March 13, 2009

CIBC De-dazzling Part 2

Bill, from CIBC customer relations called me a couple of days ago regarding my concerns. You see I had sent a copy of the blog I posted to my account manager who then made head office in Toronto aware of what was going on. Upon reflection Bill was a ‘rule pusher’ who was empowered to do nothing in terms of solving my problem.

Bill introduced himself and then went on for at least 5 minutes (‘script from above’ I suspect) explaining to me why they were adopting the policy they had. It went something like this:
- they acknowledged that it was a bit unusual to increase Personal Line of Credit (PLC) interest rates at a time when the bank rate was going down (so I should feel better about it with this logic?)
- they were treating all of their clients the same way (so I should be comforted that I am being treated like all other PLC clients regardless of their value?)
- all of the other banks were taking similar action (so I really don’t have another alternative)
- my concern has been escalated to their executive for review (so I should be comforted by the fact that the decision will be made miles and miles away from the frontline?)

The bottom line was that this call was more about telling me why they were implementing this policy and less about acknowledging my value to CIBC, caring that I had an issue with them, listening to my concerns, empathizing with me and honestly caring enough to find a solution to my problem. I would classify the call with Bill as a BE DiFFERENT de-dazzling moment of truth; I felt more frustrated after the call than before.

This was a good example of how NOT to handle a complaint call. If all you are going to do is spout company policy to your client (see Section Four of my book on Serving Customers) save your breath. You will only annoy them further and reduce their loyalty. In fact Bill’s call reminded me that I didn’t get a personal call from anyone on this; a computer generated message was all that I was worth.

Stay tuned for the executive response. Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 3.13.09 at 10:13 pm by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment