BMT 580 01 NCC - Management Systems

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Dumbest moment #56 There are 1 replies:
Gregory Joe Wood Students Author: Gregory Joe Wood, Email: GJWood@owls.williamwoods.edu   Show MyInfo popup for Gregory Joe Wood
Dumbest moment #56 Original post: Sat 9/24/2011 at 5:42 PM
When I read the story about AOL making cancellation so difficult, I had to laugh out loud.  The call lasted 21 minutes and the consumer asked to cancel 18 times.  Some people would find this story hard to believe, but I don't.  I actually had a very similar experience with AOL several years ago.  I was unhappy with my service and the price I was paying so I called to cancel the service.  The lady I spoke to argued back and forth with me about the merits of AOL, how wonderful AOL was, and how affordable the service was.  I kept telling her that no matter what she told me, I was canceling the service.  After about 10 minutes, she offered to give me a discount if I would keep the service.  By that time, I was so disgruntled that I told the lady that I wouldn't keep the service, even if it were free.  She kept arguing that she didn't want me to cancel so I finally told her that she had done one thing well in her job that day.  She asked what that was and I told her that she had ensured that I would never, ever subscribe to AOL in the future.  No matter the cost or the offers given to me, there is no way on God's green earth I would be an AOL customer again.  I think the persistent efforts to keep customers results in the opposite effect; customers are so put-out that they never want to deal with the harassment again.
Dustin Steven Schanzmeyer Students Author: Dustin Steven Schanzmeyer, Email: DSSchanzmeyer@owls.williamwoods.edu   Show MyInfo popup for Dustin Steven Schanzmeyer
Re: Dumbest moment #56 Posted: Sun 9/25/2011 at 12:35 PM, in reply to Gregory Joe Wood

Greg, I found it very interesting that you had an experience with AOL so similar to the one in the story.  I agree with you that AOL’s attempts to not let customers cancel and continue to pitch them other offers has an adverse effect on its customer’s turning them away for good.  I think we could agree that a much more effective approach in this scenario would have been for AOL to listen to the customer’s reason for cancelling and issues with the service.  At this point rather than argue with the customer I believe that if the AOL representative had an offer to resolve the issues it could be pitched.  From here the AOL representative should respect the customer’s decision to either decline or accept the offer and apologize for any issues ending the conversation by thanking them for the time they did use AOL.  I believe by using a friendlier approach like this AOL would see much better results and portray a much friendlier image to its subscribers.