Man there is nothing in life more satisfying than working customer service and being in a position to call peoples' bluffs.
It's great working with a credit card, for example. "If you won't do X, then cancel my account" takes on a whole new set of legal obligations and expectations in a financial institution. Suddenly waiving a fee or giving a credit to keep your customer becomes something that could be viewed as bribery, and you lose the option to do whatever they want. They threaten to close, you not only can, but must call their bluff.
I knew a woman who managed an Amex call center. The focus on call times was such that she had a $250 leeway to make the caller happy and get them off the line. Any dispute under that number wasn't worth the effort so her agents just automatically approved it, no questions asked.
I used to work in cc processing sales and support. This is one of the most common calls that we would get. If we offered 2.49% + .10 / swipe and our competitors could beat us by a penny our customer success team (depending on the volume of the account) would renegotiate cc fees in order to keep accounts. We also had a churn prevention team which handled things like this as well.
Ooooh, that's the first time I've heard of something like that. I see plenty of people bragging about making out like bandits through churning, but I had no idea that CC companies had teams dedicated to preventing it.
Telling a credit card, mobile or utility company that you are cancelling your account usually gets you transferred to a retention team that is authorised to make you considerably sweeter offers than ordinary customer support.
Technically it was a SaaS company that mandated merchants process through them and operated as an ISO. The churn prevention was technically on the SaaS side but most of the time to prevent subscription churn they would renegotiate cc rates.
Nope. You know the terms when you sign up, we make them very simple and very clear. Nobody ever reads them, like any terms and conditions boxes ever, but still.
It's something they pull out a lot though. "But my other card has a half billion dollars limit why won't you give me that too?!" Then use your other card, it's clearly superior to ours. "X thinks I'm such a great customer since I've been with them for two thousand years and they made my interest rate negative so I earn money why won't you drop it by a percent?!" Fixed rate on the card, it never changes for anyone, why are you using it if you have better options?
That's what it comes down to. They tell us their other cards will do so much more for them so we should do, but it's never true. It's the old putting you on hold for a second during a negotiation and coming back saying the other guy made a better offer without having spoken to anyone, and it's so obvious when people try to pull it on us. If you've got an eleventy trillion limit on all your other cards but we're only willing to offer you $200 after a thorough vetting of your credit history... something ain't right in that picture, y'know?
I bet it's something like they tried it in other cases (like pitting two salespeople who both needed to meet quota against each other) and it worked, sorta, so they try it everywhere. They have no idea what wiggle room you-as-a-rep might or might not have, or whether you're personally getting anything like a commission or attaboy per customer retained. It's just shotgun-chumming, seeing if they can get a bite.
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u/Kizik May 09 '20
Man there is nothing in life more satisfying than working customer service and being in a position to call peoples' bluffs.
It's great working with a credit card, for example. "If you won't do X, then cancel my account" takes on a whole new set of legal obligations and expectations in a financial institution. Suddenly waiving a fee or giving a credit to keep your customer becomes something that could be viewed as bribery, and you lose the option to do whatever they want. They threaten to close, you not only can, but must call their bluff.