I go round in circles

You know how sometimes a small thing becomes a big thing?

It normally starts by asking yourself a simple question which spirals into a complex issue that you didn't envisage spending hour upon hour trying to fix over the course of several weeks.

Sometimes it's along the lines of; "I wonder what that noise is in my loft?" or "I wonder what that intermittent issue is with my car?".

For me it was "I wonder if LinkedIn has given me a refund?".

Now, for those of you who don't know what LinkedIn is (and, as I have come to discover, those of us who are on LinkedIn think the whole world is on there when in actual fact, a great swathe of the general population is not); it's kind of like Facebook for business people. But with less stuff that "Needs gone ASAP" and wayyyyy more self promotion where everyone is "Delighted to announce".

I'm on there because from a business perspective it's a pretty good place for me to be. I've made some great connections and secured a lot of brilliant speaking and writing gigs. It's offered me a way to stay in touch and stay on top of what's going on in the tech and social mobility space in a way that's interesting and - dare I say it - fun. And, in a high point for me, I went vaguely viral with a post about a choc ice that garnered 185k impressions (TikTok folks will be laughing their arses off at that assertion but on LinkedIn 185k does count!). 

As with all software platforms, there's levels and options around whether you want to pay. And pay I did for the Premium version that frankly did precious little except allow me to see who had looked at my profile. And so, when - in classic subscription fashion - my Premium membership was renewed without forewarning, I thought: This has got to go.

Twenty-four hours later, I cancelled my subscription. And asked them for a refund which gave me an automated response of "Yes!".

And this is where the trouble starts...

My first mistake was to think the refund would simply be issued. I mean, they took the money a day earlier, so surely it can't be hard to send it back, right? Wrong.

I waited two weeks and having not received confirmation, thought I'd go and check if the money was in my account.

Turns out it wasn't. 

So I hopped on the LinkedIn chatbot and raised a service request which led to an almost instant reply:

"We tried to refund you but it didn't work."

Wait? What?

Now I'll spare you the finer details because god knows even I'm bored of the process so far but at this point I became locked in a three-week battle where I ping-ponged between various customer service agents at my bank and the Premium consultant handling my service request at LinkedIn, vainly trying to relay messages between each party and wondering if I had done something wrong in a former life. 

As a customer with a problem I had:

• A bank escalation process that operates on the basis of speaking to people 
• A LinkedIn escalation process that operates on the basis of Service Requests within their app.

On the one hand I've got a LinkedIn rep who is unfailingly polite ("It is my pleasure to serve you") and yet cannot actually help me ("Much as I want to I am not able to make any changes on our currently stated information above. I understand how important this is for you"). On the other hand I've got an ever-changing cast of people at the bank I can speak to if I can bear being on hold for anything between five and twenty five minutes who have variously indulged in a whole range of behaviours that include:

• Openly patronising me "You see, Mrs Kent, in banking terms what LinkedIn has told you isn't factually correct. But rest assured you've done nothing wrong" No sh*t Sherlock.

• Hating on their colleagues "Ah, Mrs Kent, I don't know who it was that told you they could see why the refund wasn't accepted - it's not possible for them to know that information." 

and finally, hopefully today a lovely customer experience person in Liverpool offered me the sweet, sweet promise of a resolution; "I'm certain the team will just ensure this gets refunded".

The thing that has given me stamina throughout is a combination of tea, swearing and my day job including hosting some webinars that feature advances in chatbot technology. As a result of seeing what's possible from the likes of AWS (and testing out some live examples), I'm getting the chance to be curious about what could be done to improve the experience for customers and customer service professionals alike. 

The new wave of chatbots (or Agentic AI powered 'agents') don't get hacked off at people's frustrations. Or react when they're asked a stupid question. Or want to gouge their own eyes out at having to search through 125 separate SharePoint sites for the information they've been asked for. Or try to find the colleague that speaks a second (or third, or fourth) language. Or get caught up in trying to translate between internal terminology and layperson's language. 

My experience in learning about these systems has been that, given the right data and prompts, they can deal with pretty complex questions in a pretty straightforward way. And if they can't - they can escalate to a human. In the cases involving councils I have seen some compelling arguments for this - one look at my local Facebook page will tell you some of the most common questions (alongside "what's that noise / smell / thing in the sky") are things like: "what bin is being collected this week?" or "who does that abandoned car belong to?". You don't want your council employing people to tell citizens to read their waste disposal flyer or to use the online reporting tool. What you want is people who have the time and skill to deal with complex issues around things like social care and housing. You can see the argument when it's a big organisation to individual conversation - but how about when you're stuck in the middle?

At a time where I've found myself wedged between two multi-billion dollar businesses, trying to not lose my cool whilst attempting to secure a refund of £270, I dread to think how much it has cost in terms of the time of everyone involved. This is a terrible way to do business. Inefficient, expensive and an appalling customer service experience. If there's anyone out there who can build a chatbot that picks up and sorts out this level of painful experience I'm here for it!

In the spirit of keeping it 'cheerful' - this horrible process has given me something to think about and write about in a way that could ultimately bring value to my customers and more business my way. Hopefully, I will eventually get my money back. And if I don't - well, I'll be asking you to book me to speak. Let's see if the next 24hours means another trip around that circle....

Soundtrack: Circles by Kae Tempest - check out the full Reasons to be Cheerful playlist here: 

Current status of my enquiry....

Photo by Daniel Herron on Unsplash