Loose Cannon: A Day For Those Who’d Rather Switch Than Fight

Was Arlo Guthrie right? Does 50 people a day walking into an organization, singing a protest song and walking out make a movement?

I sure hope so, for I’m feeling a revolutionary itch, and I need to scratch it.

A while back, I detailed how my former bank had, through some really awful customer service, pushed me into the rather comfortable arms of one of its competitors (http://www.directmag.com/loosecannon/loose-cannon-need-know-crm-kindergarten-061206/index.html). Readers responded not only with similar tales from their own banks, but added stories about cable companies and other lack-of-service providers.

If their stories are any indication, there is a lot of anger out there at poor customer treatment. Yet there is no concerted way to focus this anger in a way that organizations will hear it. Furthermore, individual actions — one consumer switching one account at a time — can get awfully lonely.

The organizations themselves aren’t going to help. I suspect that many count on either inertia or the daunting amount of paperwork and the customer service jungle to prevent customers from leaving.

Inertia is a rotten reason to reward poor customer relationship management. What if a loose confederation of consumers — say, the readers of a weekly direct marketing humor/opinion column — were to pick one day every year to be “Switch Day” — a day devoted to shedding service providers that haven’t measured up?

Here’s how it would work. Before Switch Day, consumers would list all their service providers and determine which ones weren’t meeting their needs. On the day itself, they would be ready to begin the process of changing their providers. Hopefully, they would have steeled themselves with a good breakfast before trying to cut through phone trees, searching for the hidden Web pages that enable them to sever the relationship, or actually sitting in the waiting room of whichever institution they were trying to leave.

Heck, if the concept catches on, folks waiting to see customer service reps could nod knowingly at each other, and perhaps use their tales of woe as conversation starters.

The latter part of the day would be devoted to signing up with new services. One can imagine the better service providers welcoming new customers with smiling faces and expedited “new account” lines. And families would welcome home whichever sacrificial member had been chosen to brave the bureaucracies with flowers and sweets.

Could choosing a single day to make all these changes potentially overwhelm customer service facilities? Quite frankly, yes — but those organizations tuned into the needs of consumers would probably know to hire additional staff to welcome and swiftly process new customers, while the bad ones…

Well, bring a magazine or two to read while waiting. It’s all in the spirit of the day.

I suspect a weekday would be better as Switch Day than a weekend, as most companies tend to have more customer service reps around then. And I generally like Mondays for this sort of thing, as this leaves the rest of the week free of that hideous sense of impending destiny.

So let me start the ball rolling here. Yes, I’ve opened up an account with Commerce, but I have two “til forbid” subscriptions linked to my former bank. I’ve been meaning to take care of these last few details for a while, but both aversion and apathy have prevented me from doing so. With a few minutes’ reflection, I’m sure most readers have similar tasks they’d like to cross off their lists.

Write in with suggestions, both for potential dates, services to be discontinued and activities, and I’ll incorporate them into next week’s column.

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