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Vinny

Ho...

Lee...

Shit...

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Danilo Campos

Fascinating revelations all around. I'm sure it was hard to pick out the pieces you wanted to share -- that book must be packed with juicy stuff.

I wish I could say that this material surprises me. It makes perfect sense, though, when you take into account the degree to which AOL sucks.

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Hooray4Zoidberg

These types of manuals are fun to read for their general campiness, but this one has the added bonus of exposing some dirty secrets too. Good stuff. I know you probably can't post the whole manually due to legal issues, but I'd love to thumb through that thing.

Reading corporate manuals fires me up, if I were a boxer I would read them before every fight. I'd then proceed to pummel to poor sap I was fighting, spouting corporate buzzwords and acronyms with every punch I throw.

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Paul D

Instead of investing in a system that people actually wanted to use,AOL created a system for duping customers into not exercising theirright to leave for cheaper, higher-quality services.

If you break this statement down to general terms, almost every industry is guilty of this.

Think: the RIAA, the auto industry, opponents of Net Neutrality, etc.

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ACurmudgeon

Quite a story. Glad to see it handled it right. Of course a retention handbook is going to be filled with crap, it feels like you did your best to show where the differences lie. So now no one can come along and say \"Duh, all retention programs are like that!\". Oh, and MERLIN, thats some creepy stuff. I wonder how prevalent that sort of thing is...

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Ted's Famous Kickin Chicken

Every industry with a person-to-person sales component has these kinds of manuals. More moles please!

When I worked in textbook publishing, I had the chance to go through a sales training crash course. Somewhat to my relief, I found that my company had internalized the mistakes of AOL-type practices. Our sales training included things like \"Don't ever try to sell an instructor a book if it's not right for her...she'll have a bad experience and never use our books again.\"

But, unfortunately, that kind of advice is quickly discarded when your pay is sales-goal based. Customer service companies should have a ten-second post-call recording that invites you to rate your experience with that CSR from 1 to 5. If a CSR averages above 4.5, he gets a bonus. Maybe?

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something_amazing

On a side, unrelated note, I'm fairly certain that Merlin does more than just retention. CSR's have access to the merlin system as well. (based on my limited understanding)

Remember how AOL became widely reviled as a place where member passwords were often given up? Much of that truly did come from phishing but many also came from social engineering. A famous way people used to try to get access to another person's account would be to call a CSR and pretend that they were part AOL's internal IS dept. and were running a test of the Merlin system. From there the CSR would be instructed to look up a particular member's ID and divulge information.

I don't have much personal information but I was always lead to believe that Merlin was the core of the AOL Customer Service software, not just for retention.

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thwarted

That \"six-stage system\" makes me want to stab my eyes out with a fork. \"Motivate to Activate\"?

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BenP

Love it. Thanks. Go Bens.

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Omen

AOL is that hard to cancel. I've worked in the financial industry for a number of years. If someone has some strange charges on their accounts it can usually be traced back to AOL. So much so, that when an issue comes up with someones account I usually ask if they have AOL or have cancelled it recently.

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dirty_snowflake

AOHell is what we used to call it. I was at Time/Warner when AOL bought it. Over the next few months, they tried to make us all \"migrate\" to using AOL for corporate business e-mails, but they couldn't and eventually had to drop it. Why? Because AOL loses over 30% of all e-mails sent (an unacceptable ratio in the business world) and it was difficult to send large graphics files using AOL. Instead of having a decent product, it is corporate culture to have an internally unuseable product. Market it as 'internet for dummies', and then do anything to retain customers once they wise up to the fact that you can stick a \"keyword\" in any search engine and get more relevant results. Welcome to AOHell. Please enjoy your stay.

No wonder our stock options went from $88 a share to $8.

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Nick Douglas

So do we get to see the whole document scanned in, Smoking Gun style?

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Ben Popken

Soon, the damn thing is 80 pages!

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YourTechSupport

Please, PLEASE give us a scanned PDF, so I can keep it handy next to my Necronimicon, Mein Kemf, The Road Ahead, and the Enron Ethics Handbook.

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mashuren

This is awesome. I work in combined tech support/customer support for a local dial-up ISP, so I can use all the ammunition I can get for directing customers away from the evil.

It amazes me how many people are willing to put up with horrible customer service, ridiculous prices, invasive software and shady cancellation procedures just because the software is what they're used to, and they're not intelligent enough to realize that for every thing AOL includes as a \"feature\" in its bloatware, there's a free utility out there that does the same thing.

There's absolutely no reason to give any of your money to these corporate monsters.

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Derek, IN

It's a delightful mix of motivational speaker bullshit, slimy corporate agendas, typical passive agressive customer service insults and assholery.
Whoopie!

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mcnasby

I would just like to say, thanks to this member retention manual, I retained my AOL account for 3 years -- 2001-2004 -- for FREE. In 2001, when I first called to cancel my account (due to signing up for Comcast) they said that they would need to speak with my mom to process the cancellation, due to the fact that I was a 15 year old boy. My mom told me she didn't want to be bothered with them so she told me to try to call again. I called the next day using a fake female voice. The CS rep must've hit on me three or four times during the call. I said that my \"husband\" was out of work and we couldn't afford AOL anymore. They gave me one year free.

The next year I called back one day before my free period came due. I called as my mom once again, telling them my husband was out of work. 9 more free months. This process continued until 2004 when I went away to college and didn't need my AOL e-mail address anymore.

Lessons learned. . .

-Customer Service Reps obviously don't read the previous account notation.
-If you're having a bad day, and you're still and AOL member, feel free to give the CS reps a call, they're always waiting to have someone to talk to.
-If you're still an AOL member, shame on you. If you're still an AOL member PAYING for the service, you shouldn't even be looking at this website.

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benko29

thank GOD aol never caught on in canada.

i can't imagine having to live with such a lousy service.

this whole thing is very indicadive of how peoples' minds can be so easily controlled by companies. think of how many poor souls actually buy into the whole customer retention bullshit and continue living with aol not even realizing what they're missing out on.

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Altima

Hmm, this is of no surprise really. I mean they have been making it hard to unsubscribe. And now we know why.

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Ben Popken

Steve writes:

\"I read your page dissing the AOL retention techniques.

I seem to be missing your point. It seems to be a good idea to try to keep existing customers. It's a goal of every business in the world.\"

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mashuren

Steve

Yes, but it's not ethical for businesses to attempt to retain customers with the use of subterfuge and intimidation.

Try to convince me to stay all you want, make me any offer you want, but when I give you the final word that I definitely do want to cancel my account, by God, you had better quit badgering me and immediately terminate my subscription.

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Jimbo

AOL agreed to cancel my account but I continued to get billed for five more months. Turned out I had a second account that was readily available to the retention douchebag, but he didn't bother to tell me it was still active.

I kept calling asking why I was still being billed. I finally got someone who told me I had a second active account and that the other CSRs would have seen that on their screens when I was canceling the first one. I did get three of the five months refunded, but there is no way in hell I'd ever do business with this company again. A Harvard Business Review case study in unethical behavior.

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Quine

I don't know if I'm one of the only ones, but when I tried to cancel my AOL \"high-speed\" account about 4 years ago, I ended up getting a year and a half of completely free AOL. The first call, they tried to reel me back in with 3 free months, so I agreed. I called back in 3 months and made a few new points, and when they tried to convince me that AOL was great, I simply responded \"I'll stay if you give me 3 months free\" and the person IMMEDIATELY caved. For the next 3 calls, the exact same thing happened. Then, on my last call, I demanded 3 more free months, and the person rudely [but logically] exclaimed \"you've recieved free AOL for more than a year, stop demanding more free service!\" So I reported him to his supervisor, who apologized and gave me my 3 free months. After those ran out, I called them up and demanded my account canceled, and after a few irrefutable points (such as \"you don't support xbox live. Xbox live is more important than every single service you offer to me. Yes, even that one.\") they quickly conceded the debate.

When my friend called AOL to cancel, he simply said \"The internet is a tool of satan\" to almost every thing the rep said, and that got him through quite fast :D

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Senator Boomdog

I worked at AOL from 1999 to 2001. Fortunately, not in retention/customer service. Actually, come to think of it...fortunately I don't work there at all anymore.

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Senator Boomdog

dirty snowflake is full of shit about AOL losing e-mails. He is, however, dead on about how much it sucks in general.

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Tiger

Dirty Snowflakes was write about the size of the attachments. That is the reason they stopped forcing TW to use AOL email. They had to save huge graphics and commercials to disk and mail it over night because aol mail was limited to 16 meg files. It sucked having big time TW exec calling the internal help desk and complain.

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NDP

March 12, 2008 10:46 PM

Everything written here is completly true. Probably something you guy already know is the fact AOL (like other major corporations) outsource some of their departments. And most of them can be found in East Europe and India. I work for such a company. I'm in East Europe, talking to people in USA about their accounts. I have full access of \"Merlin\". I have to say that I have a hard time working here after realizing what AOL does to members.
There is, i'm sorry to say, a large number of people who never even try to read the TOS regarding the AOL accounts. Of course the damn thng is written just to confuse people.

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ceokhan

April 25, 2008 10:16 PM

Wow. That is insane. Good job Bens!
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