I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. As a marketer, you (we) own the entire customer experience. End to end.

It is our responsibility to be the customer – to blind-call in, test the process, see where it breaks.

Else all the brilliant awareness, brand-building, and creative marketing in the world can come to naught.

I’ve blogged about this before (see FedEx), and YouTube has great examples (Comcast technician sleeping on couch, for example).

But the latest personal experience from Bank of America so beautifully illustrated “Stupid Marketing” (aka customer service doing their best to be oxymoronic, with an emphasis on Anti-customer, Anti-service, and Moronic) that I felt it was worth revisiting.

This is such raving stupidity that I’ll actually be naming names. Sorry, folks, but I did give you every chance to avoid this. Sometimes the public spotlight is the only way to cure warts on a company’s backside…

Specifically…

Bank of America recently acquired MBNA. Congrats.

In a great marketing move, they decided to extend, rather than end, a co-promotion with AAA (American Automobile Association) whereby AAA members qualified for an account with nominally higher interest rates.

BofA even chose to publicize this account to its members, via select notification. Again, great test of the promotion.

So I decided to take advantage of this offer. Here’s where the fun starts.

Step 1: Visit local branch, hoping to upgrade. Is Saturday, I’m unshaven and in ratty pants. Local “VP”, a suit-wearing flunky named Gregory Max Braun, ignores me for 15 minutes. When I loudly announce that I’ll be leaving and taking my deposits with me, he manages to extract himself from his important personal business and agrees to help me upgrade the account.

Of course, when I ask him for the actual terms & conditions, he assures me that my old BofA account (an “Interest Maximizer”) is identical to the new account, but the new account gets higher interest.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that statement can’t be factually correct. (For example, the interest has to be pegged to something. That alone means different T&Cs).

I press him for written T&Cs, he insists they’re the same. I ask him to put it in writing, he declines. I ask if he’d mind me taping him saying that the accounts are “absolutely identical”, he says “don’t be absurd” (really, I can’t make this up), then gets up from the desk and walks away.

No kidding. Game over.

Step 2: Call in to BofA. Customer service 800 number has never heard of the promotion. Suggests calling national sales.

Step 3: Call in to BofA national sales. Nice lady on the phone starts converting my account. I remind her “wait, I need the T&Cs, that’s why I called!”. She kindly transfers me to BofA online services, who has no idea what I’m talking about. Again, no kidding. Poor rep says exactly those words.

Step 4: Call in to BofA national sales again. Nice guy finally gives me the formal name of the new account type (“MBNA AAA Cash Maximizer”, as opposed to “BofA Cash Maximizer”. Yes, they’re owned by the same company. Yes, that’s a severe violation of the “marketing means making the name simple and memorable” rule).

Searching BofA’s website yields nothing about this account, but using Google points me to an unlinked page on BofA’s site with T&Cs. I print this out. I ask guy to convert the account. Guy has no idea what I’m talking about. On request, transfers me to supervisor May Xaykaophao (really, she spelled it for me on request), who insists that I must have been in the lobby of an MBNA branch when I learned about the promo, and BofA has no such account. She refuses to look at the URL, insists she’s trying to help me but that Im the one who’s confused, that I won’t let her help me (by transferring me to MBNA’s credit card department), and hangs up on me.

Really.

Step 5: Call in to BofA national sales a third time (heck, this was getting interesting!). Reach customer service rep Stephanie Truong. Explain what I want to do.

She starts the conversion process (hallelujah).

It takes 50 minutes as she looks up things, types in things, asks me for my name at least 3 times, and so forth.

I thought the highlight (lowlight) was when she asked me for the 5-digit promotional codes and regional codes to enter into her computer system (gee, aren’t you supposed to have that info, Steph? Good thing I was able to Google the codes for you…).

But I was wrong.

At Minute 50, she explained that because I was doing the conversion by phone, I could only convert one of my three accounts. 

Oh, and that conversion would kill off my old account number, and give me a new account number, but not immediately – it would be some random point in the next 48 hours.

Of course, they would not be telling me when the account switched over – she suggested (with no humor at all) that I “check online”. (How exactly I would check online was unclear, since one needs the account number to log in online… perhaps, when I couldn’t log in any more, that meant the account had changed, and I could call in to get the new number?).

Of course, she explained, I could go into a branch in person and all would be done instantly… (!)

But that wasn’t the end.

The best (worst) moment was at the 51^st minute, when I said  “Gee, it would have been nice to know that part about the phone limitations at the start of the 50 minutes”, and she said “oh, well, it’s my policy to mention that only at this point in the process”.

Get that?

She’s just spent 50 minutes pissing off a customer, withholding critical information, while other callers to BofA sit on hold longer.

Wow.

I was fairly unhappy. And surprised.

As Dave Barry says, “I am not making this up”.

(My more astute friend pointed out, “No, no, Stephanie has it right – the point of BofA’s approach isn’t to keep customers happy... it's to keep customers'  money”. Thank you, dear heart, I owe ya for that one...)

Just to add a final touch, when I got off the phone and checked my mail, Corus Bank (with whom I have a very small CD) had sent me a box of chocolates. For being a good customer.

Guess which bank is getting my money and my happy?

Again: Marketers, beware. Your customer service just took a substantial investment you’d made in me over the years, and blew it all at the slots. Don’t assume your company knows what your program is meant to do – spend the time to roll it out correctly, and be sure it works end to end.

Oh, and BofA? It’s going to take a lot more than chocolates to get my business back.

Good luck.

(ps: when I went to the branch, they told me that Greg, in step 1, had actually confused a "balance rewards" program with a "AAA MBNA" program. Of course, the balance rewards program wasn't as good. Of course, the AAA program couldn't be applied for in the bank. So I went online, opened a new AAA account, and transferred my entire balance into it, then closed my old account. 5 Minutes. Thank god for the internet. Foolish of me to not have ignored BofA's instructions and done that first. Funny, you'd think that would be behavior they'd want to encourage... which I guess they did, in a sort of punitive way)

[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]