AOL Customer Service - Improving the Quality of Service

2007-03-08 10:33:40

( Financial )



AOL customer service has been recently forced to adopt drastic changes in its procedures and incentive program for its CSRs. Hundreds of dissatisfied customers filed their complaints against AOLs bad customer service. According to the customers, they had difficulty in cancelling their AOL services. Others complained that they were still getting billed despite discontinued service.

After several investigations, it was found out that these customer problems arose from the kind of reward system that AOL customer service was practicing. The company rewarded CSRs money and other incentives for saving customers from cancelling their subscriptions. Moreover, the CSRs were required to meet the minimum percentage of saved customers. Because of these, most CSRs were encouraged not to honor the cancellation requests of the customers. CSRs even learned to scam customers just to meet the quota and earn bonuses.

As a result, AOL was penalized to pay the state of New York a sum of $1.25 million. The state attorney general also ordered the company to reimburse cash refunds equivalent to up to 4 months of services. This was not the first time that AOL was penalized for the same customer issues. It previously paid the state of Ohio $75,000 and reimbursed some refunds to customers.

Apart from the penalties and refund reimbursements, AOL customer service was also required to amend its system of rewards. AOL must eliminate the saves quota in order for the CSRs to receive a bonus. This is to discourage CSRs from cheating customers by not honoring their cancellation requests. Moreover, this will direct CSRs to focus more on providing quality customer support rather than getting rewards and incentives.

Hopefully, the reforms that will be adopted by AOL customer service will help them improve their customer service. Eventually, an excellent customer service may help the company get more customers, or better yet, may even bring back former customers.


All rights Reserved © Tradenet Services srl
Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form.