Xoom’s poorly implemented customer experience

The following is an example of poor customer service and a poor customer experience. As a startup CEO and founder myself, it is my belief that IF the founders or management were aware of this they’d fix it because that’s just the nature of founders – wanting to improve. It’s also a great example where despite that intense focus on great product, you can have mishaps at times. Anyway, let get to the story …

I had to send some money to a friend of mine in India and I was looking at efficient ways to sent it. I ran into a Quora post recommending Xoom and thought I’d give it a shot. Signup was simple or “as expected”. I then proceeded to perform my very first transaction. That required a funding source so I entered my credit card info. However, I entered “Sid Shetye” for my name and as soon as I hit submit I realized I should have typed my full legal name i.e. “Siddharth Shetye”. Anyway Xoom said credit card couldn’t be added, so I thought no worries, I’ll just edit it.

Issue#1: Xoom will not let me edit my name on an added credit card

Well, that’s stupid, but I thought there must be another way. I found the delete button for the credit card and made good use of it. I think. Credit card gone, now to add it with the right name!

Issue#2: Xoom doesn’t really delete credit cards

Sure the button says ‘Delete’ but once delete try adding the same card back. It complains that the card already exists even though it’s not in your Xoom profile page. Schizophrenic!

I thought this was a bug on their software so I called up customer service. I reached someone called Bernadett who was having issues communicating with me. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Accent wasn’t a problem, it was just the collection of words she was uttering. She  suggested that I might have distributed my credit card information to other people, who might have created a Xoom account with it, therefore Xoom won’t allow me to add it. And I thought Fox news’ conspiracy theories were idiotic. I assuring her that I had not distributed my credit card information to others. Anyway, she was not interested in solving the problem, so I asked her if she was a full time employee of Xoom. Obviously she wasn’t and her (lack of) motivation became clear.

I figured I ought to write to the founders telling them what’s happening at the customer support end of business. Seems the Contact Us emails also go to … you guessed it, the same outsourced customer support team! Here is what I got (minus the “hi, hello” niceties). I’ve adding my comments in between:

Incomplete or inaccurate information may have been entered into the system

Typos happen? No kidding!

which prompted the hold which is for the integrity on all our customer accounts.

Not sure why incomplete or inaccurate information is a security risk to every account. The rest of the internet figured out eCommerce in 1990’s – they ask the user to resubmit the information again.

You can opt to reenter the correct information to see if the system will accept it (account number, last 3 digits on the back, expiration date) as either one of these could just have been entered incorrectly.

So. If I make a typo, I should plan to have them in only those fields? Got it.

Please be sure to clear your browser cache and history to refresh the system.

This is a useless suggestion because the issue is that their web-application and database insist that the credit card exists and won’t let me add it. It has nothing to do with my browser.

If there should still be issues regarding this, kindly use a different payment source (different card number or bank account) as we are continuously working on improving our system to serve you better.

Unfortunately, for taxation purposes, I cannot simply pick and choose any payment of my choice. There was a very very good reason I picked that specific payment method. I wish the service respected that.

Xoom’s system is designed that once a payment source (bank account, debit card or credit card) is associated with one Xoom account it may not be used in a different Xoom Account

This is genuinely, a good idea. No sarcasm, it’s the right thing to do.

or if it was previously added and then deleted on a Xoom account there is no guarantee that it can be added back even on the same Xoom account. We apologize for the inconvenience.

THIS is the dumbest idea. Xoom is effectively limiting the number of funding sources that can enter their system. Their revenue depends on the volume of transactions, so they should be fostering as many sources of funding as possible (and legal of course). On top of that there seems to be no logic to that policy. Even if there was some logic, there is no dose of reality where it’s possible customer might genuinely need to remove and then add a credit card (my situation being just a specific one). On top of that by using “no guarantee” in his sentence the support agent suggests Xoom doesn’t know either. How does that uncertainty make me feel as a Xoom customer? “Hmm, they transfer money, have access to my money but they have NO idea if it will work or not.” Well, I lose my confidence in the service.

Anyway, as I said right at the start, I’m willing to give the founders and management the benefit of doubt that this is not how they intend to run their business. I’m willing to bet that if they found out this is how their support is operating or if this is how their user experience is, they would gladly look into improving it. Again, that just the nature of most founders. What is surprising is that there is no seemingly direct way to reach that management team. So if you guys are listening, remember to get feedback from your customers. Thousands of dollars and countless hours are spent in marketing research on what customers might want. So when customer tell you directly what they want – that information is priceless.

I’ll try reaching these guys in some other way because I genuinely want them to improve and be successful. We’ll see if I can actually do that because things can get super busy at this end 🙂