WENDY KNOWLER | What’s with the ghosting? When companies just ignore your complaints

I’ve never worked in a corporate environment of any kind, and all I know about the “customer-relationship management” is based on 23 years of taking up cases on behalf of customers who haven’t been “managed” very well at all.

In many cases they’ve been mistreated and then ignored when they tried to get the company to make amends. Double whammy.

As someone whose job is essentially talking to companies on behalf of their own customers, who they are either ghosting or refusing to do right by, it seems to me what we used to call “customer service” has been lost in a complicated web of jargon, overthinking, analysis and tracking, with very little focus on actually making sure their customers are made to feel respected, valued and heard.

This advert placed by a major national retailer for a “customer value management” exec sums it up: “Identify, implement and manage CVM and campaign analytics and robust campaign measurement functions to ensure that all customer impacting activities are accurately baselined, tracked and measured for success post implementation.

“Optimise targeting and execution efficiency through a proper integrated and scalable analytics engine containing machine learning and AI technologies as key enablers to ensure robust base management activities are deployed.”

And on it went.

I realise that “treat our customers right” wouldn’t cut it, but to me that description sounds very much like not seeing the wood for the trees.

Companies use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to punt their products as well as go on about their do-good initiatives and their commitment to their customers.

But click on the comments and replies and you’ll very often find posts by their customers begging someone to respond to their queries and issues.

“The call centre is not taking my call”, “no one is answering my emails” and so on.

Many of them resort to emailing the CEO, in big bold capital letters, and still there’s no response.

And so it was with Geoff and his FNB credit card problem.

“I write to you in utter frustration and exasperation concerning the complete lack of response from FNB Retail Banking, including the CEO!” his email to me began.

He attached the history of correspondence he’d sent to the bank, noting that his only responses were “read receipts”.

Geoff has banked with FNB for more than 40 years and has always paid the full amount due on his credit card by the due date so as to avoid paying “exorbitant” interest charges.

When he gets his monthly credit card statement he sets up a “scheduled transfer” from his current account to the credit card account to settle the account in full and on time.

Often, he told me, he didn’t pay the full amount in one go; he made two or three separate payments on consecutive days.

He goes to all that trouble to wring the most out of his eBucks rewards – six or more transactions made on your banking app comes with extra reward of some kind.

So, to settle the amount owing – almost R25,000 – on his May statement, due on June 26, Geoff scheduled three payments, for June 24, 25 and 26.

What he didn’t know was that the first and smallest payment of R768 failed - he only found out when he got his next statement, which contained an interest charge of a whopping R450 relating to the nonpayment.

As luck would have it, his phone was stolen on the evening before that first scheduled payment was made.

He reported the theft to FNB within 45 minutes and asked for a hold to be put on his accounts.

“The following morning – the day of the scheduled transfer – I visited an FNB branch to get a temporary bank card, but access to my account was still unavailable,” he said.

“I told the clerk that I had scheduled transfers, payments and debit orders set up on my current account, and she assured me that they wouldn’t be affected.”

But she was wrong.

“I strongly suspect that scheduled R768 failed due to the account still being frozen when the transfer was actioned,” Geoff said.

He wanted that interest of R450 to be credited to his account, given that he was not at fault, but although his emails were being read by various FNB staffers, none of them was willing to engage with him about his request.

“So would you be so kind as to take up the cudgels with FNB on my behalf?” Geoff asked.

“The amount is not that much, but I find their treatment of the whole matter appalling especially in the light of their well-vented slogan, ‘How can we help you?’

“I really would be interested in their senior management’s explanation on how their whole system fails to respond to a client’s complaint.”

Responding, FNB Card CEO Chris Labuschagne said: “We can confirm that the credit card complaint brought forward by our customer has been evaluated.

“We commend our customer for ensuring that their credit card facility is maintained on a regular basis.

“In light of the unfortunate circumstances that led to a delayed payment, we will be reversing the interest charge in full.

“We apologise to our customer for the inconvenience and any service lapse they may have experienced.”

So Geoff got a sorry and a refund but no explanation for the ghosting.

But I trust that they’ll now be ensuring that customer impacting activities are accurately baselined, tracked and measured for success.