As a form regulator of conduct / consumer protection in the financial market place for 20 years, I have observed trends over the years that were detrimental to supporting a fair, honest and responsive marketplace.  Government has responded in the past by introducing consumer protections measures for such matters as better disclosure, addressing misleading marketing and sales practices, controlling abusive fees, interest rates, requiring a consumer complaint resolution process and so on.

One aspect of the market place that remains free of any standards or disclosure is the level of customer service / satisfaction by consumer with a provider of products and / or services.  This Blog discusses how technology is two sided; on one side it can be used to improve service and satisfaction for consumers while the other side uses technology to frustrate and deter consumers and may present barriers that limit consumers from addressing their concerns. Hence, I pose the following two questions:

Has consumer apathy, weak levers for empowerment and passive government oversight in the marketplace created an open field for abusive and manipulative practices in addressing consumer service needs and which is supported by technology?

Does unfettered use of technology and innovation override any accountability to provide or support an honest, transparent and responsive market place for consumers?

The blog will be presented in two parts:

PART 1 TECHNOLOGICAL BARRIERS / OBSTACLES

There is no doubt the internet and other technology is essential for the structure and growth of an economy and clearly can provide the consumer marketplace with significant benefits by:

• Allowing & improving remote access
• Addressing, in part, the need for inclusiveness
• Reducing costs
• Offering faster and less complex service
• Creating and offering more diverse products and services and combinations thereof
• Providing ease of financial transactions
• on so…

However, it also creates risks and an uneven playing field for consumers.  I previously wrote about the risks in a previous blog in the context of unregulated or lightly regulated “FinTech” that offers financial products and services domestically and across borders.

This blog continues on the theme of highlighting risks and the unacceptable barriers that technology can create when used to deter a fair and responsive marketplace for consumers.  Policy makers in the past intervened in the consumer marketplace when it is evident that there is an unfair imbalance of power between consumers and sellers. This blog will discuss the barriers that technology and companies create, either knowingly or not, to reduce the time and costs of interacting directly with consumers who have issues, concerns, questions or complaints regarding their products and services before and after sales. 

Policy makers need to be concerned as to the level of frustration, harm and imbalance that an unfettered adoption of technology can have on the trust and confidence that consumers have in the integrity of the market place.   We should not simply accept that companies have the right set up their “protective” barriers that limit their need to be responsive to consumers or a segment of society.  The consumers deserve a level of transparency, responsiveness and accountability in order to make an informed decision as to whether they can have a trust in having a relationship with a company.

Just as companies demand performance data on consumers to make decisions, consumer equally deserve performance data to make informed decisions on who to deal with in an open market place.

From my experience, the following sets out my views regarding a trend of setting up obstacles or barriers aimed at deterring consumers and that are enabled by the application and misuse of technology.

Choking off consumer access:

Technology has been used by retail companies and financial institutions to reduce costs / increase profits by channelling / herding consumers through unresponsive communication channels such as automated call centers, websites, chat bots, social media, etc.  As well, many companies no long will identify any physical addresses of their offices or even provide an email address for consumers to directly communicate.  Many times, if there is an email address, one receives a nonsensical bot response.

These communication channels are capable of throttling access in a way that perhaps has the impact of deterrence and frustration for the average consumer to the point that they give up; examples include:

• Automated call centres that cannot respond to your call and instead gives you the recorded line, “we value your call but are experiencing a higher level of calls “at this time”, please wait”; the trouble is “this time” is almost “all the time”.  Often the automated system provides no option for a call back. 
  For example, media raised this issue for customers at Questrade Inc. who experienced extreme frustration when there were hours of delay with a backlog of calls waiting to deal with issues and requests including trades.  How many consumers ended up hanging up and were not able to have their needs addressed in a timely manner? 
  
  
• Even when the automated system puts your call through, you are simply channelled to another part of the automated system, “the notorious call tree” where you are asked to select options as to what you want to talk about…; often I find the list is incomplete and leaves you puzzled as to which button to push.  It usually does not give you a default to be connected to actual person.  If it is a voice activated tree system, when I state my issues or topic, the system often says that it does not understand and after asking me to repeat what I said and it still does not understand, it will hang up instead of offering to refer me to a “actual” person …if by chance the system does refer to a actual person, I am then put in a long queue to wait for the next available “actual” person.   

As an aside, I noticed that when I called the phone number for new customers that were noted in the marketing material, I had little or no wait time…but then when I asked the person to address my concern I quickly got transferred to the general inquires number where “we value your call but are experiencing a high level of calls “at this time”, please wait”;.

• As for websites, consumer may be channelled / forced to use poorly designed Websites that are geared to marketing and sales rather than providing information and pricing structured for consumers to easily obtain information and/or answers to their questions and concerns.   Some sites may not even provide an efficient search mechanism. 
  
  Important disclosure and other important information may be cloaked with very small print or buried within many clicks in the site, or may not even be on the site at all.  Just try to find information easily with one or two clicks for any information regarding topics such as “how to report a problem or file a complaint”; “how to cancel a service / card”; how to verify a transaction”; “how to return a product” …etc.
  
  

At what point do these behaviours by companies constitute abusive practices designed to prevent consumers from being treated fairly and provided with a reasonable level of customer service. 

Are we seeing the integrity of the marketplace simply relying on caveat emptor once again with a “race to the bottom to avoid timely and effective customer service”?