President Obama’s mortgage assistance programs give banks an excellent chance to get some good PR and repair their reputations simply by doing what was mandated – providing assistance to homeowners who are having difficulties. Unfortunately, it appears that not everyone is taking advantage of this opportunity.
After hearing a reader’s story of their (alleged) frustrating attempts to use Citi’s “Homeowner Helper” program, The Consumerist ran his story in full with the following lead-in:
“Did Citi set up its “Homeowner Helper” site to comply with Obama’s mortgage assistance programs, but then not actually attach it to any humans that will help homeowners? After inputting his info on the site, Citi told reader CoarseLive to schedule an appointment with a representative. No one ever called him. When he tried calling Citi directly, multiple agents told him they had no idea what he was talking about, and they hung up on him, again and again. His story, inside…”
Now, a major part of crisis management is crisis prevention. It doesn’t take an expert to see that, if your base-level phone operators are not made aware of a new service (much less one that has been the subject of intense national scrutiny) or even the proper way to escalate a call to management, trouble is on the horizon. Whether the site is legitimate or not, the bad publicity generated by stories such as this one are already reverberating across the blogosphere.
JB
Jonathan Bernstein
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com