Yahoo Customer Service – The perils of automation

Okay, so let’s start this out with the confession right up front.  My Yahoo account is old – I’ve had it for as long as Yahoo has had accounts.  I went in to cleanup my profile and update the password.  I cleaned up way too well and locked myself out of the account.  No fault on Yahoo – I was multi-tasking and messed up.

Once my login failed I tried to do the online password recovery but I was notified that I had to contact Yahoo customer support.  So here was the first error Yahoo made.

What they do

• Display an on screen message said tells customer to contact customer support
• Customer has to link over to customer support pages
• Customer has to find link to write in – since none of the online FAQs will help
• Customer has to write message

What they could do to make support better

• Display an on screen message said tells customer to contact customer  support and write on that page include the entry screen for the email
• Customer has to write message

Now, lets move to the next step.  In response to my query I got three emails

1. From: Yahoo!
   Subject: Account Termination
   Time: 12:37
2. From: Yahoo! Member Services
   Subject: Your new requested Yahoo! password. Please reset your password now.
   Time 12:38
3. From: Yahoo! Member Services
   Subject: Re: Sign in & Registration – I need my password reset  (KMM130153980V9226L0KM)
   Time: 12:44

The good news is Yahoo quickly addressed and fixed my issue.  The bad news is that my email checks for messages every five minutes.  At 12:37 it checked and I got the automated message saying my account was terminated!  In the midst of cursing and screaming I checked my email again and at 12:40 I got the automated email telling me how to reset my password.  I followed the instructions and got my account reset and was happy.  At 12:47 I got the message, the human message from the rep, telling me that I would get a message on how to reset – no mention was made of the email on “account termination.”

So – in the end I got my issue resolved – but I certainly did not have a good experience!  Some simple process fixes by Customer Service could make sure that I got the issue resolved and had a good experience.