Facebook Violates the Basic Rules of Serving Customers

Facebook users were surprised this weekend to find that their Facebook news feed had changed. It wasn’t just a cosmetic change, it was a complete change in the way Facebook users get their information from their “friends.”

The change left users completely confused and baffled about why Facebook made this overwhelming change. In short, Facebook took the old “News Feed,” which is where Facebook users got their information, and split it in two – a “Live Feed” and a “News Feed”.

The Live Feed now details every post your “friends” put on Facebook, including some information that was never on the News Feed before, like who your “friends” are “friending.” The News Feed, according to Facebook “Aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting” Facebook decides what’s most interesting through an “algorithm (that) bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).” In this case, algorithm means “technical stuff you’ll never understand so trust us.” Some of your friends’ posts are on both, some are on only one with no rhyme or reason why.

So Facebook users spent the weekend into Monday trying to figure out how to manipulate the home page so that they can get something close to what they used to get from Facebook (Facebook said they changed everything due to “user input.” Really?). And by the end of Monday, many of us had found a way to get around the changes.

Facebook violated several rules of outstanding customer service and relationships:

1)      It didn’t tell users the change was coming. People like to be prepared for change, and Facebook ignored that. Oh yes, I now know that in the techie community it was known Facebook was making a change, but most users didn’t know.

2)      They didn’t clearly explain the reason for the change. The page just changed in the middle of the day leaving users saying, “Huh? What is this?”

3)      They confused their customers. As a writer once said, “If the reader doesn’t understand what you’re writing, it’s not the reader’s fault, it’s yours.” We are still confused.

4)      They didn’t know their audience. They did not take into consideration that the fastest growing part of their audience are people over the age of 40. We don’t have time to figure Facebook out. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. We like connecting. I’m just trying to imagine how my 80-year-old mother, who just goes on Facebook to keep up with her children and grandchildren, is going to figure this out. What if they decide my comments aren’t important enough to land on her “News Feed?”

5)      They didn’t keep it simple. Which feed should I read, the News Feed or the Live Feed? Where are my kids’ pictures? Oh, they’re on the News Feed. Wait, no they’re not. They’re on the Live Feed. No, they’re on both.

6)      They made their customers work unnecessarily. As I teach in my customer service seminar, customers sometimes have to help, but most times, try not to make the customer do any work they don’t need to do. I shouldn’t have to feel triumphant because my niece told me how to get around the new system and I even improved on her instructions.

As companies grow, there is a tendency towards arrogance. Facebook is growing in leaps and bounds and its leadership is already saying it’s going to change the way we all communicate. Making changes that are confusing is no way to communicate.

Study says customers feel “duty bound” to tell others about their bad experiences

A new survey by RightNow Technologies has some very disturbing news for those who think they can give poor service and get away with it.  The survey studied online shoppers’ attitudes toward the technology used for customer care, but it has application for anybody dealing with customers.

There were several striking statistics from the survey, especially when it comes to spreading word about a particular company through social networking.  Half of online shoppers said they felt “duty-bound” to warn others about a particular retailer, 16% tell about their negative experiences specifically to stop other people from dealing with that company, and 30% want to vent their disappointment about the experience.  Many, if not most of these people will use Twitter, YouTube, and other social media to spread the word, as United Airlines learned from the video “United Breaks Guitars.”

Survey respondents had some good and bad news for companies using multi-channels to provide customer care – chat, email, phone and web. While, respondents said they were generally happy with the interaction channels, more than half felt that the channels showed a lack of consistency when providing information. In other words, one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Also, 78% of online shoppers said that organizations should take steps to listen to what customers are saying about their products on social networking sites and to follow up with those people.  And 60% said it was acceptable for retailers to monitor their comments and suggest relevant products, services or uses, even when dealing with a customer problem.

But the most interesting thing I found was that 64% of consumers who used the “chat” function said they would rather “chat” with an agent than speak with the agent on the phone and 69% said they would prefer chat to email. This has major consequences for those who have set up their customer care departments around telephone or email service and have neglected to put in a chat option.

So, what to do?

• Go to your own customers and ask them what their preferences are when it comes to customer care.
• If you are serving customers in any way through your website, make sure you have a chat option or begin to plan for one.
• Start training your people on using chat and email functions as well as telephone and in person customer service.
• Have at least one person from your customer care area actively monitor social networking sites for mentions of your company or store. Give them the authority to make decisions to make complaining customers happy.
• Create an area on your own website where customers can leave comments on service, good and bad. Monitor those comments and respond to customers as quickly as possible.

When my grandfather ran his men’s store, the worst thing he had to worry about was whether his customers would complain about him or his store while drinking at the many bars in the neighborhood.  Being able to leave comments to a faceless website or a faceless chat has the same release of inhibitions as the drinks the bar patrons were using to loosen their lips back then.

Customer Service Hero: Lori Ray, Olympus America, Ltd

Lori Ray, customer service representative for Olympus America saved my day. For that, I have named her a Customer Service Hero.

I had just finished recording a client’s words for a writing project I’m working on and went to transfer the remarks from my Olympus VN-4100PC digital voice recorder to my PC. The Olympus Digital Wave Player showed it recognized the recorder but was being very stubborn about transferring the files.

I checked out the recorder’s manual and found nothing. I even looked under “troubleshooting” because I was in trouble, though when I didn’t find my answer, I thought of shooting something else other than trouble. When a telephone number for customer service was not immediately findable on the Olympus website, I began to feel like someone dropped in the middle of a strange city without knowing how to get out. As the sweat began to appear on my brow, I found a number and called it. The voice recording indicated I had called Olympus Imaging products (Cameras) and I hung up. I rechecked the number and though it was the same, I tried it again. This time I stayed on long enough to hear the prompt for voice recorders.

Lori answered the phone and demonstrated everything I teach in my customer service course. She answered with a pleasant greeting and expressed a desire to help me. She asked me what the situation was and when I told her about the frustration of seeing that the software recognized my device but refused to transfer the files, she replied with an attitude of “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

Though I thought I must be missing something myself, she never made me feel like I was technically ignorant. She asked me several questions and had me repeat the various steps I had taken before I called her. The way she asked made me feel as if she was feeling the same frustration as I was, but she was going to figure it out no matter what. Her voice never showed the frustration but did show empathy. It probably helped that I remained calm, but I think she would have remained calm in any case.

Lori stayed on the phone with me for an hour (or so it seemed), tried this, tried that, and then, unlike so many others, she actually asked me if she could put me on hold and went to check with someone else. She made the conversation totally about me. She had asked what version of the software I had and apparently, there had been an update to solve the problem.

While she was telling me about the update, she was writing an email with links to the software and the update. She could have had me go to the Olympus website, navigate through the pages and find it myself. But no, she sent me the link while she was explaining so that when she got finished, the link was there for me to use.

I uninstalled the old software as she said and downloaded the new software and the patch. When my computer took a long time to shut down and reboot, I apologized and she assured me it was no problem (twice). After I rebooted, she had me reconnect my recorder, which opened the new software. Then she told me to try to transfer the files again and it worked.

Then she again exceeded my expectations while the files transferred. Apparently, I still had quite a few files on the recorder from previous uses and it was taking quite a while to transfer. Suddenly, I realized there was probably no reason for her to stay on the phone with me and offered to allow her to call me back after the transfer. She commented, “I probably won’t be here.” I looked at the clock and saw it was just after 5:00, but she had given me no indication that she wouldn’t have stayed with me for the duration. Finally, we agreed that I would email her when I saw it was alright. And it was.

In my customer service class, we show a video with a character, Maria, who does everything right. Some of the people in the class tell me Maria is “too perfect.” I ask, “Are there people who do what she does?” and they sheepishly say yes. After working with Lori Ray, our Customer Service Hero, I can honestly say I have met Maria in real life.  She is a customer service hero.

You don’t have to say “NO!”

Nothing bugs me more than watching an employee make a customer angrier than he has to be. Why would they do this?

Customers are often talking to you in a state of increased agitation. They’re upset and they want satisfaction, but so often, if we find we can’t do what the customer wants us to do, we say the word guaranteed to increase the agitation: NO!

Even when the answer is no, we need to make sure that “no” is the only answer we can give before we say it. We may not be able to do what they want us to do, but often, something other than what they’re asking for will do. But we can’t find out unless we ask some questions.

For instance, I was working with the employees of an institution of higher learning. In the class were people who worked in virtually every department at the college: registrar, bursar, counseling, guidance, writing center, library, financial aid, office of the dean of students, etc. I asked them if there were times they have to say no to a student. An employee of the financial aid office said, “When a student has gotten all of the financial aid available to him from the school and wants more, whether in straight assistance or loans.”

I clarified that the student had taken out student loans and received some minor scholarships but there was still a good amount left on his tuition and fees. Then I asked a non-question question, “So, by taking out all of those loans and receiving those scholarships, he had exhausted what the college could do for him.”

“Correct,” she said, with all the certainty of a woman who had been asked if the sky was blue on a clear day. “What does the student want?” I asked.

The class participants were puzzled. I heard the words, “More financial aid” from several people, but it was muted. So I asked again, “what does the student want?”

A brave soul called out, “More financial aid!” So I asked, “How can we help him get more financial aid?” They looked at me like I had four heads. I repeated the question.

A woman in the back of the room said sheepishly, “By telling him about other scholarships and aid that may be available to him from other sources.” Yes, the school was not the only source of aid. There was a whole community out there to provide financial assistance.

“So what question or questions could we ask him to find out if he wants to go that route?”

They quickly volunteered such questions as, “Have you considered looking in other places for scholarship money?” “Do your parents belong to a union from which you may be able to get a scholarship?” “What service organizations do you or your parents belong to?” “Do you have a disability that might qualify you for more money?” and so on. It was amazing the amount of questions and possibilities that broke loose when they pulled away from the idea that the only thing they could do for this student was provide assistance directly from the college or traditional government loan sources.

You and your business have your own similar situations. If you think you have to say no, seek out ways to avoid doing so and find alternatives to what the customer requested.

I’m not saying you should never say no to a customer. There are times when no is the only answer. In those cases, we let the chips fall where they may. However, if this process can reduce the number of times you have to say no by even 40%, you will have less angry or upset customers and less need to deal with all the grief they bring you.

Customers have good intentions most of the time. They just want to get something done. They have a problem, they want you to solve it, and if you do, they’re happy. They can be like children and stomp around, especially when you tell them “no”. Like children, if they can’t have the toy they want, perhaps they’ll settle for a Tootsie Roll. In any case, the more you can find a way to make them the least bit happy, the better the customer will feel about you and your company, and the happier and calmer you will be.

Don’t make employees deal with stupid rules

People in my customer service classes always ask me, “What makes customers so angry?” Here’s an example.

According to the New York Times, flyers on some recent flights have been told they cannot place any items in the seatback facing their seat. When asked why, flight attendants have blamed the FAA for the rule, which seemed strange since nobody had ever run into this rule before, especially on the same airline.  After numerous inquiries, the FAA admitted that when an airline enforces such a rule, it is following FAA guidelines from a 2007 directive on cabin safety.  Most airlines contacted by the Times said they weren’t aware of the ban, with one United Airlines spokesperson saying, “The seatbacks are absolutely there to be used for personal items.”

Why would this bother customers? One, because the rule doesn’t make any sense.  Frequent flyers had never heard of such a thing and had been using the seatback to hold books, newspapers, and other items forever. To our knowledge, no item ever went flying out of a seatback, hit a pilot in the back of the head and caused the plane to crash. And a hijacker isn’t going to grab my copy of Newsweek and threaten a flight attendant with it.  Two, because flyers already are feeling more and more helpless being told they have to pay to check items, having no overhead room to store items they want to take on board, and being asked to take off their shoes when they go through security.  Now they can’t use the seatbacks. Third, and last, the FAA admitted it has such a directive, but didn’t say why.

It’s enough to make you scream – at the next airline employee you see.  I feel for the airline employee who has to take the brunt of a stupid rule.

One of the things I’m always sharing with my audiences is how companies (and government agencies) make rules that affect employees and customers and don’t explain why they came up with the rule. First, companies come up with the rule without asking whether it makes any sense at all or asking what impact it will have on the customer experience. The rule is not vetted to any great extent before it is foisted upon the employees who have to enforce it.  The managers have to tell employees about the new rule without having a good explanation, so they take an attitude of “Hey, they told me we have to (or can’t) do this. I’m just telling you what they said.”

The person who the rule affects most is the customer. And the person with whom the customer has most contact is the customer-facing employee. The customer-facing employee is given the responsibility to enforce the new rule, not knowing what to say to the customer who asks “why?” Then the customer gets upset, screams at the employee, who feels betrayed by her boss who didn’t give her the tools to make the customer happy.  The employee has lost any connection to the company she works for, argues with the customer and drives him away.

Who doesn’t feel the effect of this problem? The person, department, or agency that made the rule. They just go on their merry way thinking of new rules that make customers angry and drive customer-facing employees to treat customers poorly, go through the motions, or quit, both figuratively and literally. And who can blame them?

Social media should terrify you and your business

Chew on this – “80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices … people update anywhere, anytime …imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.” (www.socialnomics.com)

Now, remember the last time you got really angry about something and were so glad later on that nobody was around to see you lose control. Then, ponder the above statistic again and think about all the people who will tell everyone who follows them on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and everything else that they had a horrible experience, way before they calm down.

Now, imagine that the name of the company or person they are texting, posting, or talking about is you. If you don’t find this terrifying, you must be awfully customer-centric or you’re fooling yourself.

The idea that people will post their anger about their customer experience while it is still happening is terrifying. How many times have we had to deal with the wrath of an angry customer who contacts us or our call center and lets loose with high-octane screaming and frustration about what happened? The only person who knows about that extreme anger is the CSR or other employee who is talking to them. Also, if we fixed the situation, their stories to friends about the incidents would be tempered by time and would include a happy ending.

The worst time to have somebody complain about your product or customer service is when the anger and frustration is still white-hot. And today, using social media to tell others about their anger is equivalent to somebody standing in the middle of your office or store and calling everybody they know to complain. In the old days, the anger might have calmed down by the time they got to the tenth person. Now, they can tell thousands (My daughter, Hannah, has 590 “friends” on Facebook. If Hannah complains about your product, 590 people hear about it instantly. Terrifying).

Even if they cool off a little, the customer you just ticked off may be one of the 200,000,000 bloggers out there. And statistics show that 54% of these bloggers post new information daily and 35% of bloggers post their opinions about products, services and companies.

What can we do about this?

• Make a firm commitment to become customer-centric by implementing new procedures, systems and processes where the customer is the most important person in the conversation or the process. If you’re not sure how to do this, here are two books you can start with: Passionate & Profitable: Why customer strategies fail and 10 steps to do them right by Lior Arussy and The Best Service is No Service: How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy & control costs by Bill Price & David Jaffe.
• Make a major effort to map your customer processes. Identify the dozens, if not hundreds of touch points where your company touches the customer in any way (even those where the department or person doesn’t touch the customer directly). Identify which are most important and find out where you need the most improvement by talking to your customers. If you can’t do the surveying yourself, hire somebody (Arussy’s Strativity Group is a great consultant on these issues)
• Get on Twitter NOW and set up a way for your customers to reach you there.
• Train, train, train your customer-facing people in techniques to diffuse situations when they are in the white-hot stage. A calm customer with a problem is less likely to tell the world than an angry customer with a problem.

People now trust their peer’s recommendations over advertising by a factor of more than five-to-one. You should be terrified.

It’s not rocket service!

Here’s a great exercise you can try to create outstanding customer service.  Get an easel chart with a pad. If you’re a manager, gather your people together. If you’re not, you may want to do this with some co-workers or friends.

Break the group into two or three smaller groups and ask each of the groups to remember when they were customers. Then tell them to write down the things they hate about dealing with customer service or customer situations, whether on the phone, in person, on email or anything else. Tell them they have to come up with at least 10 things (this should be pretty easy considering the stories I hear every day). If they can come up with more than 10, that’s even better.  Make sure you join in with one of the groups to add your two cents.

Stop the group when it seems they’ve listed enough items or when five minutes passes. Then go to the easel chart and taking one item at a time from each team, list the items on the pad. I want you to take one at a time because there will be repeat items. If the items fill up the easel chart page, hang it on the wall and start another page.

Once you have exhausted everybody’s list, ask them if there are any other items they want to add.  After you are sure there are no more items, have somebody (if not you) read the items aloud. Then say the following:

“These are the actions you said annoy you to no end when you deal with customer service. They drive you up a wall. So when dealing with your customers, DON’T DO THESE THINGS! Why? Because these things annoy people!”

It’s not rocket service. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or any other genius to figure out how to treat customers. We all know what it’s like to be a customer. We all know what it’s like to get good service. Most importantly, we all know what it’s like to get bad service, and as the great Hebrew sage Rabbi Hillel said in the 1^st century, “What is hateful to you, don’t do to other people.” The golden rule of “treat people the way you want to be treated” is all well and good, but even more important may be “don’t treat people the way you don’t want to be treated.”

Most problems with customer relationships would go away if most people and companies followed that rule and did the exercise above. People who deal with customers aren’t stupid and they know what’s right but are too often affected by poor work environments, lack of authority, and policies that force them to decide whether to treat the customer well or treat the customer quickly. Most people I know would like to have their problem solved quickly, but if given the choice, they would appreciate it more if it was done right.

What do your customers say about you when you’re not listening? Are they accusing you of the same things you put on your list? Here’s what you should do:

• Take the list you made from the exercise above.
• Turn it into a code of commandments (you can even use the “thou shalt not …” expression). Make the list extremely difficult to avoid in your office or other workplace.
• Review the list at team meetings.
• Show customers the list and ask them to let you know when the team (or you) has fallen down on the job.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. It’s not rocket service.

Who’s to blame for customer issues?

The customer calls, saying she was double-billed for her monthly service. The customer service rep notices what the customer noticed, apologizes and says she will take care of it. The customer hangs up, the rep sends a message to billing, and billing is supposed to remove the second amount. But billing doesn’t.

The customer calls again, and again, the customer service rep assures her that she will take care of it and apologizes again. Again, the system doesn’t allow the rep to remove the charge, so she sends it to billing and again the problem falls through the cracks. This time the customer calls back and the customer service rep connects her directly to billing, where somebody promises to “fix the problem.” The amount is removed and everything is fine.

The next month, the same customer gets her bill and she is double-billed for the next month’s charge. She calls and starts the process all over again. A few days after the final interaction, during which the customer screams and yells, she receives an email asking for feedback. As you might expect, she is none too happy and her ratings and statements reflect that.  The higher ups send a note to customer service asking why they received such a bad review. But customer service wasn’t responsible for that issue, billing was. So why was customer service blamed?

Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Bill Price, the co-author (with David Jaffe) of The Best Service is No Service: How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy & control costs. One of the book’s major tenets is “own the actions across the company.” As Bill and David say, “It is time to stop blaming the customer service department, which in the vast majority of cases, is the messenger and not the cause of customer contacts.”

The book points out that the manager (and in turn, the CSRs) are blamed for long queues, backlogs in responding to customer email, processing claims or any number of other issues. Bill says, “If you look a little deeper at why the customer contacts are occurring and what the staff needs to do to handle these contacts, then accountability of ownership appears less clear.” On the  whole, customer service doesn’t generate the calls (Price and Jaffe put the number at no more than 20%), the departments that are causing the problems or issues are causing people to call. Price says that the costs and blame for customer dissatisfaction should be spread to the areas that cause the problems and not segregated to customer care.

I like to say there are only two types of issues in customer service: system issues and people issues. System issues include processes, procedures, policies, manufacturing, IT, delivery, supply chain, etc. People issues come from anything that the people do. When a CSR is rude, that’s a people issue. When something is wrong in the delivery or manufacturing system or the company creates policies that are not-customer friendly, those are system issues.  Because of the way responsibility is assigned, most system issues are seen as people issues, blaming the customer service area for the mistakes and problems of the departments where the real issues lie.

Customer service should be a clearinghouse for information about where the issues are coming from and that information used to fix the problem. When we take the time to examine those causes, the costs and responsibility need to be placed where it belongs – with the area that caused the issue in the first place.

Survey says: Great customer experiences are more profitable

For 14 years, I’ve been preaching the benefits of creating outstanding customer experiences. The companies I work with seem to understand on an emotional level that better customer experiences bring loyalty from customers. But then they ask, “What is loyalty? What does it mean?” Behind those questions is skepticism that there isn’t really much to the whole concept. I’ve heard the line, “Our customers only care about price and they’ll remain loyal as long as our prices remain low” more often than I can count. In this economy, I’m hearing it more often than ever.

Now comes the 2009 Customer Experience Consumer Study from Strativity Group, Inc.  (http://bit.ly/GVH8I) which backs up the emotional understanding of exceptional customer experiences with one based on consumer opinions of their own experiences.  Based on surveys of 1,994 consumers, Strativity found that “Consumers … indicated they penalize companies that fail to deliver the desired experiences either by demanding discounted prices or by terminating their relationship altogether.”  The numbers show that:

• 52% of unhappy customers say they will continue doing business with the company that made them unhappy only if it offers a discount of 5% or more. When we make customers unhappy, they want something in return.
• Even in today’s difficult economic times, 40% of loyal customers (customers significantly happy with their customer experiences) are willing to pay an additional 10% or more to continue purchasing from the companies delivering great experiences. And while the study says only 9% of unhappy customers are willing to pay more, I see it this way: 91% of customers who are continuing to do business with you even though you’re not making them happy will bolt for the door if you raise your prices for any reason.

The study also notes that exceptional customer experiences result in significantly lower customer attrition. According to the report, “Loyal customers with exceptional customer experiences are almost three times as likely to continue doing business with companies for another ten years or more than the dissatisfied customers.” In addition, “Customers who received an inferior customer experience are ten times more likely to cease doing business with companies within the next 12 months than loyal customers.”

What does all of it mean? As Strativity puts it, “consumers want the maximum value rather than the lowest price.” If exceptional customer experiences are not among your competitive differentiators, you’re going to find yourself losing customers or selling your products and services at a lower price than you would like. In this economy, when revenues are down significantly already, can you afford to charge one penny less for your goods and services than you should? Deliver exceptional customer experiences and you not only won’t have to, you’ll probably be able to charge more.

On the phone for 2 hours for an obvious mistake. Why?

This is a fascinating story from the Associated Press:

“A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars. Josh Muszynski checked his account online a few hours later and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars).”

This story has been all over the web. Most people talked about the bank’s incredible mistake – “Can you believe it? 23 quadrillion dollars?” The mistake is too silly to make a big deal over.

Or is it? In reading the story, it wasn’t the ridiculously large number that caught my eye. It was this passage:

“Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee.”

TWO HOURS? What could have been happening on that call for two hours? Did the representative(s) have to follow every procedure the right way in order to figure out that he didn’t spend that kind of money? In a TV interview, Muszynski said the CSR didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Here’s what should have happened: Muszynski sees the number on his statement. After going back to the gas station, he calls Bank of America. A representative answers the phone and says,

“How may I help you today?”

Muszynski says, “There’s a charge on my debit card for $23,148,855,308,184,500.”

The rep says, “Hmm … Let me call up your account … I have it here, Mr. Muszynski. Oh, wow, I do see that number. That is clearly a mistake. Let me check into it and remove it from your account. I’ll call you when it’s done. What is the best number to reach you?”

And that would be that. No two hours on the phone, no holding for help, no confused representatives making him wait.

It should have been this way because the mistake was so obvious, so ridiculous that anybody could see that it was a mistake. There was no way the bank was not going to remove the charge or blame him for charging that much (Muszynski said he thought his identity was compromised and somebody used his card to buy Europe). The customer did not have to wait or explain while the bank figured out what happened, how it happened, and whose fault it was (It turned out to be Visa’s fault – 13,000 other customers had the same mistake). Why did it take so long?

The bank should have removed the charge and the service fee immediately because it was so obviously a mistake. If the systems didn’t allow that quick a change, then they should have done what I recommended. The customer should not be penalized because somebody on the provider side made a mistake.