connecting*the*dots

Thanks, Chris & Tara.

(originally uploaded by SOUTHEN)

My Mom has always worked the financial system to the best of her ability — from triple coupon shopping at ShopRite to becoming a landlord three states away as a retirement investment — so back in my freshman year at Syracuse, she co-signed an application for me to get an American Express Gold Card. She felt that by simply holding it, it would go a long way in establishing my credit rating.

It did.

Over the years, I’ve made large and small purchases alike, while making sure to be on-time with payments. As a result, my credit rating spiked and just recently, I was able to purchase a home at a decent rate — even though dotmatrix is in its first year as a business.

So, as much as I dislike paying $85 a year for a credit card, Amex has more than paid me back in return with customer service that has always been extremely helpful and courteous.

Until today, that is.

Can We Just Upsell You Instead?

In moving from freelance mode to building a design consultancy, I figured it was about time to completely separate my personal expenses from my business expenses. So a few weeks back I applied for an Amex Business Gold Card and tonight, with Christmas finally behind me, I called to activate my recently delivered card.

While activating, I asked the operator to transfer my points (close to 100,000 from 17 years of purchases) to the new card. Of course, that couldn’t be accomplished by the account opening specialist, so within a few minutes I was speaking to another CSR in the Membership Rewards department.

No problems there; the guy added the program to my new business card and proceeded to transfer my points over in one fell swoop.

Then I told him that I wanted to cancel my old Gold Card.

Wrong move.

Five minutes of hold time later, I was speaking to a guy in another department with a glossy title that, once decoded, equated with “card retainment specialist.”

I told the guy that I wanted to cancel my personal Gold Card, but before doing so, I needed to know that I would be receiving my End of Year Summary — essential documentation of my numerous business deductions over the past year.

The guy didn’t listen to one word I said.

Before I could say AOL nightmare, the guy began to upsell me about the benefits of the card. He said he could throw in a $40 credit due to my long-standing account status (for you non-math majors, that’s a benefit of $2.35 per year).

I repeated that I needed an answer to my question.

Instead of transferring me to customer service — who apparently held the knowledge as to when I was to receive my summary document — the specialist continued along the same line of reasoning.

Next, he tells me that it’s almost impossible to get an Amex Gold card and that I’d be missing out on a ton of great benefits. Getting a bit annoyed, I lost track of my request and challenged him to look at my account and tell me what exactly I’d be missing — especially now that just I opened a Business Gold Card.

Instead of doing what I asked, the guy took the opportunity to challenge me to name one of my Gold Card benefits — you know, ’cause I’m a dumb customer who doesn’t know what he needs.

Okay, now I’m starting to get pissed.

I returned to my original question about the summary and the guy just kept on going, telling me all about the great benefits of card membership, including more points with a second card. When I told him that I had that angle covered — for free with a non-Amex card — and that I didn’t need advice along those lines, he kept pushing, insisting that most people don’t know what they’re missing out on.

I tell him I’m an adult and don’t appreciate the continuous upsell.

He tells me that I’m not listening; everybody needs a Gold Card.

I hang up.

Next: Customer Service

So taking the only valuable info the retainment specialist gave me, I decided to call Customer Service to find out when I would receive my summary. The new guy must’ve checked his CRM tool (man, is this a call for VRM or what?!), as he was ready to deflect my question and continue to upsell Gold Card membership.

Only after I made it crystal clear to him that I just added another Gold Card to my account — keeping the beans coming in at a steady pace — did he stop his Lomanesque discourse long enough to put me on hold and find out for me exactly when I could cancel my card, yet still receive my summary.

After another five minutes, he comes back and tells me that I can’t cancel the account until March 9th — my anniversary date.

When I tell him that I receive my summary no later than early February, he pauses.

When I ask him on what date I was to be charged next year’s $85 fee, he meekly responds with “March 9th.”

Motherfuckers.

Learn Or Die

I ended up hanging up tonight, to wait until I receive my summary before I cancel prior to March 9th. I messed up: I never should have mentioned canceling the card before getting all the information I needed.

I guess I had too much faith that being a longtime card member should mean something — like not having to game my call to people who are supposed to be servicing me, the customer.

It blows me away that companies continue to develop CSR scripts along these lines, in an attempt to maximize profits. For 17 years, I considered Amex to be a great company — not based on the bills I received each month or the ridiculous $40 per year points program I’ve paid for since obtaining the card — but for their impeccable customer service.

Well, they’ve now joined the likes of Sprint as far as I’m concerned.

How much more money have they now lost through this piss poor brand experience? I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing for sure:

Momma didn’t raise no motherfucking plankton.

(originally uploaded by dsearls)

Doc and company are working on making VRM a reality. Well, here’s my shout out to the ether: I wanna help!

(self-portrait by dsearls)

Sorry, Doc — I couldn’t quote your Jupiter Research post without a Rageboy-like visual.

Turning funnels into megaphones
Doc Searls

[…]

Think for a minute about how much more useful (or obsolete) marketing would be if customers had actual relationships, or the means to initiate relationships — on the customers’ terms — when and where they wanted to initiate them?

Wouldn’t it be handy if customers could, at their discretion, by themselves or in whatever groups they feel like assembling (in the wild open and free marketplace, rather than in any vendor’s or intermediary’s silo), tell vendors what they are looking for, and under what conditions? Including what they are willing to pay?

We’re talking about a real marketplace here. Not eBay or any other walled garden.

We’re talking about relieving vendors of the need to do complex guesswork about what customers want.

We’re talking about efficient and easy ways to satisfy money-in-hand demand, rather than more ways of ‘creating’ or manipulating demand.

We’re talking about obsoleting advertising as we know it. Marketing too.

We’re talking about re-framing markets as real places where transactions, conversations and relationships happen between independent participants on terms and conditions that are work well for everybody.

We’re talking about creating the means for leveraging customer independence, choice and rights to obtain respect and authority independent of any private online marketplace, or any search engine.

We’re talking about VRM, for Vendor Relationship Management. Some have suggested RM for just Relationship Management. Others have suggested XRM, for managing relationships with anybody, including one’s own social networks — ranging from memberships in organizations to email white and black lists. Whatever we call it, the subject will be front & center at the Internet Identity Workshop coming up in December.

We’re talking about individuals managing the means by which their every gesture is recorded (or not) and put to use (or not).

We’re talking about giving research organizations and their clients reasons to stop looking at each of us as “consumers”, “audiences”, or cattle that can be “driven” to do anything.

We’re talking about flattening the power relationships between vendors and customers, for the good of both.

I could go on, but it’s Sunday morning, and I’m off to make breakfast, have some fun with the family, and buy stuff from vendors who don’t treat people like plankton.

As much as some people might like to believe, we don’t define ourselves as a nation of market silos, with various connecting retail channels and media mechanisms enabled to advertise new and retreaded products for mass consumption — either in the brick n’ mortar space or the new wild west of the internet.

We define at ourselves as people, first and foremost. And, God forbid, we like to be treated as such.

The problem that Doc has framed in the past, and is dealing with in this post, is that the majority of players who guard and influence the American system of capitalism can’t seem to roll with the idea of influence neutral and people-centric business practices.

Why you ask? (come on, ask)

Because systematically backing individualism comes at too high of a cost.

Consider the fact that:

• mass manufacturing and targeted advertising in the industrial age set the standard approach to maximizing short-term and long-term profitability; customization and new media conversations throws a huge monkey wrench into that methodology of perpetual product pimping and production.
• the more catering the individual receives — regardless of the depth of their pockets — the more that the levers of the traditional supply and demand model must change; this affects not only the politics of the market, but the politics of the nation, as citizen participation and influence flattens and widens the playing field.

To me, it sounds like Doc wants to live in a world where we have enough breathing room to get a handle on our own needs and wants — as opposed to our current state of constantly being poked, prodded and influenced into needing what marketers and advertisers want us to buy.

Don’t we all want to live in such a world?

By enabling smart social mechanisms that allow us to — for a lack of a better term — ping the ether when we desire, alerting other human beings to hit us back who own aligning attributes of proximity, supply, price, quality, etc., we can move towards a way of life that is free of the walled constructs that serve the bricklayers more than the bartering parties themselves.

We don’t quite have such a commons in place yet, and our new economy mechanisms are still somewhat crude, but we’re heading in the right direction.

In order to ensure our new world dreams don’t get trounced by the same people who clipped the wings of ham radio operators and the promise of public access television, we need to be vigilant in monitoring the old guard who won’t evolve — for as innovation creates opportunities for the masses, it also marginalizes old technology and the people who hold on for dear life.

These people will not go quietly into the night.