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dirty little tricks of call center agents for top US bank
i encountered these dirty little tricks recently from a philippine call center agents for a top US bank:
- putting you on hold for a long time to pretend he is trying to get more info and resolve the issues and get answers to your questions but coming back with nothing. bring up another issue and the same thing is done – put you on hold for a long time and when you call him back gives you nothing. this agent obviously does not know his job. he puts you on hold just to make you feel better.
- when you ask the call center agent to talk to his supervisor to escalate the call and complain about his performance, the call center agent transfers you to another call center agent, not his supervisor. this new call center agent pretends to be a supervisor. this is done so that the call center agent avoidstheescalation. “escalation” in the call center industry is a bad thing. it means a customer is bring up a problem with the call center agent. agents who get an escalation diminishes his performance rating.
this is a stock photo, not the agents written about here. source of photo : http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/files/2013/05/24TAlk_Call-Center-300×194.jpg
- you know the person you are talking to is not a supervisor because he told you so and his tone, demeanor and style of customer handling is not that of a supervisor.
- the call center agent who transferred you to another agent is obviously being very dishonest. in my view agents who do this should be fired from their jobs.
- there is also collusion between the original call center agent and the other agent who took the escalation and pretended to be the supervisor of the original call center. this agent who colluded with the original agent should be fired from his job as well.
- when asked to talk to the supervisor, the call center agent puts you on hold and says he will be looking for a supervisor. this hold time will be a long time, hoping the customer will get tired of waiting and no longer ask to talk to the supervisor. the call center agent will even go back to you and tell you his supervisor is busy and cannot take the call. this is just to tire the customer out.
- call center agent gives a fake name when the customer asks for it. obviously nothing will happen when a customer who reports the fake name to his superiors, the person who gave the fake name cannot be traced.
- call center refuses to give their ID number to customers who ask for them, saying they are not allowed to give their ID numbers to customers when many other call center agents from the same company give their ID numbers. the reason for refusing to give the ID numbers is to be able to hide from their superiors when the customer files a complaint about their performance.
- call center agent gives a fake ID number. this becomes obvious when the ID number given to you is very different in format versus others from the same company who have given you their ID numbers. its easy to assume that the same company and specially if they belong to the same department will have the same alpha-numeric format for their ID numbers.
- call center agent gives you answers to your questions and issues on a topic he has not been trained for, not his job and is unable to access the information on your account because he belongs to another department which does not have authorization to access your information. you know this is so because he gives you wrong answers and theories and when you ask him can you see the details of your account on his computer and he answered “no”, it’s not on his screen because he is not authorized to see those.
after 4 long hours on the phone and talking to 5 different departments in the bank (fraud, credit card, personal checking and savings account, bill pay and online banking) and no resolution to the issues plus it is obvious the agents you are talking to are incompetent, you give in, exhausted and very frustrated and just give up and hang-up.
we took the matter to twitter, sending messages to the bank. the bank also emailed a survey form specific to the experience and we filled it up with very much what was written here plus names and ID numbers of the call center agents. to us at least 2 agents should be fired from their jobs and everyone on that call should be coached (“coached” means reprimanded and re-trained).
these are call center agents from one of the biggest banks in the US and in the world. we have called the same bank before over many years and it has never been as bad this latest experience. we think this bank probably changed call center companies in recent years, hence the change in quality of service.
we are also sure this call center is a philippine based call center. the accent of some of their agents betray that they are actually filipinos. that makes it really sad. the philippines is one of the leading if not the leading country in the call center business in the world and this kind of experience and quality of work does not speak well for the philippine call center industry.
and that is over and above the negative impression these call center agents create for the bank that they service. these agents are supposedly employees of the bank. we do not know the company name of their call center company, we only know the name of the bank they service. it creates a negative image for the bank.
at the end of the 4 hours of pain and frustration, we end up not liking the bank and philippine call center agents.
note : photo in this article is not the call center agent/s written about in this posting. source of photo : http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/files/2013/05/24TAlk_Call-Center-300×194.jpg
when use of a celebrity in TV ad fails – the new security bank’s TV ad with Megan Young
use of celebrities in ads is a huge trend in the philippines, it has been for decades years now. almost all the ads you see in TV, print, billboards and hear on radio use a celebrity. use of a celebrity in advertising is the go-to ad concept for most if not all the advertising agencies in the phiippines. we do not know how that happened or if that was instigated by ad agencies in general or clients in general. that is an interesting question but it is for another article in the future.
for now, we are interested in this particular celebrity TV ad by security bank using megan young.
megan young won the Miss World beauty title in 2013. she has brought so much glory to the country for this win 
specially when it has been a long time when the country has won a major international beauty contest title.
beautiful women and men have been big choices for philippine advertising agencies specially if they have gained celebrity status. the usual choices are TV and movie stars and big sports heroes like manny pacquiao but beauty queens specially someone like young who has won a major international beauty contest classifies her a celebrity endorser.
security bank is a medium sized bank in the country. it has a good reputation among institutional or business bank clients but not as popular and in fact has very little mass consumer clientele like the top 3 major banks. you would know very few among your friends and relatives who bank with security bank.
security bank is not a big advertiser among the banks. it makes sense that it is not since its clientele, specially among mass consumers is not that much but it has been known to try to get into attract mass consumer clientele from time to time in spurts and in very limited efforts in the past.
this advertising with megan young represents a giant marketing effort for security bank. it has been many, many years since it had released any kind of advertising and in this magnitude. it has been airing heavily in the past weeks.
in marketing this megan young TV campaign represent what is called a brand relaunch where the bank re-positions itself and puts across a “new bank”, a new security bank.
based on the TV ad, security ad wants consumers to “switch to the new security bank, you deserve better“, the tagline of the ad. the “new security bank” offers the following new services : “priority queuing”, “exclusive privileges” and a “relationship manager” with all that intending to give clients better, more efficient, faster and personalized banking services. the ad shows young going into the bank and talks to the camera about her “new relationship” and she breezes through the bank services and gets attended to by a handsome relationship manager who wears a suit, no less.
well, that part of the handsome relationship manager in a suit is for certain an over promise and the roominess and good ambiance of the security ba
nk branch featured in the TV, we do not think there is one single branch of security bank that has that kind of employee and branch design. but let’s pretend that is not an issue in this ad for the moment.
the ad also shows megan young being served coffee by the relationship manager. another over-promise that we should pretend we did not see in the ad and something we should not expect in an actual security bank branch.
the issue we have on this TV ad is much more than the over-promises of what a security bank branch looks like and what happens to customers inside the bank, what we are making a point on is the choice of the talent in the ad, the celebrity endorser and what the promises of what a new security bank is all about.
first a side bar – technically, security bank as a whole has not been changed. it’s not really a “new security bank” but its a just new product that security bank offers to well-off clients. this “new relationship” or the “new security bank” that is being talked about in the ad will be given to a select number of clients – those who have a minimum P100,000 deposit in the bank, not to all clients of the bank. because it is offered only to a select few of its clients, it is just one product in the bank. do not expect to get the kind of servicing in a security bank if you are an ordinary bank client.
this new product of security bank is being pitched to young bank clients, the yuppies given the use of young who is herself young (pun unintended) and the ad uses references to “relationships that are not complicated” a modern-day reference to social media (facebook) that young adults are familiar with and most likely very few older adults know about.
from there the question comes up on the defined target market of the ad – young yuppies as we would think very few of them can afford to have a remaining balance of P100,000 in their bank accounts. they can afford to buy an iPhone worth P30,0000+ but hardly will you find people at that age bracket having that large amount of cash in their bank accounts.
now back to megan young.
the point of this “new security bank” but actually the new security bank product is that it promises to give its bank clients “special treatment”, something that clients of other banks and other security bank clients will not or do not get. what it is saying is that bank clients get the regular treatment of having to line up, no privileges and no relationship manager tending to your personal needs (including coffee being served). it is saying many bank clients get the regular treatment, not the special one.
and that is where the choice of megan young as talent in this tv ad shows a disconnect.
megan young IS A VERY POPULAR CELEBRITY. everyone knows her. for being a celebrity and this kind of beauty with an international beauty title, she WILL get special treatment from any bank or in fact any establishment like restaurants, department stores and malls even if she does not do anything, ask for it or have P100,000 with her to open a bank account with. getting special treatment, even the priority ones is part and parcel of the benefits one gets in being a celebrity and being an international beauty titlist.
we are willing to bet that if she enters any branch of any bank, the branch manager will most likely stand up from her desk and attend to her. she is that recognizable and that is what we do for celebrities.
using her in this ad then destroys the whole concept of the “new security bank”. if the bank used a regular person, a non-celebrity in the ad and the ad proceeds to show this regular person gets special treatment in security bank, then the ad works and delivers the message very well.
the point of relationship products like this is that one gets “special treatment” even if you are an ordinary person but has P100,000 minimum deposit. a regular person gets special treatment, that is the idea.
in this ad and with the new security bank product, the choice of a celebrity endorser destroyed the very idea of the new product. it’s a WAWAM!
~~~ mindscape landmark ~~~
carlo arvisu
BIR’s public shaming of doctors print ad – brilliant ad, disparaging to doctors & it can be banned from publication
this is Part 2 : BIR’s public shaming of doctors print ad is disparaging to doctors and the profession
this print ad has gotten thousands of reactions from pinoy netizens on the very first day the ad was published. not surprising, many of the negative reactions, angry even came from doctors themselves. non-doctor netizens also gave a lot of reaction to the ad almost in the same 
intensity and content – some liked the ad, others didn’t.
this i think is the first public shaming ad published in the philippines. it is the first of its kind that we have seen in our entire career. there have been other shaming activities done in the philippines but not an advertising campaign like this one.my non-scientific scanning of the reactions to the ad i think are mostly negative where they are saying they do not like the ad. this is not surprising. i think the negative reaction to the ads both by doctors and non-medical netizens is a result of the tone and concept of the ad – it is public shaming of a group of people.
we have heard alfredo lim’s shaming campaign against frug pushers when he was interior secretary where he spray painted the homes of suspected drug pushers to identify the occupant as one.
“shaming” of tax cheats is one of the intended objectives of this print advertising campaign. the question of course is will shaming the doctors get them to pay the appropriate taxes?
the number 1 objective of any ad campaign is to get the target audience to take action after seeing the ad. volume sales, market share increase or attitude change are the goals of advertising. for this particular ad, the intended action is for doctors to finally pay the right amount of taxes on their earnings.
another objective of ads, in the top 2, is to create awareness. this ad has done extremely well on the awareness part as we can see that it is the key topic talked about of almost everyone exposed to media, both in the internet and traditional media. the ad and accompanying controversy it 
created led to it being front page headline news at the Philippine Daily Inquirer on March 4, 2014 .
the kind of exposure it got and the resulting discussions obviously had this ad over-achieving its objective of creating awareness on the importance of properly paying your taxes. we think on this alone the BIR and the ad agency that developed it should look at the ad as a huge success.
high awareness is the first step before action. with awareness very high, will the doctors take action and stop cheating the BIR and start paying the correct taxes?
that is actually left to be seen. we suppose the BIR has some way of tracking whether this public shaming ad campaign will generate more taxpayers to pay the right amount of taxes. an increase of 10% will be a great achievement.
filipinos are big on reputation. things like protecting or preserving the good name of the family is important to us as a race. this is even more important for doctors. doctors get their patients on the basis of their reputation. we know of names of doctors who are good in certain fields of specializations. while they have not been specifically named in this ad, we think this ad will have the effect it intends to achieve and will succeed on getting more doctors to pay the right taxes.
aside from avoiding an even indirect slight to their reputation as doctors, this ad will signal to the doctors that the BIR in the next tax filing will closely scrutinize the tax returns of doctors. the BIR with this ad has put the doctors on notice. that should instill some kind of fear on the doctors. we won’t be surprised if many doctors have hired accountants in the past days to have their tax returns professionally and accurately prepared in the next tax filing which is in a few weeks time.
the doctors feeling shamed and insulted by this ad has merit. i think the ad do disparage the reputation of doctors. the key problem of the ad is that it does not have a disclaimer that not all doctors are tax cheats. all it has is this fictitious name of a doctor and this one ad talent appearing to be a doctor. the ad even without directly saying it generalizes ALL DOCTORS to be tax cheats. of course not all doctors are tax cheats.
releasing just this one ad first obviously singles out doctors. we only get to know that there are two more versions only from news articles on interviews done by BIR chief Kim Henares. the ad could have just featured the “generic tax cheat”, not identifying specific professions and that could have removed the problem of disparaging the practitioners of the medical profession. but if that was done we do not think it will be as provocative and effective as this ad is.
PMA president: ‘We are not tax evaders’
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/582198/pma-president-we-are-not-tax-evaders
the print ad actually talks about doctors as tax cheats which has nothing to do with their medical skills and reputation. but regardless, it is understandable that the doctors feels slighted by the print ad. for people who belong to a profession where reputation gets you business and your livelihood, even a indirect insult can have the same intensity.
>> more to come <<
~~~ mindscape landmark ~~~
carlo arvisu
Read here :
Part 1 : BIR’s public shaming of doctors print ad is brilliant, it should win an ad congress award for excellence
https://wawam.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/birs-public-shaming-of-doctors-print-ad-brilliant-print-ad-disparaging-to-doctors-it-can-be-banned-from-publication/
BIR’s public shaming of doctors print ad – brilliant print ad, disparaging to doctors & it can be banned from publication
Part 1 : BIR’s public shaming of doctors print ad is brilliant, it should win an ad congress award for excellence
the BIR just launched what i call the “public shaming of doctors” (PSoD) ad campaign, above is the first print ad of the campaign. this doctor ad apparently is the first of three ad executions, with the accountants and online sellers being the next to be featured in two more ads. last night, i saw on GMA7 the TV version of the PSoD using accountants. we are assuming there are 2 more TV ad versions to come with doctors and online sellers.
the print ad has these elements :
> it features a doctor literally sitting on the shoulders of a teacher in a classroom setting
> the concept revolves the idea of tax cheats are a burden to honest taxpayers, in this ad represented literally as being put on the shoulders of the teacher. we all know that teachers in the philippines are not paid very well and yet their jobs are very important, very difficult and impacts the nation specially the youth in very significant ways. doctors on the hand we know to be high income individuals. we know that first hand through the professional fees we pay them in every visit to their clinics and when we need to pay hospital bills.
– the ad even includes a computation of the salaries and taxes paid by doctors and teachers where we see in very glaring numbers, shocking even that the doctor who earns much higher pays much lower taxes than the teacher.
– the ad ends with the tagline : “When you don’t pay your taxes, you’re a burden to those who do.”
from an advertising point of view we think this print ad is brilliant! we think it should win an award in the next ad congress.
> the ad’s message is very provocative. provocative is one of the top 3 qualities that you want in an ad to be. it is in the top 3 by which you measure the effectiveness of an ad. the responses and reactions it has been getting in social media and traditional media, both from doctors and citizens have been massive, for or against the ad, a good indicator of provocativeness (sic) for this kinds of ads.
>the ad concept and the visuals communicate the message very well and with ease. just by looking at the visuals, you understand the message of the ad.
the only push back we have and this it is a minor one on this ad is the execution of the ‘burden”. we thought the ad could have been more effective if it showed more ‘burden” being suffered by the teacher.
i am guessing the ad agency thought of it but they probably decided against it as they probably knew it will be a controversial ad and pusing the burden more in the visuals might make the ad too much to bear for the audience.
> the strategy of the ad was spot on – the impact of tax cheats on taxpayers is real and full of credible and strong insight. the ill effect of the actions of tax cheats is not just on the government but also on individual citizens. being the weak link makes everyone else in the link weaker and burdened.
> the choice of the doctor and teacher for this comparison was brilliant and very effective, quickly understandable to the audience. almost by rote, we know that doctors are one of the highest paid in the country and teachers are one of the lowest paid.
we know of the doctors as we have our own experiences to base it on. for a visit to the doctor, we pay anywhere from P400 to P1,200 every consultation depending on the specialization and reputation of the doctor. those consultation fees are nothing when we or members of our family are hospitalized or God forbid goes through surgery. surgery fees of doctors range from P5T to P200T depending on what the surgery is.
our own experience also tells us the doctors we see almost always do not voluntarily issue official receipts after a consultation. they issue one only when we ask.
we know of teachers as we have read about them – on how their pay is so low and yet they do a lot of hard work, their roles important and even critical to nation building and to our children.
the doctor versus the teacher simply put gives an excellent and concrete contrast for the purpose of communicating disparities and burden.
>> more to come <<
~~~ mindscape landmark ~~~
carlo arvisu
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