Living in Canberra, but the occasional user of the Sydney road system, I have an e-TAG from a lovely company called Roam.

Normally, this system is great, you just drive under the e-TAG gates, and the tag beeps, and you continue on your merry way, when the balance hits a certain level, it automatically refills.

Supposedly.

Having just got off the phone with a debt collection agency, and with Roam afterwards, unfortunately, it appears that customer service is not their strong suit, and in fact, needs some significant work.

Heres the problem, the last refill must have bounced for some reason, fair cop, I’ve changed the way I manage my cash flow, and that account that gets direct debited from Roam about half the time wouldn’t have enough in it to cover a recharge.

Unfortunately, instead of issuing an automated email informing me of this, they simply remained silent. I continued to use the tag to Sydney over the last year, getting my balance into the red.

It wasn’t until this afternoon when I received a call from a debt collection agency that I was first alerted to the fact that there had been a problem.

First lesson - First point of contact to be directly from the company

Its quite a rude shock to the system for someone who has made sure they’ve never been to debt collection, paid bills on time, and made sure when large unexpected bills came through (wasn’t so good with money management when I first moved out of home), that I called the company and made a plan, to receive the first point of call from a debt collection agency is a shock to the system.

Plus, they added about $40 onto the outstanding amount as “Legal Fees”.

Solution: To soften the blow, customers should always be given the option to fix a mistake. Call it “benefit of the doubt” - especially to someone who has never had an issue with their account before. Even if it is an automated email if you don’t want to have staff chase customers up.

This brings me to my second point,

Second Lesson - Actually attempt to contact the customer to solve the problem.

This issue is what really annoys me though. After speaking to the debt collection agency, and paying the outstanding amount, I called Roam to investigate how this could have happened. The Customer Service Representative’s response floored me.

We don’t provide notifications for customers as to their balance or failed transactions, you can do that yourself online.

Seriously? I thought the process was automated, I set it up the first time, and then proceeded to forget about it. I didn’t feel like I needed to check up to make sure everything was in working order.

Solution: Send an automated email to the registered email address on file informing the customer of the problem, provide information in the email on how to correct the problem, preferably without penalty for at least the first notice. If that doesn’t work, try giving me a call, and stick an admin fee for the issue getting through to the contact team, as the problem will be mine if I’ve let my email address fall out of date, and the admin fee therefore justifiable.

Now, I get that sometimes you can’t contact the customer, because over the years, their details have changed, moved house, changed email addresses or phone numbers, they haven’t provided the updated ones to you and as a result, pushing the outstanding amount down the line to an agency might be a legitimate solution in some circumstances, I find it to be pure laziness in this instance.

Why? Well, that is lesson 3.

Third Lesson - All customers are created equal

By equal, I’m referring to the standard of support people receive. It should be consistent. Some people might pay for priority support with some companies, but you should receive a similar level of service throughout the organisation.

In this case with Roam, realise this. Its a prepaid service. When your credit runs out, it should just stop working. Like a prepaid mobile phone, like your prepaid credit card, or like your smart bus pass.

That said with a road, you can’t deny someone service quite like that, there are some complexities involved, and thats where equality comes into it.

If you don’t have an account at all with Roam and use their motorway, they will send you a letter informing you that you owe $x plus an administration fee in relation to the use of their road. Which is fair.

What isn’t fair, is customers on their system, with their own e-TAG, when their balance hits zero, Roam don’t then treat every trip after that as if you didn’t have a tag, and send you a letter, aggregating trips over a week for example. They just don’t notify you at all, and send you to debt collection if you don’t pay a bill you know nothing about because you weren’t notified to login to the online portal because you didn’t know you needed to.

Solution: If you can’t send even an automated email about the account situation, then customers need to revert to this method when their credit runs out. Paying a couple of admin fees is preferable in my opinion, and learning to keep a closer eye on my balance, is much better than getting the first point of contact from an agency.

Some people might complain that the current method works better because they can allow the balance to hit zero, realise and not be penalised, by logging into the system after a week or so themselves, realising the mistake, and correcting it.

Yes, but you wouldn’t need that argument if you followed the final lesson.

Fourth Lesson - Provide visual feedback about changes to the service

I’m referring in this case to knowing what the current state of your service is. For Roam, their feedback device is the e-TAG itself. Now, I will issue a disclaimer, this may already be implemented on newer tags (mine is pretty old, from around 2006).

Simply, the tag makes a single beep when it goes through a checkpoint. I’ve never heard it make any other sounds, long beep, a triple beep maybe, and thats my point. Roam should use the device itself to communicate with their customers.

ACTION (Canberra’s bus network) recently implemented a new smart card system called MyWay. One of the great things about it is seeing your balance in real time on the screen when you tag off a bus. However, it also goes one step further. Lights at the top of the screen change colour depending on the level of charge left in the card. Green means success. Green + yellow means success, but you’re running out of credit (under $10 remaining I believe), and red is used for cards who have run out of credit.

Solution: The tag can do the same thing with sounds. Customers are used to a beep from the tag meaning success, so make it a double or triple beep to indicate success, but that the funds are low. Couple that with a long beep when the balance has reached zero, and you have a system in place where the customer always has feedback about their account standing when they drive.

A conclusion

Roam did nothing to manage my expectations, and just (metaphorically) hit me with a hammer. Not really a good way to treat people who have used the system for years, and never had a problem. I’m not asking for preferential treatment, I’m just asking Roam to be “real” - the benefits of providing great customers service far outweigh the costs, and in many cases, can actually save the company money in the long term, through less bad debts needing to be written off, leading to a healthier balance sheet, greater productivity from staff with higher morale because they don’t have to take a the brunt of customer anger surrounding why they weren’t notified by at least an email, or a letter.

The experience has left a decidedly stale taste in my mouth.

Have you ever had a bad customer service experience? Did you do anything about it? How (if at all) was it solved, and what would you do differently next time?

Please feel free to comment below.