Generally I love UPS. Well "love" might be an overstatement; their tagline synchronizing the world of commerce is sleek and conveys an Obamalike sense of efficiency, but hardly the intoxicating poetry to stimulate romance. Nor do we want our delivery service to be sexy (although I've heard many oohs and ahs about UPS men in their brown shorts). We just want to know that our packages are going to be picked up and delivered when they say they will-or even better yet, when we say they will. And overall, UPS does a superb job of this, for a fair price.
But I just experienced with UPS a case of institutional empathic failure. This occurred during a 35-minute phone call that has left me wanting to SCREAM. Instead, I'll do the mature thing: take a breath...and blog. Here's what happened: 6 months ago I tried to switch the credit card used for my UPS account from my reliable, yet quite pedestrian Chase Mastercard, to my new shiny American Express Gold Card, that had lured me with amenities such as miles, miles, and more miles, concierge service, and other things I'd probably never use. Sounds simple enough: navigate to My Account, find Billing Preferences, delete the old credit card, add the new one, voila! The joys of online efficiency.
And it worked....95% of the time. But about once a month I'd get a piddly little straggler charge still appearing on my Chase Mastercard. So I double-checked my settings on the website to verify that I had deleted the Mastercard. Then called UPS, confirming this card was deleted from system. Yep they said, all gone. Next month, another piddly charge. So I had my office manager call UPS. She can usually take care of anything and everything. But she had no better luck than I did, and this continues for 6 annoying months!
Before calling Mastercard to dispute the charges, I thought I'd give UPS one more try. After the billing department representative, much to my disbelief, insisted she didn't have access to my credit card info, and after her supervisor parroted the same thing, and after being put on hold listening to saccharine sweet elevator music, I was finally transferred to the credit department.
Credit Dept. Lady: The problem is that you have your credit card listed as your default payment method.
Me: But that's what I want!
Credit Dept. Lady: Yes, but you need to have your account number listed as your default payment method.
Me: I don't understand. I want it to be billed to my credit card, just the correct one.
Credit Dept. Lady: Yes, that's why you need to have your account number listed as default payment method. Then your account will be invoiced, which will then be charged to your credit card...
Me: Are you familiar with the writings of Franz Kafka? [Okay, I didn't really say that. Instead I did exactly what she told me to do, somewhat skeptical that this would do the trick.]
Credit Dept. Lady: Thank you. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Me: No, I think that does it.
Credit Dept. Lady: We will be emailing you a brief survey regarding this phone call. I hope that I've provided you with excellent customer service.
Empathy is defined as an ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and see things from their point of view. Obviously this capacity is important in personal relationships, but do institutions really need empathy? Yes, they do--maybe for different reasons--but they need to try to understand the mindset and emotions of their customers.
By forcing me to navigate their byzantine, counterintuitive system, rather than present a system that makes sense from where I'm sitting, UPS totally missed the institutional empathy boat. Who knows why this happened-there may be some historical accounting reasons why things are set up as they are. Maybe they had to merge two incompatible databases. But in presenting an interface for their customers, their web developers or bean counters didn't give sufficient thought to what the user experience would be. Their needs evidently drove the interface setup, not the customers' needs. That's a big no-no.
This may sound like an overly simple explanation. Well that's because it really is that simple. If you want to be successful in any human interaction-whether it's in business, personal relations, or foreign diplomacy, you'd better make a real effort to see things from the other's point of view. You won't always be able to give them exactly what they'd most like, but at least you can make informed decisions, and be able to anticipate when they're likely to be displeased. In most ways UPS succeeds; but in this instance, they get a D (I think they solved my problem, so I won't fail them).
