Sunday, January 06, 2019

Make things simple for customers

I had an interesting exchange with the Customer Care of Ohms Energy.

I found it difficult to use their temporary password and change to my password. I could not find the link. They had actually provided it, but it was lost in a very long email.

Here is the reply from customer care:

Quote
We would like to explain that the temporary password is in such combination of letters and numbers so as to make it secure and deter unauthorised login.
The aim is to secure your account information.
Unquote

I gave them this response:

Quote
I know that people like you do not listen.
There is no need to secure the account as there is nothing that the customer can do.
I used websites from Google etc. and they just give a simple 4 digit PIN for me to enter my preferred password.
Anyway, you can check from your record how many customers go through the secure password (which you expire anyway) to change their password.
Unquote

I followed up with this longer suggestion:

Quote
This is another suggestion.
You send to me a very long email containing important things that I have to do, such as updating my password, and passing my referral code to friends, and also attaching the documents on the contract.
Most people just ignore long emails.
I suggest that you should send out 3 separate short emails for:
a) change the password
b) refer your friends
c) here are the contracts for your reference.
Emails cost you nothing to send.
The short emails will catch your customer's attention and get them to do the things that need to be done.
If I get a short email containing my referral code, I can forward it to my families and friends.
Unquote

I am sharing this exchange because the approach adopted by Ohms Energy is typical of the "Singapore" approach - too much focus on "security" (even when unnecessary) and making things difficult for customers.

Tan Kin Lian

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