Eat Your Own Puppy Chow

What follows is a true story... at a company that shall remain nameless.

It's an average day in the web department of a large financial company. A project manager gets an email from a high executive who happens to sit just down the hall.

They are asking for the Project Manager to explain something to them.

As Project Manager doesn't usually hear from High Executive, they quick pop down the hall.

In your mind's eye - picture the dutiful PM strolling over towards the corner office - eager to assist.

Bit of background:

Large financial company sells many financial products. Financial products typically come with legal contracts and scheduled payments. High Executive (like most of their ilk) buys many of these products from the company. Above a certain rank, it's considered bad form to buy from competitors.

Back to our PM, now bounding into the office of High Executive. While it is a lovely day, it is immediately apparent that High Executive is not pleased.

Their mood can be directly connected to two events:

1) Over a month ago, High Executive had used the company website to set up automatic payment (in full) for a financial product.
2) High Executive had just received a cancellation/dunning letter for the same product from their company.

HE says something to the effect of What the hell is going on? I set up automatic payment and I get cancelled? Who sent me this crap?

PM rushes to find out just what the hell happened. They start with the department in charge of sending that kind of crap. The department readily admits, yes - we sent that letter to an executive in our own company - because they hadn't paid us in over a month.

PM points out that the executive not only set up automatic payments, but set them up to pay the full annual bill - as opposed to just the monthly installments.

Ahhh... replies the department with a bureaucratic smile ...there's the problem. Automatic payment doesn't take effect for a month after you set it up. You still need to manually make the first payment.

You can imagine them holding that smile for a moment - as if their answer has solved everything. PM points out that this executive has supplied an account number & routing number to set up automatic payment - and that this information is identical to information that would be required to make a payment of any amount.

PM: "So, you couldn't take a monthly payment using that information...?"

Of course not (you big silly) They said they didn't want to pay by the month - they wanted to pay in full.

PM: "Couldn't you make a note that their payment is scheduled for 30 days from the date of setup?"

Our process doesn't support that. We'd be taking the risk their payment wouldn't go through.

Smile is weakening a bit - but still there.  

They should have made their first payment when they set up automatic payment

PM: "They thought they had."

We have warning text on the screen - it's very specific.

PM: "It looks like terms and conditions. They didn't read it."

Well, they really should have read it. Then this wouldn't have happened.

PM: "We should change the automatic payment to make the initial payment at the same time."

Our process doesn't support that.

PM: "Well, what are you going to do about this?"

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Now, I'll give you two scenarios that could result from this:

Scenario 1: A review of the payment web interface is undertaken. A gap is found where three tasks (View outstanding balance, Make a payment & Set up automatic payments) are kept entirely separate, despite being very closely related.

The underlying processes are integrated - so that a user who sets up automatic payment is presented with the amount of their initial payment, shown the scheduled date of payment, and asked to confirm it. Behind the scenes, an initial payment for 30 days is recorded - and a second payment for the remaining balance is scheduled with the automatic payment system in the following month.

Conversely - each time a user makes a single payment, they are presented with their outstanding balances and offered the opportunity to make a single payment or set up automatic payments.

Scenario 2: A script is written to scan all outgoing dunning letters for the names of all company executives. Those letters will be routed to an employee tasked with investigating the account balance and resolving any issues with a minimum of exec involvement.

 Now - Any bets on which of these two will actually happen?