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At the sound of the beep …
By Lauren | November 17, 2008
A friend of mine (let’s call him Bob) recently suffered through what should have been a simple telephone call. Bob had worked for over a decade for a company with a particularly nice pension plan so, when he left for a new job, he decided to leave his retirement money in his former employer’s plan for a while. But when Bob lost almost half of his retirement savings in the recent stock market collapse, he decided to get some professional help to recoup the losses. He hired a financial advisor who recommended moving Bob’s money from his former employer’s pension plan to an IRA. That’s where the trouble began.
Bob and his advisor called the investment firm that managed Bob’s pension money - or tried to. The investment firm’s automated voice answering system ran them around and around its endless menus and security questions, cut them off, and took almost ten minutes before they finally got to a human being. (Anyone less persistent would have given up by the third time the system asked for Bob’s security code.)
Was the automated phone system inefficient? Maybe not. Bob’s advisor told him that investment firms frequently use such convoluted answering systems to discourage people from moving their money. Make it a big enough hassle, and most consumers will decide it’s just not worth the trouble to reinvest their funds.
It may not be outright dishonest for investment firms to use such underhanded tactics to keep investors’ money, but it’s certainly sleazy. Bob’s angry enough at this point that he wouldn’t use that firm again under any circumstances, and he’ll share his story with friends and family if an opportunity arises. Note to investment firms: we know times are hard, but if the only way you can keep your investors is to trap them in your phone system, do your part to reduce the unemployment rate and hire a receptionist. If you don’t free your customers, they’ll eventually free themselves.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, customer relations, ethics |
November 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
[...] presents At the sound of the beep posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, ”…our automated voice answering system will [...]