Ameriprise -- the trilogy is complete!

as promised, here is the update on the Ameriprise saga:

so the very nice and highly competent customer service person returns my call and we walk through the process of getting accounts set up on their website. i can't log in because i've forgotten my stupid username and password. i'm thinking i should probably just use "stupid" as a username and whatever the numbers are for "stupid" as a password, and then i'd have no trouble remembering them.

anyway, rather than transferring me to some call center in a basement in minneapolis or mumbai, she puts me on hold for a very short interval, and comes back on the line with an IT person who gets the UI/PW situation resolved in the nanosecond it requires to hit a key (which should also be marked "stupid" on her keyboard, so people like me can be more expeditiously handled). then, in a curious display of IT-hijinks, the card account which has been the subject of so much consternation and blogging is all of a sudden resting comfortably on the page, minding its own business, and looking like it's been there all along. i know this isn't the case, and tell them so, and they calmly agree with me even though i can tell by their voices that they think i'm crazy.

i don't care, though, because i am the customer and i have been helped!!! it's silly to think that customer service problems are good for brands, but i will say that sometimes solving a problem gives a brand an added boost it wouldn't have gotten if it had simply performed acceptably well all along. and now, i'm going to tell my 4 followers and anybody else who's seeing this post (given the Ameriprise experience, i now make room for that possibility) about how great Ameriprise is, when i might not have gone out of my way to do that otherwise, because these kinds of great brand UX experiences are, in truth, pretty rare and when people like me find them we tend to talk about them.

i'm sure that Ameriprise, given a normal market, would rather have their clients recommending them for other reasons (e.g., growth, stability, investment performance, etc.) -- and who wouldn't agree that "they made me a ton of money!" sounds a bit more compelling than "they solved my card website problem!" -- but it's a crazy world out there and beggars can't be choosers. small brand victories in the short term can help win the war in the long run.

Ameriprise, thanks for restoring my faith in your brand. we're gonna know each other for a long time.

Ameriprise Part 2, and 3, and the illusion of control

when you're a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. and i admit it....i am, most often, the nail, and these posts are written from a very nail-oriented perspective. which is just my way of saying, "hey, hello... i'm your target and you, Mr. or Ms. Marketing Genius, are not really hitting me on the head or even striking the broad patch of drywall in my vicinity."

occasionally (much less occasionally, lately), i am the hammer and this allows me to recognize the good work of other hammers. so here's what's happened in the ameriprise saga (see my earlier post, below, for the start of the story.)

so the day after i wrote that post, i come home to a phone message from a lovely lady from ameriprise, who says, among other things, "we saw your blog." and i'm like, WHAT? no, that's impossible. i only have 4 followers and 2 of them are dogs. i share a maiden name with the third and my bed with the 4th. but sure enough she had seen the post and knew all about the poor customer service and left her phone number and said she would help me AND the other gal who was apparently in need of some instruction on the company's products and services.

i don't know whether i was more thrilled at the fact that i'm surfacing on amerprise's marketing comms screen as some kinda person of influence, or that they just wanted to fix the brand UX... but in either case, i was in fact thrilled and am using this opportunity to give big snaps to ameriprise for getting it right (well, i'm assuming they will. we've been playing phone tag, which is by no means a situation entirely under their control. so stay tuned for amerprise Part 3, where i will report faithfully on what happened and either send you flying in droves to seek financial nirvana from them, or not.)

speaking of control ... i was having lunch with a couple of folks from 2 fine milwaukee-based communications shops in pr and design, and we were in general agreement that control is not all it's cracked up to be. the design house had just been notified that their work has garnered some awards, and i thought it was a pretty interesting circumstance that those award-winning items are the ones where the client did not get out his/her pointy finger and insist that the type be in a certain color or font, that the images be cropped a certain way, or make any other stupid pronouncement that should without doubt be left up to someone who went to design school (or could have). on the pr side, the same was true -- at the time of the interview, the client had not been convinced the story was a great placement, but gave the agency the benefit of the doubt and in the end it turned out to be a terrific score.

i think really we should stop believing in "control" as a way of getting what we actually want, and instead favor "guidance," which enables agencies and other outside service partners to do more and better work, faster, more easily, and with greater value while still in the end providing us with deliverables that meet our needs. sometimes this means paying for things you end up not wanting -- but i think the true cost of that is significantly less than the benefit of getting something great you didn't know you needed.

Brand UX

i had a very interesting conversation today with a very smart guy named dick bondy, a fellow who has probably forgotten more than i'll ever know about brands and marketing. dick is consulting now and is carving out a pretty interesting niche for himself in the area of corporate brand launches.

these events, known in the trade generally as "these @#$%^!& events," due to the fact that nobody really knows what they're supposed to be or how they're supposed to work, and as a result most of us who have done them usually just devise our own programs and hope for the best, or at least, the absence of disaster. ameriprise is an example of a company that did a fabulous job on its launch event, helped by my very good friends at lippincott, when they transitioned from american express to their new moniker.

but in my view, it's not all sweetness and light for the ameriprise brand at the moment. apart from being tarred with the same brush that's blackening the image of all financial services companies, i think they have what i call a brand ux (user experience) problem.

i happen to be an ameriprise customer, having been a client of american express financial services for many years. i've had the same advisor for the last 14 years, and she's fabulous (note, that's not to say i'm doing better in the market than anyone else whose holdings are in the tank). but she is extremely bright, extremely responsive, and i'm quite sure she does a better job at managing my money than i could do on my own.

one of the services she recommended recently was that my husband and i take advantage of the Ameriprise Achiever's Circle credit card, which has no annual fee if you keep a certain level of assets in Ameriprise accounts. i called, spoke to an equally fabulous customer service rep on the phone, and we ordered up the cards. and they came in a lovely little folder with all the features of the card, etc., and at this point i would say my ameriprise user experience was completely intact -- they've suggested to me a brand promise of intelligence, capability and great service, and they had delivered completely on it.

but then... i wanted to set up the card online so i could see transactions, balances, etc., so i went to their website (the intelligent thing, in my view) but couldn't find anyplace where it talked about the card, other than to sell you on signing up for it. so i called the number on the card, and got the web address, http://www.servicemycard.com/, and learned that barclays is the card servicer.

ok, i guess i'm all right with that - strong brands can align with other strong brands and not defeat their value propositions - but it would've been nice if somewhere along the way they'd told me so.

so i begin the laborious process of setting up the card. pick a username. password. photo. phrase. enter your mother's maiden name. the first school you attended (by this time, i'm getting a bit ornery, but dealing with it). now enter your address, telephone, employer, blah blah blah.... and now i'm thinking stuff like "does ameriprise really know what the hell's going on here?" and then finally i get to hit the "go" button and .... it doesn't work.

like an idiot, i try the whole process again (isn't it funny how we've become conditioned to thinking that somehow it's OUR fault and not the website's?). and again, it doesn't work. by this time, i am livid.

i call the number again and tell a not-so-fabulous phone rep the problem. she puts me on hold for an hour -- ok, it was probably 3 minutes but it felt like a hour--and then she says "your financial office has to set it up for you."

me: "financial office? i don't have a financial office. i have an advisor. do you mean my advisor has to set this up?"

her: "your financial office has to set it up for you."

me: "I DON'T HAVE A FINANCIAL OFFICE." (i probably was speaking in all capital letters by this time.)

her: i don't know anything about that. it says here you have to have your financial office set it up for you."

i hung up the phone and chalked it up to material for a good blog post.

this is why brand UX is so, so important. brand is not about a great logo -- it's about a great company, and products, services, and customer interaction that are completely consistent with that greatness. it wouldn't have been so bad, arguably, if i wasn't thrilled with the rest of the ameriprise delivery -- then i would've expected mediocre performance on the credit card thing, and my expectations would have been fulfilled. but they set themselves up to fail on this one, and i can only hope they figure it out soon... before i, and others like me, decide to go elsewhere.