How A Client’s Bad Service Screws Ad Agencies

This is a post about how ad agencies are at the mercy of their clients. I am talking about how agencies can be the victims of clients that do not deliver on their brand, product, and service promises. How the client’s, not the agency’s, bad service can ultimately kill a good client relationship.

A Poor Service Story

I recently made a mistake when setting up a bank transfer using Bank Of America’s online money transfer service. The money went to an intermediary account at Bank Of New York, instead of the actual person I was sending the money to, and I wanted to get it back. I thought that this would be a relatively easy fix. Not!

To make a multi-day bad service story short, I called Bank Of America’s customer service and they passed me on to the bank’s money transfer department. The transfer department’s phone rang for minutes. I tried again. They did not pick up. I called customer service back to make sure I was sent to the right phone number. I was and went through the same no-pick-up routine. I gave up. Note, I am doing all of this from a foreign country, which makes the calling a bit more difficult as I have to modify any 800 or 888 numbers to make these calls.

I tried the whole process again the next day but would not let the customer service rep off the line when she passed me to the money transfer department. Again, they didn’t pick up. The customer service rep couldn’t believe that our call went on ringing. I told her that I couldn’t take this anymore, was fed up and wanted to get off the line. But,she made a big service mistake. She did not note my level of frustration and did not offer her name and contact information for me to follow up and did not ask for mine. Poor service management by the bank.

Later that day I called my Portland bank branch directly and asked for the manager. She told me that she would take care of the transfer mistake for me. I didn’t hear back. I called back the next day and was told that she was working on it and would call back. But, nada.

The next day, I bypassed “customer service” by going to Google and called a random branch in New York. A man answered, wondered how I reached him and after I explained the problem, told me that I had reached the right guy and that he would take care of everything. He took my contact information, sent me a follow-up email and a day later told me that the money would be returned to my account. This was efficient and cool. So cool, I emailed his boss about what a great job he did for me. I know the email arrived because I copied the praised employee. Did I ever get a thanks for the kudos from the boss? Something I always did when one of my agency employees got praise from clients? No. I am now convinced that Bank of America has no customer focus.

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