AOL doesn't want you to leave
A recently published article reports that an unhappy AOL customer tried to cancel his account. When the customer service representative didn't want to let him cancel, it took the customer a total of a 21 minute phone call (including automated response and hold-time) to get the account cancelled. The customer decided to share a 5-minute recording of the call just to share how frustrating it was.
What's even more of a shock is how much time in total people have wasted talking to AOL reps trying to cancel.
"When AOL customers call to cancel, the average duration of the call is 10 to 11 minutes. If we generously assume the shorter time, then the three million members who dropped AOL in the 12 months through March had to make an involuntary investment equivalent to 250 work-years in order to wriggle free."
I verified the math. It works out to 249.1 work-years if you use the typical worktime assumptions and multiply by a 10-minute phone call per cancellation:
- 8 hours / work day
- 5 days / work week
- 50 weeks / work year
If AOL had a form to allow people to do the cancellation online, things would be different. Let's assume it would take about 15 seconds (the article assumes 2 seconds, which is a bit quick). That 15 seconds for 3-million people would equate to 6.2 work-years. That's still a lot of time, but a lot less frustration.
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