As if by magic my bank, yes bank, has restored my faith that some companies do strive to please. This is a copy of an e-mail sent to me, and follows a day when the full website of the bank could not be accessed (granted it is an internet bank, but they do have telephone banking as well which was not effected):


Dear Robert,

This is the first time I have felt the need to write to you to apologise if you have tried to access your ******* plan over the last few days via the web and phone, and did not receive our normal level of service. We were experiencing technical problems with our website, which I am pleased to say have now been resolved. Access has now been fully restored to our online service.

The problem was an intermittent fault, which has now been identified and fixed, and we have no reason to believe that this will reoccur.

Our goal is naturally to provide a first class service at all times to our customers and on this occasion, due to these technical issues, we may have failed to do so for some of our customers. I can only apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and would thank you for your patience during this time.

Yours sincerely


I feel more loyal towards this company now simpy for this e-mail and I didn't even consider it a problem in the first place. This highlights a problem often overlooked. What about the people who don't complain when things go wrong? You get the opportunity to say sorry to those who do but the silent majority (if figures stating only 4% of those with a complaint will actually tell you are true) or often overlooked. If they didn't contact us then leave it at that....until they find another company that is, then you don't ever have to worry about them again.

Begs the question, what can companies do to ensure they offer such levels of service? Is it best to own up to everyone even if not all customers had a problem, or is it best to keep quiet and apologise when they complain?

Good issue, Robert

First of all may I ask, did you complain to them at all or were they in anyway aware of the fact that you had been trying to log onto their site ???

The answer to that would solve my question of whether they sent out such a wonderfully scripted apology to all their customers or to those they thought neccessary.

In Voice operations, having looked at a couple of agents sending apology emails to the customers even when not necessarily required or sometimes just to follow up so that the customer is assured of the company's interest in their issue, it is unbelievable as to the unsolicited feedback one recevies acclaiming the agent/company's efforts to look after the customer's welfare.

Hence, yes, I would definetly suggest such a method , however, if initiated only by customer making first contact, I would also believe the correct way to handle this would be to expect the agent in question to take it by gut feeling or instinct, where he can decide whether a follow-up email could be useful or not, dependent on a lot of factors, 2 of which come to mind currently:-

1. Customer's issue is resolved or should be resolved in sometime, at that particular juncture, the agent could send out an email suggesting reply to in case of customer not being totally satisfied with resolution, since this would give the customer an opportunity to remain in touch with the same agent which would bring about a personalised service available to him/her, rather than talk to another agent and explain the whole thing again, which a lot of customers dread during repeat calls.


2. In case of irate or angry customers, one could send out an email such as the one you received, apologising as well as assuring them of timely interaction with, again, a specific email id or number to get to for the same issue, so that the customer would again feel the all - important human touch of personalising the service available to him.


Of course, it would all need to be cost effective, such as, in outsourced call centres, it might not be possible to receive/send emails with the parent company's address or it might not at all be viable to provide a reply to address, since this might initiate the customer requesting , time and again, preferential or personal service.

However, keeping both pros and cons in mind, i defintely believe some email form of assuring the customer of the company's interest in their welfare is extremly important especially with such an overwhelming feeling of impersonal cold service being prevalent with customers about big corporation's service facilitites.

Any comments , Robert ?

if I was trying to gain access to the website or not, although I knew someone who was. Because I haven't!
I understand the cost must play a role and therefore the severity of the problem for customers. Where it is of far reaching effects I think we rely to heavily on only dealing with those who contact us.

I agree with you there Robert, on the far reaching customer retention effects of contacting the customer before them contacting us and would definitely applaud the efforts of the concerned bank in question.

While I was simply thinking aloud concerning the cost effects of such measures, I would suggest that companies look at them more closely, since I am sure cost-effective plans can come to the forefront as well for such situations.

And do excuse my sorry use of the English language.

I always remind myself to not repeat the same typos over and over again, but I guess out of haste, i forget to check my spellings and sometimes grammar too.