Disclosing the Cause of an Issue to a Customer
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
Give a non-technical explanation. "Due to a race condition a message could be lost under heavy load. This has now been fixed." should work.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
When you mess with peoples cash they want assurances the cause of an issue that caused them a loss is fixed. Imagine how irate you would be if your entire savings were wiped with a glitch? Now imagine your trepidation in continuing to do business with a company whose philosophy is, "Oh, my bad". Trust me, if you have a non-transactional financial system (which it seems you do) you have a much, much bigger problem than competitors.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
It sounds like you work for a brokerage firm or trading house. Such a question is a matter for the compliance department: I would strongly recommend referring the question to them. If you say the wrong thing to an angry client, your firm could be in a lot of hot soup. Provide an explanation to Compliance, and let them pass it on to the client. Complaints of any kind should never, ever be handled by anyone else.
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When you mess with peoples cash they want assurances the cause of an issue that caused them a loss is fixed. Imagine how irate you would be if your entire savings were wiped with a glitch? Now imagine your trepidation in continuing to do business with a company whose philosophy is, "Oh, my bad". Trust me, if you have a non-transactional financial system (which it seems you do) you have a much, much bigger problem than competitors.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
Can you elaborate on what you mean by a 'non-transactional' financial system? I'm not sure I get what you meant.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
Tell them that the information is company proprietary, and the specifics of the fix are not relevant. If he continues pressing you, tell him you know someone with a volatile personality, guns, and the skill to use them at a considerable distance.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
Tell them that the information is company proprietary, and the specifics of the fix are not relevant. If he continues pressing you, tell him you know someone with a volatile personality, guns, and the skill to use them at a considerable distance.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
Know someone, or am someone? BTW, I'm putting up my shooting plaque in my cube.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
modified on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 12:19 PM
I have a couple of hard drives on my desk that I ventillated with an AR-15. :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
I have a couple of hard drives on my desk that I ventillated with an AR-15. :)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997I should do that this weekend with my hard drive that my last company sent away to get fixed. They couldn't even recover anything, and were willing to spend a few $k's on it.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean by a 'non-transactional' financial system? I'm not sure I get what you meant.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
Ennis will likely provide a better explanation than I, but if messages are lost somehow, then you have a non-transactional system. Consider an accounting system that books two ledger entries for every accounting action. If one entry fails while the second one succeeds, your ledger system will never balance. Both entries are deemed a logical transaction and both must succeed for the accounting action to be correct. In your specific case, the loss of an acknowledgement message, should have resulted in a time-out error that would have rolled back the acceptance of the trade. That would have made it more transactional. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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It sounds like you work for a brokerage firm or trading house. Such a question is a matter for the compliance department: I would strongly recommend referring the question to them. If you say the wrong thing to an angry client, your firm could be in a lot of hot soup. Provide an explanation to Compliance, and let them pass it on to the client. Complaints of any kind should never, ever be handled by anyone else.
Yes, the company itself is a brokerage. I should have pointed out that I am not responsible for the error, the fix, or providing the explanation. I have been on the long nasty e-mail chain and it got me thinking about what this Level 1 support guy might send out if under enough pressure from the client.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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I'm looking to get some input from you guys on this matter. Last night we had a message get lost. Meaning, we never sent a trade acknowledgement to a customer, but booked the order in our system and executed it. The customer has been furious all morning about it. I did not investigate or work on the fix, but the problem is now fixed we are saying. However, the customer is demanding a full explanation of why it happened and how we fixed it. They won't start trading and it seems they might pull the plug if we don't supply it. I for one, strongly feel that we shouldn't disclose how an issue was resolved after we have accepted responsibility. In my industry, someone who is a customer, is often times a competitor, too. It isn't worth it to give them any trash they can use against us to woo potential customers.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
Do what I do when I forget birthdays. Set back your PC clock, compose lovely email. Send it. Correct PC clock again. Tell the person on the other side that their email must be slow or broken and to check the sent date, if they wonder why it only reached them now :)
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Ennis will likely provide a better explanation than I, but if messages are lost somehow, then you have a non-transactional system. Consider an accounting system that books two ledger entries for every accounting action. If one entry fails while the second one succeeds, your ledger system will never balance. Both entries are deemed a logical transaction and both must succeed for the accounting action to be correct. In your specific case, the loss of an acknowledgement message, should have resulted in a time-out error that would have rolled back the acceptance of the trade. That would have made it more transactional. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
The actual issue was that when the production account for this customer was set up, it was mapped to the demo book keeping system, which sends the acknowledgement. The failure happened there, and the actual trade engine thought everything was fine.
Chris Meech wrote:
In your specific case, the loss of an acknowledgement message, should have resulted in a time-out error that would have rolled back the acceptance of the trade.
But now you got me thinking. How is one to know that our ack message was lost, without waiting to see. Our messages are shot out to our banks as soon as we get them, indifferent to whether the customer gets acknowledged, if we don't, our performance is unacceptable. You can't exactly rollback an accepted trade after the fact.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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The actual issue was that when the production account for this customer was set up, it was mapped to the demo book keeping system, which sends the acknowledgement. The failure happened there, and the actual trade engine thought everything was fine.
Chris Meech wrote:
In your specific case, the loss of an acknowledgement message, should have resulted in a time-out error that would have rolled back the acceptance of the trade.
But now you got me thinking. How is one to know that our ack message was lost, without waiting to see. Our messages are shot out to our banks as soon as we get them, indifferent to whether the customer gets acknowledged, if we don't, our performance is unacceptable. You can't exactly rollback an accepted trade after the fact.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
It also sounds like there is procesing going on at different locations such as the banks, clients and your own. All of which makes it even more difficult to establish logical transactions around business events. Some times the best that you can do is perform batch or end of day reconciliation processing that makes you aware of the breaks. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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It also sounds like there is procesing going on at different locations such as the banks, clients and your own. All of which makes it even more difficult to establish logical transactions around business events. Some times the best that you can do is perform batch or end of day reconciliation processing that makes you aware of the breaks. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
That is definitely the case and we have to do a daily report that is sent to a 3rd party agency for compliance, or we can be fined. The customer caught the issue rather quickly, but with a multiparty system like this the blame gets passed all over. Since support was confidence it was a setup error, and was able to track down the lost message, they disclosed it to the customer, even though it was an embarrassing error, at least it wasn't the code.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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That is definitely the case and we have to do a daily report that is sent to a 3rd party agency for compliance, or we can be fined. The customer caught the issue rather quickly, but with a multiparty system like this the blame gets passed all over. Since support was confidence it was a setup error, and was able to track down the lost message, they disclosed it to the customer, even though it was an embarrassing error, at least it wasn't the code.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
Was this trade the first one booked for the account? That's when these types of data configuration errors are usually caught. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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Was this trade the first one booked for the account? That's when these types of data configuration errors are usually caught. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
I can't verify, but it seems like it. Nothing like going live at 2am local time.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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Yes, the company itself is a brokerage. I should have pointed out that I am not responsible for the error, the fix, or providing the explanation. I have been on the long nasty e-mail chain and it got me thinking about what this Level 1 support guy might send out if under enough pressure from the client.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
That's what I figured, and situations like this are one of the reasons my own firm had me get the Series 7 and Series 66 license: to make damned sure that I knew the rules and had some legal/regulatory protection if I messed up. Drawing on my own training, I would suggest: * Create a special folder and copy Every. Last. One. of those emails into it, so they do not accidentally get deleted. Don't forget to also get the emails in your Sent folder. If anything has already been permanently deleted, try to get them from your server backups. * Make hard copies of every email, even when they overlap because of Reply To. What you want to do is create an unbroken chain of correspondence. * If you spoke to the client on the telephone, go to your recording device manager and get recordings of those calls. * Write up your own summary of events, including the resolution. Be as technical and detailed as you can, but also provide a non-technical summary suitable for the bosses. * If you know of anyone else who has been involved, ask them to do the same. * Bring all of this to your compliance department. If it will take a while to assemble everything, notify them now and get everything put together post haste. * Do not contact the client again. If he contacts you, your only response is, "You will need to speak to N. N." Notify the compliance department of this contact, and make sure you provide emails, print outs, recordings and/or transcripts as appropriate. These are the procedures that I had hammered into me, presumably for a reason. Think of this as kicking the problem upstairs and making it someone else's headache :rolleyes:
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That's what I figured, and situations like this are one of the reasons my own firm had me get the Series 7 and Series 66 license: to make damned sure that I knew the rules and had some legal/regulatory protection if I messed up. Drawing on my own training, I would suggest: * Create a special folder and copy Every. Last. One. of those emails into it, so they do not accidentally get deleted. Don't forget to also get the emails in your Sent folder. If anything has already been permanently deleted, try to get them from your server backups. * Make hard copies of every email, even when they overlap because of Reply To. What you want to do is create an unbroken chain of correspondence. * If you spoke to the client on the telephone, go to your recording device manager and get recordings of those calls. * Write up your own summary of events, including the resolution. Be as technical and detailed as you can, but also provide a non-technical summary suitable for the bosses. * If you know of anyone else who has been involved, ask them to do the same. * Bring all of this to your compliance department. If it will take a while to assemble everything, notify them now and get everything put together post haste. * Do not contact the client again. If he contacts you, your only response is, "You will need to speak to N. N." Notify the compliance department of this contact, and make sure you provide emails, print outs, recordings and/or transcripts as appropriate. These are the procedures that I had hammered into me, presumably for a reason. Think of this as kicking the problem upstairs and making it someone else's headache :rolleyes:
That's good policy, and our broker and support people do that. They also have both licenses. I never come into contact with customers, so never needed to take the license.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
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That's good policy, and our broker and support people do that. They also have both licenses. I never come into contact with customers, so never needed to take the license.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson My comedy.
I never deal with clients; I rarely even deal with our reps beyond "I've locked myself out of the website" and "What anti-virus software do you recommend?" Even so, my company has written policies that all personnel must read and answer questions on every six months.
