It depicts the growing power social media gained in public opinion, access and usage. Just as much as it can contribute to a firm or individual PR, it can make a nightmare as well.

The story is a simple customer care issue that evolved via social media into an overnight nightmare, goes as follows:

An American guy named Dave Carroll flays United Airlines and in the process his guitar gets damaged in the cargo process. Carroll applies to UA, asks for covering his damage and the company takes few months to reply with a decision. Once they do take the decision it is not other than sorry, but no compensation, in so many words.  

So far, an everyday story. However, Carroll opts for the ultimate revenge and does what he does best: compose couple of funny songs named United Breaks Guitars and releases it on youtube.

The next thing happening is amazing: more than five million people viewed the clip! Some experts suggested the clip influenced negatively UA stock price and even caused long run damage to UA brand name. And if you believe this was the worst implication, now the story ended up on Endeavour’s blog…

The story ended by UA finally offering compensation to Carroll but he nobly rejected the payment asking them to give it to someone really needing it.

I myself refuse to join the party around this case, I believe it went out of proportion and that we can all learn a thing or two concerning customer relations and its consequences. I also refuse to add to the flames by naming this post United Breaks Guitars as the subject requests, due to the same reasons.  

Let’s pull this discussion upwards to its principal level rather than dealing with the single case at hand here.

As most of us are aware of, most airlines are responsible for any damage to people or luggage even though in many cases the airlines are victims to ground workers as well. Most airlines will offer compensation to proven damage and damage to luggage is an everyday issue for airlines.

From the company’s perspective, I can see two issues that needed to be solved: the length of time in making the decision and obviously the negative nature of the decision. The first issue should never happen of course and the second is questionable and got worse when the company finally offered compensation, probably after realizing the snowball.

Many firms need to communicate negative or unsatisfactory decision to customers’ demands, however, delaying and prolonging the process is not advised and unless the firm waits for the customer to give up on his/ her case, it is always advised to update the customer as for how long the decision process might take, the information needed, the actions to be taken and the commitment of the company and the person dealing with it for concluding it.

In addition, since there is always more than one way to communicate disappointing messages to customer, the worst thing to do is also making the customer angrier by the tone or manner in which the message was delivered. A customer might be willing to accept a negative answer to his demand but will not accept humiliation, patronizing or any none sincere reply with some empathy.

If a CRM professional makes the mistake and actually manages to add pain on sorrow, he can expect the customer to develop revengeful ideas and even carry them out.

We are all aware of the customers that can never be satisfied and will actually go the extra step just to have few Dollars refund. Some customers are very good at that and spoiling it for everyone else being firms and other customers. If you ever worked more than a day for any airline on this planet you must have heard the following sentence: I’ll never fly with you again…

I remember myself feeling so much better when finding out passengers are actually use that phrase against all airlines evenly. In addition, mostly the passenger is not aware of the carrier identity in the booking process and most flights are being selected for price and timing, not carrier.

The social issue media is actually changing the roles of the game for PR professionals and firms. In today’s reality individuals can get a massive public attention to their message for or against a firm and the days firms had absolute PR power over the individual customer, are over. CRM and PR professionals should take that in calculations when dealing with customers. As they say in relation to traffic but applicable here as well: sometimes it is better being smart than right.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

EU banking basic fees were reported to fluctuate from 27 Euros annual fees in Bulgaria, via 46 Euros in the Netherlands and up to 154 in France and 253 in Italy.

The EU report covers prices of various banking fees of 224 banks, accounting for 81% of the EU market.

 Another exposed issue was the clarity of services, terms, conditions and engagement rules with the bank. Many customers reported the level of clarity in given services was

very low, misleading and insufficient.

The above findings are just the tip of the iceberg as the report itself suggest. The report suggested that some of the misleading is intentional and revealed banking hidden fees and failing customers as a trend.

OK, what did I miss?

High street Banks are acting like some dodgy money exchange shops? What is going on here?

A little economic crisis and the banks are losing it? Just when we thought general trust in the financial system could not be worse…

Well, here is the main problem here: banks are essential part of our economy and finance foundations. If we have problem in this level, the whole system built on it will not function well.

Unfortunately, EU officials have only exposed the problem and are leaving each country and law enforcement agencies to take care of the rest.

The EU officials exposing the problem and publishing it deserve recognition for what they did, however, there is a lot to do in order to set a clear EU message to all EU financial institutes:

Zero tolerance towards dishonest banks and financial services!

EU commission and each EU country should impose strict regulations concerning banking fees and services. It is not possible that the whole world will try to recover from one of its deepest slow downs while banks will row the opposite direction.  This really has to finish.

Endeavour VS. Belasting

Dutch Tax refuses to speak English

To our regret, about two years ago, the Tax authorities in the Netherlands have taken the decision not speak any language than Dutch while speaking to local taxpayers. The decision includes all communication with taxpayers even and especially if the Tax employee is able to express himself in other language.

This one-sided harsh decision was coming as a surprise to most non Dutch speaking people in the Netherlands and has caused a major frustration among individual as well as companies.

The Netherlands is characterized by hosting hundreds of foreign firms and thousands of expatriates living and working locally. Some governmental authorities such as the NFIA are concentrating their efforts on attracting foreign firms to invest in the Netherlands.

Ironically, the same Tax authority that grants the ruling 30% as an incentive to expatriates, is the very same authority that refuses speaking even English with them.

With all the empathy we have towards the Dutch society, facing major immigration to the Netherlands with all its negative implications, we find this decision hurting the expatriates’ community that lives in the Netherlands, working and paying its taxes just like everyone else.

Naturally, these Expats would not expect the local authorities to invest in educating their employees to speak more languages, however, while employees are fluently speaking other languages and willing to help the calling expats, it does not make any sense to forbid usage of other languages in such strict way.

So, why did they take that decision? I am told that the Tax authorities could not guarantee given information’s accuracy and cannot be held responsible for any info it is generating unless it is in Dutch. Since this blog entry is only the beginning of the process, we will send the Tax authorities a letter requesting an explanation for the above mentioned decision and will publish their answer here.

For comparison purposes, let’s look west at the UK for a moment and see how their tax services deal with residents who cannot speak English. Surprisingly, the HM Revenue & Customs service publishes on its internet site that not only they are willing to assist taxpayers in other languages; the CRM team in Nottingham is holding a list detailing employees who are fluent in other languages than English. Impressive, isn’t it? It is especially kind since the Brits could easily claim that English is the only official international language and they are expecting everyone to speak it. As it appears, we would need our own Lady Godiva in the Netherlands in order to change the language decision.

We have other examples for English tolerance, this time in the Netherlands: the Dutch court is able to legalize English written papers without the need to translate it to Dutch. That is amazing, isn’t it? The court is dealing with official and accurate information, but can easily tolerate English in some levels and definitely allows its employees to use it when needed. Since the Dutch court is willing to speak other languages than just Dutch, the Tax claim for information accuracy looks more like an easy excuse than a real reason.

I can testify as for a positive experience I had regarding English tolerance in the Netherlands, when I needed to pay a small traffic fine to the CJIB the Dutch collecting agency. When I got their letter, l felt it was wrong and wrote them about it. I also paid the fine at the same time and when they rejected my appeal, I thought the case was closed.
Reminders were sent to me again and the fine amount was increased. At that time I wrote an English letter to the CJIB explaining the situation. A week later, I have received an official letter in English explaining me that I actually switched two digits on CJIB bank account hence the payment was never done. They gave me again their correct bank account and reduced the fine to its original amount. Now, doesn’t that worth a medal for good service? Someone there actually took the time and efforts to sort this issue in a language I understand. If the CJIB can, why the Tax can’t?
As for the decision itself:
Is it legal? We have no idea but we will surely have a local law office taking a look at it. If we are lucky, it conflicts with a higher law or civil servant standards and therefore vulnerable.
Is this a case of a governmental agency that “forgets” it is here to serve people, not the other way around? Doesn’t this agency adhere to common standards of civil-servant policies or simply can take controversial decisions such as this one only because technically they can?

In terms of management, it seems as if the solution to the precision and accountability issue is by far exaggerated. If this is the problem, the Tax authorities could state that the information they give in any other language, is general and only the Dutch version of the info is official. That would easily solve the problem. Easy.
In practice, most of taxpayers’ inquires are very simple and so are the answers. There is no need to make so many people affected negatively by such decision.

We are calling the Dutch Tax authorities to reconsider their decision forbidding their employees speaking any other language than Dutch.

We are calling everyone that identifies with our cause to support our quest by spreading it and linking to it. We might be able to change it.

Cheers,
David Dekel, CEO
Endeavour Enterprises N.V.
www.endeavour-eu.com