I remember a time when just about everyone had an AOL account. It was a quick, easy way for even the most inexperienced and computer illiterate among us to log on and use the Web. But now people don’t want a browser that does it all for them. They want to connect and go. The result: AOL is struggling to stay relevant.
The result may be that the company is asking its customer service people to discourage users from canceling their paid service. Or maybe the customer service folks are just feeling the anxiety filtering down through the ranks and taking it as an implicit directive to work harder to keep customers.
Whatever the case may be blogger Vinny Ferarri was not pleased with the service he received when he tried to cancel his AOL account. He posted a recording of the interaction to his blog. The story has been making the rounds of the big memetrackers, it looks like the traffic may have crashed Ferarri’s hosting.
Now it’s possible that this particular customer service guy was just a troll. But as of now, he represents AOL’s customer service to the general public. And if the possibility of AOL’s desperation to keep customers came so readily to my mind, it’s a safe bet that other people who have heard this recording are thinking the same thing. In a world where perception is everything, having your company become the subject of a negative meme like this can be soul-crushingly bad. Particularly when you’re already struggling with your role in the changing Web.
So what should AOL do? First of all, fire the guy. I know customer service is one of the hardest fields to work in, but you shouldn’t be doing it if you can’t take the heat from an angry customer. Customers and potential customers need to see that this sort of behavior isn’t typical of AOL customer service reps.
AOL also needs to start making it a lot easier to cancel their service. You can see just from reading Ferarri’s post that AOL is notorious for giving customers who want to cancel a hard time. Ferarri clearly expected some static. Cancellation of an account needs to be made as easy as possible. It will engender goodwill.
Still, that doesn’t solve the larger problem of how the AOL walled garden can keep up with the rest of the Web. There are no easy answers for that big question.
Via Digg.
Update 6-22-06 at 10:08 a.m - The story is now on NBC via TailRank.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
christine baker 05.03.08 at 1:59 pm
After 10 hrs on the telephone (14p a minute) I found the customer services at AOL to be non existent. I was not aware of the association with Car Phone Warehouse, but after a week without broadband service, a series of lies, and an attempt to blackmail me into purchasing a more costly service to maintain my connection, the offer they made me to reward me for not closing my account was strangely familiar. It was the same offer I had from a very rude man at Hammersmith, demanding that I change to Car Phone services, otherwise I was a fool. Same negative remarks about BT as well. Not a problem about individuals who answer your calls, but about what they are told to say. Don’t sack them, sack AOL. They were happy to discipline individuals when I know they were simply following a corporate script. AOL has no one responsible for customer services, and after several trips around the world, I was told to write a letter of complaint. Is this not the definition of absurd, my IP provider will not discuss my concerns unless I post them a letter?
G. Fos 08.25.08 at 1:05 pm
AOL has become far worse than non-competitive, it has become archiac and incompetent, pissing off people they should be leaping to help REMAIN OR BECOME CUSTOMERS. It’s no wonder AOL will soon be the Doo-Doo bird of on-line providers.
AOL no longer provides - it simply either does not respond at all to customer service inquires and complaints - or repeats as a mantra that it can not disclose information that will be a privacy violation - when no such information is being requested, only help. You should see the transcripts of the approximately one (1) hour or more of two extremely unhelpful and disturbing “live help chat sessions” I had with the dullest and most uncooperative people ever met.
I was trying to OPEN A NEW ACCOUNT with AOL, OR REACTIVATE the previous account that my husband let lapse, based upon AOL’s poor communication with him about the termination of free customer service e-mail support with the soon to be “free” AOL e-mail account. Had he known the support service would no longer be part of free AOL e-mail, he would have paid the nominal money for this purpose. But they didn’t notifu him. Never informed him. Hhhm: wonder whether that’s the reason why AOL lost droves of cutsomers at the time of the change-over. The other basic reason has to be that their customer service department is atrocious - not merely awful; EVEN WHEN TRYING TO REACTIVATE OR SET UP A NEW PAYING AOL ACCOUNT - THEY WON’T HELP YOU.
It’s bizarre - and explains much.
blah blah black sheep 10.20.08 at 2:21 pm
Had a similar experience with Bank of America in trying to cancel both a credit card & checking account with them. They had all this fancy online banking stuff, but no way to cancel unless you call in. I did so, sat on hold for a while, then found I had to get transfered to another number to get customer service for cancelling a checking acct. Then I had to get transfered to a DIFFERENT number to cancel the credit card. During the whole time, I asked them “will this close the account?”, “nobody can use or access the account after this, right?”, “will I get some kind of written notice saying the accounts are closed?”. I wasn’t getting clear answers, but they finally said the accounts were closed. The next day, I still got the auto-messages I had setup previously to tell me my account balances. I called them again asking why I was getting these if the accounts were closed. They said I had to log into the online site to turn them off. I couldn’t, though, because my online account wouldn’t let me in since both accounts were technically closed. I made several phone calls asking them to change the settings on their end, and twice they said they fixed it. But, still I would get the messages. I called in a third time, and the guy who was trying to help me asked for my social security number to verify who I was. I told him the previous folks just asked me for my old account numbers and some pertinant piece of info to verify who I was (EG: like answer to my secret question). He told me he needed my ssn this time to verify who I was. I told him that didn’t seem to follow protocol from past sessions, and that it’s blatantly stupid to give out ones SSN over the phone. I finally hung up, and just set my email to auto-delete those messages going forward. I finally (after the other few phone calls) received letters in the mail explicitly saying the accounts were closed. It’s crazy how difficult they make this … so much so that you want to do it just so you can get away from them. Big Business likes to make it hard to leave, so folks will hopefully stay and put up with frustration rather than suffer the pain of leaving. But if a company makes it painful to leave, then it’s not a company worth doing business with.