Disclosing the Cause of an Issue to a Customer
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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.
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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.
Oh bugger - you just reminded me I need to go to my HR folder and check what mandatory courses are outstanding, may your day be better than mine is now going to be!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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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.
Get one of the staff who will NEVER speak to customers, to call the customer, and explain that it was their, human, error (they powered down the Swichinator 2000 when they were reclamming the brogal banch), offer their appologies then pass the call onto their account manager, who should explain that the person is now being sacked for their incompetence
MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Get one of the staff who will NEVER speak to customers, to call the customer, and explain that it was their, human, error (they powered down the Swichinator 2000 when they were reclamming the brogal banch), offer their appologies then pass the call onto their account manager, who should explain that the person is now being sacked for their incompetence
MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
That reminds me of something, long ago: We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked. ... We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked. ... The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.
"Dark the dark side is. Very dark..." - Yoda ---
"Shut up, Yoda, and just make yourself another toast." - Obi Wan Kenobi -
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.
Have you checked out the The Bastard Operator From Hell-Style Excuse Server[^]? ;) Or just pick one from the full list of BOFH excuses.
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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.
- You can refuse to tell the customer what happened. 2) You can tell the customer what happened. 3) You can escalate. You admit you don't want to do 2 (I concur). You admit that if you do 1, the customer might leave (I would, and I would tell everyone else to leave). That means you must escalate. In the customer's terms, they want to know what happened, why it happened, how it got fixed. It all boils down to one question - HOW DO I KNOW THIS WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN? Simply saying it won't happen again won't work. You (the company) promised him that WHEN HE OPENED THE ACCOUNT. So promising it again (after the screw up) just makes you look bad. Frankly speaking, given the cause of the error, changes need to be made so it never happens again -- changes in policy that are far above your pay grade. Again, it needs to escalated.
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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.
wizardzz wrote:
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.
You already had a bug and admitted fault, so they have all the trash they need. Sounds like they're wanting their trust in your system to be restored -- not just that this particular bug won't repeat, but that they won't experience other kinds of (potentially worse) bugs with your system -- and giving you an opportunity to do that. Its a no-brainer to me, take it, but make sure to address both of those concerns or they'll probably "pull the plug" anyway (I would).
patbob
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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.
You're dealing with millions of dollars, on behalf of your customers. And if you're handling transactions for multiple brokers, that can easily be hundreds of millions of dollars. It's common in the financial processing sector that customers: * will not accept the latest version of your software without THEIR testing. * will demand full accountability when errors or problems occur - with detailed tracking & auditting * will switch away to another processing firm if you're not cost-competitive or reliable * your customers are often your competitors It's been this way for years. As someone else said, you don't have to give them the full internal description of the problem. But you should be honest and state the basic problem and that it was fixed. Unless you have an ongoing reliability or performance problem, your reputation won't be ruined. All of the financial processing (firms) fuck up once in awhile.
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I 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.
We had that happen to our production server a few years ago - a RAID-1 system and the people in the area where the server was located neglected to mention the noise that was coming out of the machine until it was too late. And they weren't doing the nightly backups. Cost the company $6K to recover most of the data and the system was down for two weeks (good thing a few still knew how to do things manually) :sigh:
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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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
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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.
I know nothing about your company (because we don't know your company) but I can tell you that in general there is a lot of mistrust with corporations amongst the public a mistrust that is growing due to the blatant abuses by powerful entities especially those in finance and how they get away with these abuse with little more than fines that often end up being less then what they gained by the illegal/unethical action they took. That’s not to say you or your company fall into this category of unethical business only that this is the perception towards corporations that work in finance and it is not an undeserved perception. Even though not every entity in finance participated in the scheme that GOLDMAN-SACHS did when it bet against what it sold to its own clients the perception among the public is those in finance with connections can do these things and get away with it. This can easily cause many to be untrusting of those in that industry regardless of who they are. Kudos for admitting to the client that an error did occur because these days most corporations won’t admit to any error no matter what if they can avoid it.