Don't lead your customers down a dead end.

I recently tried to lease a server from Dell. Here is what happened, and hopefully what we can learn as business people from the experience.

I placed my order through the Dell website, which was a fairly straight-forward process. I applied for the lease, and was approved.

Verification Required
Shortly after I placed the order I received an email stating that I would need to contact the Dell Financial Services verification department before my order could proceed.

No problem. I immediately called.

I was asked for my Dell customer #, name, tax ID, address and phone number and put on hold. Standard and simple.

Welcome to the Dead End
In the context of this discussion "dead ends" are places where the vendor leads a customer out to a point, and then abandons them. That's where I was about to end up.

After a few minutes on hold the operator returned and told me that "verification failed".

After four calls and speaking with a Supervisor, this was the dead end result:

• Credit is fine it is a "verification" issue.
  
• The account is locked indefinitely.
• There is no way to find out what information failed verification.
  
• There is no way to resolve the issue.
• There is no one else to speak with.
  

I asked the Supervisor, "So you are telling me that I'm at a dead end. You are locking my account forever because you cannot verify some information - but you will not tell me what that information is or how to fix the issue?"

"That is correct."

It's like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

Dead Ends: Tangible Effects
Customer Perspecitve: These dead ends produce feelings of frustration and helplessness - not exactly the adjectives you want associated with your brand.

Operator Perspective: Instead of being able to help, policies relegate them to repeating "I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to do anything". This leads to speaking with unhappy customers, and results in low job satisfaction.

Company Perspective: Since the answer seemed so unreasonable I persistently made four attempts. In doing so I kept 4 different operators and ultimately a supervisor busy for a total of about 1 hour. The hour of time that Dell Financial Services paid those combined employees was totally wasted, because it did not accomplish anything positive for me or DFS, and worse it had all of the above mentioned negative results.

Lessons to be Learned
In brief, don't create customer dead ends.

You probably have policies that need to be enforced. Your may need to perform identity verification or other serious processes. Identify possible dead ends, and fix them. Give your employees some way to help the customer back out. Provide some form of solution.

Remember that every interaction you have with customers is part of your marketing. What is the message you are sending?

What do you think?
Are "dead ends" inescapable, or is it simply a matter of bad business policies?