
Ford Credit Doesn’t Care About Employees
I’ll be the first to admit this headline is a very bold claim to make about a company as large as Ford Credit, but I have been following an inside story about recent events at the company that will justify the use of such a title.
Nearly 2 months ago, Ford Credit made a change to the website that customers use to login and pay their bill or otherwise monitor their account. They said it was security reasons and the goal was to get customers who weren’t using their email address as their username to do so. If they have FordPass, which is Ford’s mobile app, or if they’d ever registered their email address on the Ford Owner website — the intention was to have them merge the login information.
Sounds pretty simple, right?
It hasn’t been.
For starters, Ford Credit never sent out any type of email communication to inform the customers of the changes before they started. So, as I understand it, one day, a customer could login with their normal username and password and the next day, they were faced with these changes. What’s worse is the changes were impassable. Complete this or you can’t login!
Mistake 2: The website does not provide clear and concise instructions on how to get through this new “Single Sign-On” process. A lot of Ford Credit customers are older people who have been logging into the website for years the exact same way. Aside from a general aversion to change — this new process made it almost impossible for them to get to the “other side” when all they really want to do is pay their bill. If Ford Credit had bothered to provide step-by-step instructions on the website, that could help TREMENDOUSLY with the process, but they chose not to do that.
Mistake 3: After receiving what could possibly be THOUSANDS of complaints from users and employees about the changes to the website, Ford Credit refused to make any REAL improvements to the website. They did a little change to the wording, but it wasn’t enough to make it easier for anyone. On top of all of this, the process is IMPOSSIBLE if you are not on the right browser — in this case, Google Chrome. So, Apple users who have Safari, or people who use IE or even Firefox face an even bigger challenge. Again, Ford Credit could have communicated this on the site “Hey, if you’re using Safari, please complete this process from Chrome” — a simple warning that, if placed on the website, could save everyone involved a lot of trouble.
So, what happens when you make changes to a website that people use regularly, fail to effectively provide instructions to get through those changes, and refuse to make adjustments based on documented complaints?
You guessed it — customers start calling customer service!
Call volumes have exponentially increased. Service levels has exponentially decreased. And EVERYONE’S frustration levels are through the roof.
We live in a time where it’s clear that companies and customers have very little regard for the person on the receiving end. Social media has given a platform to shine a light on such things. Last month, Zuckerberg was in front of Congress and he was questioned about whether he thought it was appropriate that the people who moderate FB video content were contractors (instead of employees), paid a barely live-able wage, often suffered from PTSD, and were only allowed 9 minutes a day to process some of the awful content they were paid to watch.
Popeye’s created a chicken sandwich and a lot of buzz around it. In mid-August when the sandwich was introduced, social media was flooded with videos of the employees being verbally and sometimes physically assaulted by customers, there was a constant shortage of the sandwiches, and there were photos of extremely exhausted employees just trying to cope with the storm the company had caused. Upon the return of the sandwich a few days ago, there have been more video of the same and unfortunately, one person has been killed over a chicken sandwich.
These are examples of how large companies value profits over people.
Ford Credit is no different.
Ford Credit customers are (justifiably) frustrated with the changes to the website and as a result, they are visiting that frustration upon the reps who are trying to help them. Customer service reps are being yelled at, cursed at, and given terrible customer service survey scores all because of corporate changes beyond their control. Everyone is tired. This situation doesn’t appear to be a win for anyone involved.
And what does management at Ford Credit do in this scenario — NOTHING!
Supervisors are constantly “challenging” the employees to meet their customer service goals in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, because Ford Credit is a metrics-driven company. They don’t care about the experience of the customers nor the employees — the SOLE focus is what the numbers look like. Supervisors, from my understanding don’t roll up their sleeves and help out on the phones during this time. The main advice they’re giving is “hang in there.”
When a customer service rep is being yelled at for the majority of an 8+ hour shift for nearly 2 months, what kind of impact does that have on their psyche? We all know that customer service is not always an easy job. There’s no denying that it comes with some challenges. But, when the companies failures exponentially increase the challenges that are visited upon their employees and the company does little to nothing to alleviate these challenges, it’s evident they care more about the money than the people (customers and employees, alike).
There are a LOT of things that Ford Credit could have done by now to ease the burden they’ve created for the customers and their employees, but they’ve opted not to do any of those things. They’ve left their employees to twist in the wind and I’d venture to guess that the mentality is like that of so many other people/corporations — “You don’t have to work there.” Factually, that’s a true sentiment, but it’s intellectually dishonest.
But, I guess it’s not all for nothing because as a reward for all their hard work, the employees are getting pizza.
