"Hello, my name is Peggy"
- Discover Credit Card commercial
Whoever developed the character of "Peggy the Customer Service Representative" really had their finger on the pulse of the American consumer. The move to offshore call centers may have saved corporations tons of money, but customers often paid a steep price with their frustration. It wasn't bad enough that certain operators were hard to understand; they also often lacked the training or authority to fix the problems customers called about. There was also the unsettling question of whether the personal information being traded during these phone calls was safe, or whether a boiler room operation next door might have been using that sensitive data for nefarious means.
At the time these ads were running, my wife was working as a billing representative for an ambulance company. She remembers a customer calling in and immediately asking, "You're not one of those Peggys, are you?" If a commercial's goal is to permeate the public consciousness, this one nailed it.
As a long-time Discover Card holder, I appreciated the level of customer service the company provided. When calling for assistance, the representative would tell you their name - and yes, I sometimes wondered if they refused to hire anyone named Peggy - and the location of the call center. While most phone calls for assistance feel rushed, like you're interrupting the operator from doing something more important, calls to Discover felt more conversational. Their representatives generally sounded like they wanted to help, not sprint to the next caller to hit a quota.
Knowing Discover's uniqueness, I read with concern the news that its credit card operations were acquired by Capital One. Other than knowing that Alias alum Jennifer Garner is one of their spokespeople, I was not personally familiar with their operations. None of their cards were in my wallet.
The first sign that my concerns were well founded was the email right before the purchase was finalized. Instead of letting customers keep what was familiar to them, the accounts would be switched to Capital One's online platform. Even worse, the migration would not be automatic. Without an overlap period, customers would have to set up their new access if they wanted to service their accounts online.
When the time came to check my statement, I followed the prompts, entered my personal information, and found myself staring at an error message: "Try again later."
In a rush, I pushed back the task until another day.
Unfortunately, time did not do anything to resolve the technical problems. After a few more days, I called for help.
After answering several prompts from the automated service (arguably a fate worse than an offshore operator), a transfer to a different department, and an extended hold, a customer representative finally picked up. Luckily, her name was not "Peggy," and I was able to understand what she was saying. There was, however, no mention of where her call center was located.
Any hope for a quick solution was quickly dashed. She had me enter and then re-enter my identifying information. She told me to try using a different browser. I am still dealing with the consequences after following her instruction to clear my cache.
After sitting on the phone for over an hour, the best the representative could come up with was that there was some kind of discrepancy in my data. After working with me to make the needed corrections, she told me to give the system 72 hours to update and then try again.
I gave it more than a week.
Understanding that the person on the other end of the phone call wasn't responsible for her employer's failures, I was careful not to take my frustrations out on her. But when she asked how my day was going, I politely explained that I wasn't happy about the situation. I explained that my first call had lasted over an hour and that the problem still wasn't resolved. The change in ownership wasn't something I had initiated, and it was unfair for them to expect me to waste my time on the phone so a corporation could expand its profits.
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