s also trying to coordinate between the car dealer, the local DMV, and the bank to make sure the lien information on our Subaru is recorded correctly. This morning, she discovered the bank had the VIN number wrong, that they had an 8 instead of an H. The conversation went something like this:
Bank: “Did you say, 8 as in Hector?”
Wife: “No, H as in Hector.”
Bank: “Oh, we had an 8 recorded.”
Finally, my web hosting email was backlogged yesterday. I received an email around 2 p.m. that someone sent at 11 a.m. I sent a couple of test emails to and from jon[at]sealycommunications.com, and there was a good 30-45-minute delay. When I called my hosting company’s IT support, the number had been disconnected. I emailed them, and went back and forth through several emails. (“Can you send us the meta-data from the header in the delayed emails?” “Sure.” “Actually, can you send us the entire emails as EML files?” “Sure.” “There was no header data in those EML files.”) I called again and was told, “Nope, everything looks fine. Our servers might have been a little slow, but an email queue is normal. Thirty minutes is a bit long, but it shouldn’t happen again.”
What kind of response is that? Where’s the customer service? This is my business here. I had just sent some materials to a prospective client, and how unprofessional would it be for me to send him a second email from my Yahoo account saying, “Hey, I’m a small-time chump and my email doesn’t work. Did you get everything?”
So it was with such relief this morning when I called Vanguard to see about rolling over my 401(k), and immediately got through to a friendly, capable person. After taking my information, she got me on a conference call with my previous investment company, sat patiently while I entered my account number and password and played 20-questions with their automated system, then assisted me in closing that account.
I know it’s in Vanguard’s best interest to have me roll my money into an IRA with them. But that’s business. It’s in every business’s best interest to bring in clients and to keep them, yet it’s astounding how many businesses are utterly inept at such a basic function as customer service.
Shameless self-promotion: In short, it’s my policy as a copywriter to make your life easier, and as a businessman and a consumer, I believe that starts with good customer service. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.