MBNA Misinformation

DullGreyGuy

Superhoopza said:

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

You'd need to speak to someone who understands how MBNAs systems all work and communicate to each other. 

Haven't worked in front line banking but did plenty of work in call centres before I escaped. In one mail order company life was particularly complex. Products were coded as AB12345 where A represented the department, B represented the catalogue/brochure, and the numbers just identified the item in the department. In principle you could type A?12345 and it would bring up all the options for the second letter and all the different prices.

Customers were sometimes sent promo codes that were separate from the a sales leaflet and could be discounts or BNPL etc. As an operator you could tell if the system had accepted the code or not but nothing onscreen told you what the promo had done. We did have a paper list of them but it was far from complete. 

Some promo codes and promo leaflets weren't compatible with each other, ie you could have it at 50% off from the sales book or you could have it on a 12 month BNPL not both. With discount codes it was fairly evident as long as you paid attention but other types of code again no feedback. 

You'd often get customer phoning up saying they'd seen something in a flyer but have lost it so dont have the catalogue number and asking if they were entitled to any promo codes etc. Agents did their best to help but I spent a large amount of my time on Enquiries/Complaints with people saying they didnt get the 9 months interest free credit they'd been promised etc. 

You'd like to think banks have amazing hyper modern systems where none of this nonsense still exists. The reality is that touching anything in systems is considered extremely high risk and so the pace of change is glacial. Front ends for customers move a touch faster but backends for employees are a low priority and they just have to put up with the pain. 

It could be they too have separate lists of offers and have to try and work out if your account fits the criteria or not themselves without having the toolset of the dedicated team.

Superhoopza

th081 said:

Because the staff are undertrained and underpaid and likely have a high turn over. Maybe he was looking at offers not applicable to your account. Who knows. 

I don't feel you've addressed how they could see something and then tell me a different story 5 minutes later. I know you wouldn't know, none of us do. My point is how can you say it's a simple mistake if you don't know how it occured?

Superhoopza

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

You'd need to speak to someone who understands how MBNAs systems all work and communicate to each other. 

Haven't worked in front line banking but did plenty of work in call centres before I escaped. In one mail order company life was particularly complex. Products were coded as AB12345 where A represented the department, B represented the catalogue/brochure, and the numbers just identified the item in the department. In principle you could type A?12345 and it would bring up all the options for the second letter and all the different prices.

Customers were sometimes sent promo codes that were separate from the a sales leaflet and could be discounts or BNPL etc. As an operator you could tell if the system had accepted the code or not but nothing onscreen told you what the promo had done. We did have a paper list of them but it was far from complete. 

Some promo codes and promo leaflets weren't compatible with each other, ie you could have it at 50% off from the sales book or you could have it on a 12 month BNPL not both. With discount codes it was fairly evident as long as you paid attention but other types of code again no feedback. 

You'd often get customer phoning up saying they'd seen something in a flyer but have lost it so dont have the catalogue number and asking if they were entitled to any promo codes etc. Agents did their best to help but I spent a large amount of my time on Enquiries/Complaints with people saying they didnt get the 9 months interest free credit they'd been promised etc. 

You'd like to think banks have amazing hyper modern systems where none of this nonsense still exists. The reality is that touching anything in systems is considered extremely high risk and so the pace of change is glacial. Front ends for customers move a touch faster but backends for employees are a low priority and they just have to put up with the pain. 

It could be they too have separate lists of offers and have to try and work out if your account fits the criteria or not themselves without having the toolset of the dedicated team.

Thank you for that, appreciate the effort in time to help me understand why systems might not be fit for purpose. I say it in jest but you'd hope they would use mine and other's high interest rates to pay for better training and systems.

DullGreyGuy

Superhoopza said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

You'd need to speak to someone who understands how MBNAs systems all work and communicate to each other. 

Haven't worked in front line banking but did plenty of work in call centres before I escaped. In one mail order company life was particularly complex. Products were coded as AB12345 where A represented the department, B represented the catalogue/brochure, and the numbers just identified the item in the department. In principle you could type A?12345 and it would bring up all the options for the second letter and all the different prices.

Customers were sometimes sent promo codes that were separate from the a sales leaflet and could be discounts or BNPL etc. As an operator you could tell if the system had accepted the code or not but nothing onscreen told you what the promo had done. We did have a paper list of them but it was far from complete. 

Some promo codes and promo leaflets weren't compatible with each other, ie you could have it at 50% off from the sales book or you could have it on a 12 month BNPL not both. With discount codes it was fairly evident as long as you paid attention but other types of code again no feedback. 

You'd often get customer phoning up saying they'd seen something in a flyer but have lost it so dont have the catalogue number and asking if they were entitled to any promo codes etc. Agents did their best to help but I spent a large amount of my time on Enquiries/Complaints with people saying they didnt get the 9 months interest free credit they'd been promised etc. 

You'd like to think banks have amazing hyper modern systems where none of this nonsense still exists. The reality is that touching anything in systems is considered extremely high risk and so the pace of change is glacial. Front ends for customers move a touch faster but backends for employees are a low priority and they just have to put up with the pain. 

It could be they too have separate lists of offers and have to try and work out if your account fits the criteria or not themselves without having the toolset of the dedicated team.

Thank you for that, appreciate the effort in time to help me understand why systems might not be fit for purpose. I say it in jest but you'd hope they would use mine and other's high interest rates to pay for better training and systems.

A long time ago I was working on a project to replace all the Claims systems/processes in a mass market consumer insurance firm. We were estimating £80m costs over 5 years to do it. The CEO offered the consultancy that we were working with a blank cheque if they could do it in 18 months, they said no. I left long before it was finished but think it actually ended up taking 7 years and of cause by that point the tech you put in at the start of the process is now starting to look a bit old. 


Training is another complex one, most companies have specialist teams but a generalist team too. There will always be the question of how much training you give the generalist team... clearly they aren't going to do the full training of each of the specialist teams as that'd mean 6+ months training to just take your first call but its debatable how far you go. You then have the second issue of that team wanting to be helpful, not having the tools/training to do what the specialist teams do and in some cases being targeted against transferring people. The result generally is that they step beyond their knowledge and dont always get it right. 

Call monitoring should pick things up but the monitors dont necessarily know if the answer was right or wrong as it's not on their score sheet for the generalist team. They instead are marking based on use of the customer name, ensuring they did DPA checks correctly, not giving advice, remembered to offer the special offer of the day etc etc


A former boss wanted to change our contact centre so everyone was fully multi-skilled with access to the full toolset but it would more than triple the operational cost for the business and that didnt factor in that the staff may become more highly poached by competitors if they were all so highly trained... we already had issues of Recruitement drives being done outside our offices because they liked our staff training and paid more than us. 

Superhoopza

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

You'd need to speak to someone who understands how MBNAs systems all work and communicate to each other. 

Haven't worked in front line banking but did plenty of work in call centres before I escaped. In one mail order company life was particularly complex. Products were coded as AB12345 where A represented the department, B represented the catalogue/brochure, and the numbers just identified the item in the department. In principle you could type A?12345 and it would bring up all the options for the second letter and all the different prices.

Customers were sometimes sent promo codes that were separate from the a sales leaflet and could be discounts or BNPL etc. As an operator you could tell if the system had accepted the code or not but nothing onscreen told you what the promo had done. We did have a paper list of them but it was far from complete. 

Some promo codes and promo leaflets weren't compatible with each other, ie you could have it at 50% off from the sales book or you could have it on a 12 month BNPL not both. With discount codes it was fairly evident as long as you paid attention but other types of code again no feedback. 

You'd often get customer phoning up saying they'd seen something in a flyer but have lost it so dont have the catalogue number and asking if they were entitled to any promo codes etc. Agents did their best to help but I spent a large amount of my time on Enquiries/Complaints with people saying they didnt get the 9 months interest free credit they'd been promised etc. 

You'd like to think banks have amazing hyper modern systems where none of this nonsense still exists. The reality is that touching anything in systems is considered extremely high risk and so the pace of change is glacial. Front ends for customers move a touch faster but backends for employees are a low priority and they just have to put up with the pain. 

It could be they too have separate lists of offers and have to try and work out if your account fits the criteria or not themselves without having the toolset of the dedicated team.

Thank you for that, appreciate the effort in time to help me understand why systems might not be fit for purpose. I say it in jest but you'd hope they would use mine and other's high interest rates to pay for better training and systems.

A long time ago I was working on a project to replace all the Claims systems/processes in a mass market consumer insurance firm. We were estimating £80m costs over 5 years to do it. The CEO offered the consultancy that we were working with a blank cheque if they could do it in 18 months, they said no. I left long before it was finished but think it actually ended up taking 7 years and of cause by that point the tech you put in at the start of the process is now starting to look a bit old. 


Training is another complex one, most companies have specialist teams but a generalist team too. There will always be the question of how much training you give the generalist team... clearly they aren't going to do the full training of each of the specialist teams as that'd mean 6+ months training to just take your first call but its debatable how far you go. You then have the second issue of that team wanting to be helpful, not having the tools/training to do what the specialist teams do and in some cases being targeted against transferring people. The result generally is that they step beyond their knowledge and dont always get it right. 

Call monitoring should pick things up but the monitors dont necessarily know if the answer was right or wrong as it's not on their score sheet for the generalist team. They instead are marking based on use of the customer name, ensuring they did DPA checks correctly, not giving advice, remembered to offer the special offer of the day etc etc


A former boss wanted to change our contact centre so everyone was fully multi-skilled with access to the full toolset but it would more than triple the operational cost for the business and that didnt factor in that the staff may become more highly poached by competitors if they were all so highly trained... we already had issues of Recruitement drives being done outside our offices because they liked our staff training and paid more than us. 

So long and short of it is it's too expensive to train everyone properly and if that hampers customer service then so be it, so long as basic training covers most people's queries.

born_again

eskbanker said:

born_again said:

Complaints cost money for staff to investigate, which will be far more than £30. Then they having done this, make the decision if any recompense is due.

So your complaint will be logged as a complaint with the reason for it, but then marked as resolved with a £30 (call it what you want)
Rep just using their write off & common sense to solve the issue.

I think that's OP's point, that a small goodwill gesture doesn't solve the issue as such, in terms of the root cause of the customer being given conflicting information, it just allows a complaint to be closed off!

But it is still looked at, if it is happening often. That is part of the complaint team remit, to review all complaints, even if resolved by the 1st rep & take forward issue that are happening often. As well as FCA review all complaint stats & the reason for them. So if this is a common complaint, then they will be asking what is being done to resolve the issue.

They are never just swept under the carpet. 👍

In terms of MBNA systems. They are a company that have taken on a lot of different brands, so may not all be on the same system. It maybe a case that some of the taken over brands are on legacy systems, which some reps may have a better handle on than others in terms of finding outstanding offers, which most likely will translate across to App & offer showing in there.

DullGreyGuy

Superhoopza said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Superhoopza said:

th081 said:

It just seems a simple mistake. You knew you had no offers on the app, the online people may have given some wrong info you called and was given the correct info. No big deal not really worthy of a complaint to waste people's time. 

presume you can explain if it's so simple why a chat rep said no offers then 5 mins gave me an expiry date and rate for an offer?

You'd need to speak to someone who understands how MBNAs systems all work and communicate to each other. 

Haven't worked in front line banking but did plenty of work in call centres before I escaped. In one mail order company life was particularly complex. Products were coded as AB12345 where A represented the department, B represented the catalogue/brochure, and the numbers just identified the item in the department. In principle you could type A?12345 and it would bring up all the options for the second letter and all the different prices.

Customers were sometimes sent promo codes that were separate from the a sales leaflet and could be discounts or BNPL etc. As an operator you could tell if the system had accepted the code or not but nothing onscreen told you what the promo had done. We did have a paper list of them but it was far from complete. 

Some promo codes and promo leaflets weren't compatible with each other, ie you could have it at 50% off from the sales book or you could have it on a 12 month BNPL not both. With discount codes it was fairly evident as long as you paid attention but other types of code again no feedback. 

You'd often get customer phoning up saying they'd seen something in a flyer but have lost it so dont have the catalogue number and asking if they were entitled to any promo codes etc. Agents did their best to help but I spent a large amount of my time on Enquiries/Complaints with people saying they didnt get the 9 months interest free credit they'd been promised etc. 

You'd like to think banks have amazing hyper modern systems where none of this nonsense still exists. The reality is that touching anything in systems is considered extremely high risk and so the pace of change is glacial. Front ends for customers move a touch faster but backends for employees are a low priority and they just have to put up with the pain. 

It could be they too have separate lists of offers and have to try and work out if your account fits the criteria or not themselves without having the toolset of the dedicated team.

Thank you for that, appreciate the effort in time to help me understand why systems might not be fit for purpose. I say it in jest but you'd hope they would use mine and other's high interest rates to pay for better training and systems.

A long time ago I was working on a project to replace all the Claims systems/processes in a mass market consumer insurance firm. We were estimating £80m costs over 5 years to do it. The CEO offered the consultancy that we were working with a blank cheque if they could do it in 18 months, they said no. I left long before it was finished but think it actually ended up taking 7 years and of cause by that point the tech you put in at the start of the process is now starting to look a bit old. 


Training is another complex one, most companies have specialist teams but a generalist team too. There will always be the question of how much training you give the generalist team... clearly they aren't going to do the full training of each of the specialist teams as that'd mean 6+ months training to just take your first call but its debatable how far you go. You then have the second issue of that team wanting to be helpful, not having the tools/training to do what the specialist teams do and in some cases being targeted against transferring people. The result generally is that they step beyond their knowledge and dont always get it right. 

Call monitoring should pick things up but the monitors dont necessarily know if the answer was right or wrong as it's not on their score sheet for the generalist team. They instead are marking based on use of the customer name, ensuring they did DPA checks correctly, not giving advice, remembered to offer the special offer of the day etc etc


A former boss wanted to change our contact centre so everyone was fully multi-skilled with access to the full toolset but it would more than triple the operational cost for the business and that didnt factor in that the staff may become more highly poached by competitors if they were all so highly trained... we already had issues of Recruitement drives being done outside our offices because they liked our staff training and paid more than us. 

So long and short of it is it's too expensive to train everyone properly and if that hampers customer service then so be it, so long as basic training covers most people's queries.

It's highly expensive to train everyone to a high level of proficiency across all areas and pay them all well enough to stick around. Generally its not thought that the average punter would be willing to pay a £50 annual fee to support such operational expense, certainly in insurance people will switch from household known ethical brand to unknown offshore brand to save less than £5 a year so the idea of them paying an extra £50 just for more knowledgable staff when the existing staff answer 95%+ of questions adequately doesn't stack up. 

I mean you can go to AmEx Centurion and then get a very different standard of agent but then its a £7,000 in year 1 and £3,400 every year after in fees. 

Superhoopza

MBNA responded admitting fault and apologising for providing incorrect information and therefore in their eyes, settled the claim by offering £30. Getting them to acknowledge being wrong was probably the best I could get out of it.