Bank Of America Solves Serious Customer Issue
Bank of America rectified an issue that was affecting the account balances of customers who had recently completed Zelle transactions, but the way they handled the crisis is indicative of a complete customer service failure.
When a person goes on their mobile banking app to check on their accounts, there is not a scarier feeling when the figure you see is much lower than the figure you expected to see. Unfortunately, this was the case on Wednesday for Bank of America customers, whose funds had gone missing due to an issue with Zelle transactions. Thankfully, the issue has since been rectified, but that’s not to say BofA customers weren’t put through the wringer.
Customers reportedly felt shock and panic as they scrambled through their transaction history to try and discern where the error stemmed from. There were feelings related to the cascading impacts of not having enough money in their accounts. Unfortunately, Bank of America failed to quell customer tensions.
To compound the customer’s frustration, the Bank of America representatives were responding with an uncertain audible shrug of the shoulders. When tensions are running high for a customer, they often will start feeling despondent, and for an organization’s agent to bring the tenor of the conversation back to a more productive level they need to respond in a confident manner and assure the customer that they are well informed about the issue at hand. They can offer peace of mind to those affected customers that their bank will rectify the issue and even though it may be an inconvenience currently once the issue is resolved it will all be like it never happened and the customer will not be negatively impacted.
However, this was not how the Bank of America customer service department responded to their patron’s dilemma. Instead, they caused even more panic by not being able to answer their calls in a timely manner, and if you did get a representative, they were not able to clearly explain that their internal systems were having issues with its interactions with Zelle the interbank electronic money transfer system.
It could have been as simple as a statement like “Bank of America technicians were aware of the issue and were working as quickly as possible to correct the problem and restore the correct balances.” The lack of either internal leadership communication or agent preparedness sent customers out of their service queues and directly onto social media platforms loudly voicing their disdain for the bank.
One customer tweeted, “So cool how @BankofAmerica magically disappeared a large Zelle transaction that HAD ALREADY POSTED and I had used to pay bills. Now I’m extremely in debt in my checking, and I can’t get ahold of them. Unbelievable.” Some of the representatives even played the pass-the-buck game and referred the banking customers to contact Zelle which saw a huge spike in their call volume. Zelle’s customer service agents were having to de-escalate those angry customers as they explained their systems are functioning normally with all the other banks in the country and that the problem was with Bank of America’s internal systems.
The Zelle Twitter handle even got in on the action making sure that the public knew where the problem was emanating from and who to contact for information, “The Zelle App & Network are up & running. We are aware of an issue that is impacting Bank of America customers when sending & receiving payments. We recommend contacting Bank of America’s customer support team for additional updates.” According to NPR, “As of 3 p.m. ET, Bank of America said the problem had been resolved.”
Unfortunately for Bank of America and Zelle, this system and customer service failure caught the eye of Senator Elizabeth Warren who has made many headlines in the past going after the big national banks and their business processes. She tweeted, “Bank of America and Zelle “are apparently failing customers again, with money somehow disappearing from accounts. This should be fixed immediately and customers should be compensated. I’ve called out serious fraud issues on Zelle and this is their latest failure.”
If either company continues to have public issues, Senator Warren is not opposed to dragging those CEOs and other senior company leaders into public congressional hearings to answer for their processes. And that is something that does not usually end well for those people’s careers.
