Are You Getting Feedback When You Need It?

Companies are always looking for more efficient ways to handle their organizational processes in order to cut down on wasted time. On PayPal.com, one of the ways they did this was by creating a more automated customer service line. First, you go through a list of questions that are potentially related to your need.

Next, you get sent to an automated customer service bot that tries to answer your question or you based on keywords. Only if you are unable to find your information can you email PayPal and get a direct response. It's a nice system that likely improves the flow of information to and from PayPal, but it's incomplete, and unfortunately PayPal hasn't created any program that allows for customer feedback.

Someone within the organization needed to send money to a stranger as a response to a personal project, and didn't want that person to receive their full name. They needed to find out if there was a way for anonymity. So they searched the help and found nothing.

They were then sent to the automated customer service rep, and that rep was completely unable to understand what the individual meant by "How Do I Hide My Name" and related questions. At this point there was still no opportunity to provide feedback.

Finally, they sent an email to PayPal. Once again, however, there were problems. First, PayPal didn't have an option for "Other" when choosing the topic of the email – you're forced to pick a subtopic, but this particular subtopic didn't exist.

Finally, after sending the email, the individual receive a response directly from PayPal – and the response had nothing to do with the question. In fact, the response was about what happens if you have a "Hold" on an eBay payment. There was no place to respond, and once again no opportunity to provide feedback.

This is a minor example of a more serious problem – creating a change that drastically affects customers without finding out if that change is providing customers with the experience they need to be satisfied. The individual was never able to receive an answer, and while PayPal has a monopoly on online banking, if there was another competitor this might have been a reason for the individual to try them out. Asking for feedback is an important part of a good business strategy, and the PayPal example serves as a reminder to how important it can be.