eCommerce and

PayPal a Force to be Reckoned With

With the rapid growth of online sales, there has also been a rapid growth in the number of people using PayPal. In fact Monday’s outage was a huge testament to the role that PayPal now plays in eCommerce.  Considering that sources like CNet revealed “The outage could be costly for those who rely on PayPal to handle e-commerce transactions. PayPal says about $2,000 in payments per second flows through the system, meaning that a one-hour outage would cut out about $7.2 million in commerce.” PayPal provides customers a safe and secure way to check out online.  PayPal allows customers to not only pay for items they purchase, but it allows users to transfer money between other PayPal users. PayPal accounts can be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card.

To access a PayPal account you need to have the username and password of the account. The username of a PayPal account is the main email address (primary email address) used to register the account. The owner of the account would also set up a password to be used along with the username to access the account. The security system is quite secure as long as the username and password of the PayPal account are known only to the actual owner of the account. If these details are available to anyone else it would mean that the security of that PayPal account could be compromised. Anyone acquiring the username and password of any PayPal account can access and perform all functions that the actual owner of the account could do. Although PayPal has a security key, PayPal identity scams have become more frequent. 

Account Exposed

I personally had an experience in which I had an eBay account and a PayPal account which was compromised. Someone sold fraudulent items under my eBay account (items they never intended to ship), linking my PayPal account to the sales.  They then collected the funds by transferring them from my account to theirs. When the eBay buyer realized their money was taken and no product was delivered, they started a claim with PayPal and in return the money was deducted out of my account!  I ended up not being liable after we fought the claims and PayPal did an investigation, but the accounts had to be closed and were no longer usable and it was a big hassle and I didn’t even realize that this was all going on until I saw debits coming out of our checking account.

There are a few ways that your PayPal account can be compromised. Being careless with your information is an obvious way for your account to be compromised. Writing down your information on paper or choosing a simple password, is another way. A common way the fraudster can get your PayPal information is by sending an email to the account owner notifying them of certain activity in their PayPal account. For these PayPal email scams to work, the receiver of the email is instructed to login to his or her PayPal account by clicking a link in the email. Once the user clicks the link in the email, he is taken to a web page that closely resembles a regular PayPal login page. This page is in fact a fake and is hosted by the fraudster (not PayPal) with the sole purpose of collecting confidential login details from the actual owner of the PayPal account.  These are referred to as fishing scams.

Account Protection

To avoid these types of PayPal fraud scams there are a few things you can do. One is to never use a simple password such as your first or last name, strong passwords should consist of a capital letter, a lowercase letter a number and a symbol if the service will allow all of the characters mentioned above to be used in the password. Two, never click links on emails to access your PayPal account. Also, type in the complete name of the PayPal website to the requested login, what you will see is that the URL is often a letter or two off or a play on words, for example www.playplal.com. Three, login to your account periodically and look for any strange or unexpected transactions.

The suggestions above will help you keep your PayPal account safe, while lowering the risk of your account being compromised.

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In light of the Christmas season just passing, my customer service team and I experienced a high volume of unhappy and "angry" customers.
   
The majority of the customer frustrations came from last minute shopping. Orders were placed with the expectation that the products would be received on a specific day. To the surprise of the customer some items would not be in stock and some would even be on back order, due to the amount of popular items being purchased. As you can imagine, when customers found out the item(s) on their order were not in stock, the typical response was "This was a Christmas gift, and you guys have messed it up."
 
In our customer service department we strive to do the best with what tools we have and what has been made available to us. Everyone works their hardest and to the best of their ability. But we have all realized that in the online world of shopping, to customers, a lot of times that is not good enough. Customers who shop online seem to have a higher expectation of great customer service, and every year the bar they set seems to rise.  I hate to see unhappy customers and I sometimes want to let them know that their situation could have been avoided if they would have just read the description of the product, read our shipping and returns policies and planned their orders appropriately.  Yet, in the midst of their dismay I don’t say these things because in all honesty I really do want to make them happy and hopefully resolve whatever issue they may be encountering.

As a customer service representative, at times it can become very stressful and discouraging when you are continually dealing with "angry" or "unhappy" customers, day after day. I mean regardless of how many customers that amounts to every week, even if it is only one, that customer situation sticks with you far longer than the customer that emails to say “thank you”.  Its human nature and it can be hard to shake off.  Here at Gordian Project all of our reps have taken this challenge in stride, and they do their best, every time, to help the customer as much as they can. We see it as an area to improve and do better, if we did not, we would eventually become defeated. Not just as a company and department, but emotionally as well.
 
I have wondered how many of our actual customers read our blog, especially the customer service section? There are plenty of articles written on what a customer should look out for when making an online purchase, but not many that give tips on actually planning your purchases.  After making a list of the most common complaints and frustrations our customer’s experience, I thought I would write down a few ways of avoiding such frustrations.  I settled on a list of a few tips for any consumer who is considering making an online purchase, especially a purchase that will be needed by a certain date.
 
Tip 1:
 
Keep track of your account information and log in to check order status. Most websites, including ours, make it easy for you to see the status of your order by simply logging in to an account. A lot of customers get angry waiting on hold to check status of their order and do not realize they can find it themselves by logging into their account.
 
Tip 2:
 
Call centers experience high call volumes, especially during the holidays, even with increased staffing. As a consumer, if you are unable to get through, leave a voicemail, and you will generally be called back within one business day. Many customers get upset because they continue to hold, or instead try to continually call, hang up and keep calling back. If you do not need an immediate answer and can wait a business day, leaving a voicemail will save you call and wait time.
 
Tip 3:
 
Using our LivePerson live chat feature is one of our greatest tools. Customers can chat with an online rep who will assist them in real time and in the same exact way a rep will on the phones. Many customers think they must speak to someone on the phone to get an answer, when in reality they will get the same exact service via our live chat feature.
 
Tip 4:
 
I would say this is my greatest tip to any customer, whether you are our customer or shopping elsewhere. Read the returns policy.
 
I will admit I never really read or paid attention to any company's or stores return policy until I started working here. You can bet that I do now, and I actually do read them, even if I only scan through the important points.
 
I would say a good percentage of our customers fail to read our returns policy, this creates stress and trouble for not only the customer but the representative as well. We want to help customers in any way we can, but in all reality, there are policies we have to stick to.
 
It makes us very happy and encourages us when a customer calls and says, I read your return policy which states "X, Y, and Z", is there anything you can do for me? This shows the customer understands our policies and is asking for some type of exception. At which point we try and do what we can to help them or come to a solution that favors both the company and customer. As a customer please understand there are some policies we simply cannot break or make an exception to, but we will try our best. This is why it is always best to read companies return policy.

There are definitely areas that retailers can improve on, us included, but as someone who sees both sides of the equation as an online consumer and an online customer service representative, it is my hope that these tips not only assist the consumer but the customer service representative as well.

We all know it is easy to get along with people you know, like, work well with, and have things in common with, but when it comes customers, sooner or later, we all encounter that difficult patron. That difficult customer could be any of the following: a complainer, picky, frustrated, irate, or just plain angry.

Circumstances that Lead to Complaints

We get our fair share of angry customers. For the majority of cases, there has been some type of error on the customer’s side, such as ordering the wrong product or entering the wrong address; sometimes, it is our fault. At times, it seems impossible to please an angry customer; they expect us to do something that does not make sense for the company and goes against our policies. But to them it makes sense, because they are looking at it from an emotional perspective instead of from a business aspect.

If an error occurred on our part, we are always more than happy to help the customer and fix the error we made. When the customer is at fault, it can become a little more difficult. While we want to provide great service and help the customer, we have certain polices in place to ensure that the least amount of money is lost and that all processes are correctly documented.

Tactics for Dealing with Difficult Customers

What we have found in our customer service department is that the best way to approach the angry customer, is to treat the problem as an opportunity. Below are a few tactics we use when talking with our customers that may fall in to the category we are discussing.

Empathy - We try putting ourselves in the customer’s shoes, so that we can get a better understanding of their perspective. By letting them explain their situation, even more than one time, they know you care, understand, and are listening to them.  Which we are, but if the customer service representative is not genuine about it, the customer will know.

Respect - Any customer service rep that has been in the field long enough will know that it is difficult to respect an angry customer who is yelling at you. Most of the time, the anger is not towards the rep directly, but they are upset about their situation and we are the person they get to take their frustration out on. Staying calm sends a message to the customer you have respect for them.

Know how to Apologize - Sometimes customers just want to hear and know that you are apologetic about their situation, even if it isn’t your fault directly.  Offering an apology regardless of what you can do about the situation will often alleviate some of the stress the customer is feeling.

Take Responsibility - If the error is one made by the merchant; we always take full responsibility and assist the customer so that their problem is solved.

Having to talk and respond to angry customers can at times be stressful. When those customers are over demanding and unreasonable, it can be very hard to deliver great customer service. If you equip your customer service reps with the right tools necessary to handle the upset customers, they are more than likely going to arrive at positive solutions and the customer may return in the future because of the way the problem was handled.