Customer Care Professional

First, let’s talk about who your Customer Care Professional (called a CCP) is. He or she can be anyone from the tip of Rhode Island to the shores of California working from their home and/or an office in Phoenix, Arizona. I worked from a third-party company that allowed me to work from home with various hours to choose from. The convenience of working from home was the allure. It was supposed to give me the flexibility to manage the family and allow me to get my writing done.

The problem, and it’s more of a personal issue than company problem … it’s very difficult to write after a day of listening to American Express Customers whining daily. And I do mean whining. These are people who AMEX deemed worthy of getting a credit card and, after years of feeling special for having the card, feel they have earned exclusive privileges to be pains in the ass to the CCP’s. Everything from needing to waive a late fee, to where their membership points are to wondering why they’re APR’s are sky rocketing. All well and good valid requests … but if you get these calls back to back for eight hours, it wears on the average CCP and, since many of us do not work within a office but from our homes, the lack of managerial overseeing creates a mood of who needs this crap and disgruntled feelings. The average AMEX card owner is very, very arrogant and considering that so many random people aren’t tied to an office, receiving pivotal private information on an hour to hour basis (address, phone numbers, expiration dates, social security numbers, etc), you would think they would be careful how they treat whom they are dealing with.

Am I saying people are stealing card member information? I don’t know anyone at all particularly, but my question is to you …what’s stopping them? Any given day, I will have scraps of papers of social security numbers and information that I have to throw out after writing things down to access accounts. You see, when the caller makes a mistake at the automated system, it gets steered to a CCP and that CCP may ask to re-enter the account number and ask you some security questions to make sure you are who you say you are.

The average arrogant card member tends to get annoyed at this part. Swearing they typed in the number correctly when they didn’t. If that were so, they would never have to come and speak to us.

The CCP asks a series of questions based on how you set your password when you opened the account. The problem with AMEX is, 80% of the time, new cards they issue out to new members don’t have a password setup for when you call in. So, it gives the default question: What is your mother’s maiden name? Again, 80% of the card members never set up. The other 20% usually forget it.

If you don’t know it, that’s okay. Usually the next question is what is your year of birth? And if you know that, then you are suppose to be given an opportunity to change your password through a voice response system. Because we know you’re annoyed by now, we usually just don’t give you the opportunity to change it and just move on. If you answered the year of birth question right, the account is displayed and we can talk to you.

Even if you’re not you.

From there, anyone crafty enough can just reset the password (provided they know additional questions like previous resident, or a family member no in their household).

We are given strict rules not to over-challenge anyone who calls. So if the card comes up on the screen with the name MARY RICHARDS and it’s a male voice … if the person who called answered all the voice prompts correctly and still says his name is MARY RICHARDS, we have to still give out information as asked. Naturally, we try to get the right information…like the card comes up on the screen MARY RICHARDS but the person admits he or she is the spouse, additional card owner, etc … we adjust our screens to acknowledge who we’re talking to … but most times, if all passwords are answered correctly, a woman’s name on the card and the male voice will not be challenged if he says he’s Mary. Sounds funny, but it’s true.

There are a multitude of Work-From-Home companies that work for American Express. They give a couple months of training through online and telephone conferences. Truthfully, the training is long and intense, but you get to really see the kinds of people working for American Express through these months. Mostly women … housewives who need to be home for one reason or another. They require that all those working from home regard a zero-noise tolerance, but from time to time I’ve heard stories of the CCP caught with the barking dog in the background, small party or children going on in the background.

Then at certain times of the evening, AMEX calls get transferred to other farmed out countries and by the next day, card members are asking whether or not the CCP is from America. You see, for whatever reasons AMEX has, mostly financial, to keep their 24-hour service in motion, they need to farm out help overseas or in patches of American communities that have a concentration of a specific race willing to do the job. Not every call is actually diverted to Pakistan … however the work could be farmed out to an American company run by those of Hindu heritage.

Still not good enough for the average card member that, often times, bridges on racism on how they don’t want to talk to an accented CCP.

With calls coming in by the multitude specific times of the year, it’s really hard for the average CCP to really care about your problems after being yelled at and often abused by card members. So don’t be surprised if you get hung up on consistently if you come off making demands.

No, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a member. You can be a card member since 1922 but if you’re late with a payment, you will get a late fee. It’s system generated … stop complaining and pay your bills on time.

Always remember, American Express is a business first. Your friend dead last. And the average CCP has even less interest in your wellbeing … especially if your acting belligerent over something that could have been handled if you, the card member, would just calm down and listen.

But the American Express Card Member will always act if their high and mighty … forgetting the CCP has their personal history in their hands.