Image by Zach Klein via Flickr

You think trust doesn’t matter in the online world? Take these two scenarios and tell me why it doesn’t.

Scenario A:

Making flight reservations through Orbitz.com, the illustrious online travel service. Select itinerary A, jump through hoops, enter payment info, get told flights not available. Go back, select new itinerary, enter payment info, get told AGAIN flights not available. Select last itinerary, enter payment info, get a credit card decline. What?

I contact the bank. Apparently, for every itinerary I went to book – even when Orbitz wouldn’t complete them – they authorized my card for nearly $800. Three times. Card is now frozen due to suspected fraud.

Contact Orbitz with instructions from my bank, stating that they need to call my bank directly to authorize removal of those pending charges. Spend an hour on the phone with an Orbitz representative across the ocean somewhere who is rude, impatient, interrupts me, and takes three separate phone calls to my bank to reverse charges THEY made before I can finally book my trip. (My bank tells me that it should have taken no more than 10 minutes. Total.)

Scenario B:

Ordering some merchandise through CafePress.com – a significant order for over $1000.

Because of a glitch on THEIR website, my order is screwy, so they contact me and ask me to allow them to cancel the order and start over. So I agree. They agree to give me free one-day shipping in return for the glitch and to make sure I get my stuff on time. Cool. I’m to place the order again, include the one day shipping, and then they’ll credit me for it.

Next day, go and place the order. Pay for shipping. Call customer service, who (after about three explanations) eventually finds the notes about the free shipping and says okay, fine. Complete said order (which actually involves again canceling the order and placing it again, minus the shipping, instead of just giving me a $40 credit. But whatever).

But here’s the rub. Today, I go to make a plane reservation on my credit card. Declined. WTF?

Call bank (I’m with Chase). Their fraud department has been flagged because:

* The original order that CafePress authorized but says they canceled is still sitting on my card.
* The second order was placed, then canceled again, then RE-placed to accommodate the free shipping.
* CafePress ALSO charged me for the order that they have since shipped.

So now I’m over the credit limit on my tiny little business credit card, and the fraud department (rightfully so) has frozen the card because there are now five separate authorizations and cancelations from the same damn merchant, only one of which constitutes the actual order. Nice.

The Resolution

I have to give a big fat shoutout to Chase Bank for this, which I never thought I’d do. I was actually reticent to join a big national bank, but in both the scenarios above, their CSR’s and Fraud Department went out of their way to resolve the issues. In today’s case, they actually got on a conference call WITH me to call the CafePress people and back me up. And when the original customer service rep got snotty, my Chase rep stood right up to her and explained that I was a Chase customer, asked for a supervisor, and reiterated they (Chase) were going to do what it took to make sure that I wasn’t paying for Cafe Press’ mistakes. (Right on.)

When we couldn’t arrive at a resolution on the phone because even the Cafe Press supervisor couldn’t manage to fix it, Chase got off the phone and reassured me that if Cafe Press didn’t call me back with a resolution, I should call Chase back again and they’d help me with next steps. CafePress did call me back a bit later, again conferenced on the bank, but ultimately it was MY BANK that had to suggest a resolution, not Cafe Press, even though they weren’t the ones who had made the mistake. (Chase even called me back afterwards to ensure that I was satisfied with the resolution).  So yay, George and Susan at Chase. And George’s parting comment to me?

“You’re our customer and we just wanted to make sure you were taken care of. We’ve got your back.”

The Point

I’ve become distrustful of online merchants, mostly because I feel like they hide behind their lack of brick and mortar. Their phone systems are horrible to navigate (I can get to a human at Chase from the get-go by pressing zero). In these two scenarios, even though the merchants were the ones charging me all kinds of extraneous money, their reps were rude and defensive and unhelpful.  As for Cafe Press and Orbitz, I‘ll never do business with them again. Period.

It’s not that I’m not okay with mistakes. Those happen. It’s that I’m not okay with swift, courteous, and responsive resolution of those mistakes. I don’t trust that these companies give a flying you-know-what about whether or not I’m happy, or inconvenienced, or anything else. I felt like a transaction number to them from start to finish, and I felt like *I* was inconveniencing *them* when something went wrong.

My bank, on the other hand, for being a massive commercial bank, took personal care of me. Addressed me by name. Made sure they had a phone number to reach me on so they could contact me when they solved the problem. Thanked me for my patience (and it wasn’t even their problem), And then they did something neither one of the merchants did – they thanked me for my business. I walked away reassured and cared for.

Trust matters. Customer service matters. It matters even more when you can’t see someone’s face, walk into their store or office, and talk to a real person to get reassurance that they’ve solved your issue. When you’re online, you have to work that much harder to get and keep the trust and personal connection with your customers. And when things go haywire – as they’re apt to do – perhaps we all need to think about how that need for trust and reassurance translates across wires and screens, and work that much harder to let people know that they – as people – matter to us.

I’ve sure learned a few things about how to help people in my role through all of this. And I’m thinking hard about how to keep bridging the value of people across online and offline worlds. What’ve you got to say?

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