I just escaped from customer service hell. I was on the phone with the bank trying to make a simple transfer of funds from account A to account B.

Should be easy. It wasn’t. They’ve been taken over by another bank, changed their prompts, and added more steps. My pin number was messed up and I couldn’t make the transfer.

So I called the 800 number, and sat on hold, typing as I listened to musak, wondering what happened to the friendly, helpful bank I used to do business with.

I had to wait and wait, but finally got connected to someone who made my transfer for me. Next up, fixing the pin number.

The rep said, you need to talk to the branch (and transferred me). The branch said, you need to call the 800 number. Argghh!!!

It took a couple more rounds, a call back, resetting the passwords to the default, and then calling and resetting each account to straighten it all out.

The lessons for marketing

• Make it easy for your customers to interact with you.
• Don’t add extra steps to transactions. The fewer buttons, fewer fields and fewer forms, the better.
• Double-check your work. Test everything before it goes live.
• Mistakes do happen. If you make one, admit the error and fix it.
• Don’t send people round and round from person to person. If you don’t know the answer, offer to find out, and call the customer back.

Photo:basykes