Customer Happiness Versus Customer Security

I received disgruntled feedback from a customer recently that threw me for a loop.  Of course, I had to share and I’d really like YOUR feedback on situations when we’re faced with a dilemma of customer happiness versus customer security:

The customer had experienced a tragic loss in their family. They were notified during the business day, at the office, and had to drive to the hospital to identify the body. To ensure that their business calls were sent to voicemail instead of ringing through, they called our customer support en route to have the settings updated. In the rush of things, the customer could not recall their password or remember their phone number. Our representative asked them a variety of other account details to verify, such as the last 5 digits of credit card on file. In a time of such frustration and tragedy, the customer saw this as an absolute burden to have to verify account information. Our representative however had the customer’s security in mind. The call ended with the customer pulling over on the side of the road to find their credit card to verify the account to allow us to make the changes.

My empathy strength kicked in immediately when reading this. I felt absolutely horrible for the customer.

But, then the sadness of reality kicked in. People lie. And people will make up horrible stories like this to try to do bad things. We all know this. They ruin it for all the good, honest people in the world.

So, how can I make this better?

I gave condolences and wrote to them with empathy and an honest explanation of why we did what we did to verify their account. I also followed up a few days later to check in to make sure everything is alright. I also am in the process of sending a bouquet of flowers to their office to show that we do care—we are sorry for their loss. But, we are happy they are our customer. We are real people who go through this stuff too and we get it. But, we also get the value of security for accounts and we take this very seriously.

This was yet another feedback opportunity to show our true customer service colors.

I hope I did good! Did I miss anything valuable? Share with me!

[custom_author=jenny]