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Hi, I am the CEO at Affirm. I am sorry for the bad experience you appear to have had with our customer support — it is certainly not what we strive for. Please

Hi, I am the CEO at Affirm. I am sorry for the bad experience you appear to have had with our customer support — it is certainly not what we strive for. Please email me at max.levchin @ affirm.com with either the transaction ID or the email address you used to register, and I will track down exactly what happened here. I realize you may not care at this point, but I’d greatly appreciate it, as it will help us prevent poor customer experiences. Thank you. —Max

chernevik 4y ago
I hope he doesn't. It sounds like your customer service is the usual cost-minimization nightmare, and I don't see how fixing this one case will make it any better. Companies like yours make it hard for customers to reach capable representatives and routinely break service promises. Because hey! who cares if we have treated people decently? it has nothing to do with the business model. There must be dozens of ways to ensure your customer service systems treat people properly, and you're clearly doing none of them. Don't fix this case, fix your systems.
- tehlike 4y ago
  You should notice that a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on, and cases like this might trigger a deeper look on his side. Whether affirm has this kind of issues as a pattern or not, i don't know. But assuming malintent is not a great pov imho.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    > a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on "Everything" in the micro sense, sure. "Everything" in the macro sense, well, that's literally the job description of CEO, so it sounds like you think the CEO does not deserve criticism. If customer service is not working to the benefit of customers, I'd say that's something a CEO should already be aware of and represents a lack in organizational awareness, which compromises executive duties. Just because the job is hard doesn't mean we should give anyone a break. Assuming the role and responsibilities of CEO is completely voluntary. I don't think anyone is assuming malice; intent has nothing to do with this. The outcome of each interaction is only what matters here.
    - tehlike 4y ago
      You are making plenty of assumptions. But let's entertain what you said is true. What if this is a recent regression that even his people (c-level, vp level etc) is trying to solve recently? Assuming CEO has visibility into every macro thing(who decides what is macro?) at any given point in time is not fair, especially these days when there is so much economic volatility to be honest, which impacts his company more than many others. He doesn't get a pass because he is the CEO. I believe him to be a decent humble person, that will make a honest attempt to address this specific problem and at large. That's all.
- senko 4y ago
  >> Please email me [...] it will help us prevent poor customer experiences. > I hope he doesn't. [...] Don't fix this case, fix your systems. He's literally trying to do exactly that (and acknowledged the customer is pissed and likely can't be bothered to). How would you hande this situation? Not the hypothetical "I'd never let this happen", because if you haven't given at least someone a bad customer experience, you didn't have customers.
  - chernevik 4y ago
    I would send them an email at the address listed in their HN profile (it's there, I checked). I would NOT respond to a complaint like this on Hacker News with some performative demonstration of concern. I would ask my VP for customer service to explain the state of the operation and why this case is such a mess. Who knows, maybe they aren't getting adequate resources or support. I'd do a deep dive: - What are our average call hold times? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC these calls? - When we promise to contact a customer, what is our average response time? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC the quality of those responses? - What are our escalation procedures? How often / effectively are they invoked? - What is our track record with credit bureau reports -- how often are they challenged? what is the outcome of those challenges? - What is our plan for customer service? How do we know it is properly resourced? I'd expect answers to these questions in a day or so, if they can't answer these quickly they aren't the right person. I would be preparing to tell my board, subject to the answers received above, that we have serious problems in customer support, we need new leadership/strategy there, and this might be expensive. These are the guesses of a zero-management experience dude. I'm sure a real CEO would have a better list -- but they should be doing something serious about problems that are clearly systematic.
    - tehlike 4y ago
      Something can be both performative, and honest at the same time. He probably got notified by someone in the company that this is getting attention, he felt responsible so he responded AND got people to pull numbers for example.
- arcastroe 4y ago
  > I hope he doesnt. I personally find Max's (CEO's) response great, and his direct reply and personal note/care is one of the best possible outcomes in this situation. I wouldn't want to discourage this kind of response.
- AmericanOP 4y ago
  The only appropriate response is a public flogging. I also hope he validates my cynicism rather than solve the problem.
michaelmrose 4y ago
It is great that you are trying to help but a customer support situation where there is no actual recourse but complaining on hacker news can't possibly scale and while functional orgs absolutely DO drop the ball sometimes they don't drop the ball repeatedly. From my experience something like this not getting escalated and then escalated again until somebody can handle it is that the system process is broken. In other words there is no sane universe where you learn about this problem on hacker news. How do you plan to fix THAT.
- shmoogy 4y ago
  Bringing the attention of a systematic failure/issue to a CEO that may be caused by policies that force KPIs internally that lead to frustrating encounters is the best way to resolve these kinds of issues.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    I have never seen the CEO of any organization I've ever worked for fix anything of note even company or life threatening situations unless it was actually to the point of threatening the immediate existence of cash flows right away as in this quarter. Honestly anyone who expects Affirm to fix an issue where a fraction of 1% of users are fucked and 99% are OK is dreaming. All it would have to do to negative the benefit of such is for it to increase costs by 1% The smart folks reading this thread have just learned that its wise not to do business with affirm because its not worth the hassle.
    - tehlike 4y ago
      I was an engineer at Google, in admob specifically. We would get issues all over the place. 99% was publisher bug, but it would help us detect patterns and potentially improve the API, or onboarding flow etc. On the 1% we would sometimes figure out later because support Frontline didn't realize the issue properly and we had to address it few months later. All that is is a feedback. I believe we tried to do better by people but our scale probably grew faster than our process could scale. And i say this as a victim of Google's account support (or lack thereof). It is horrible, but you figure nothing is perfect. "Smart folks" tend to know how sausage is made and take things into account and not simply abandon. Don't project your own opinion on others.
bigtones 4y ago
Max, you should personally read some of your negative NPS feedback after service interactions to get a better understanding of what is going wrong in your business. If you're not already using NPS surveys after customer interactions and then looking at the detractors on how to improve your service, you should start now. Could be really enlightening.
supersync 4y ago
Max, check out “The Effortless Experience” - how Verizon took care of this same challenge. There’s a way to provide cost optimized customer service that doesn’t put the burden on the customer to drive the process.
crest 4y ago
You‘ve been given enough details to get your shop in order. Your processes are broken by design if support staff is provided neither with the means to escalate nor resolve issues. It’s time to let your actions or lack of there of speak instead of a cheap damage control post on hacker news attempting to redirect communications into private channels.

chernevik 4y ago

I hope he doesn't. It sounds like your customer service is the usual cost-minimization nightmare, and I don't see how fixing this one case will make it any better. Companies like yours make it hard for customers to reach capable representatives and routinely break service promises. Because hey! who cares if we have treated people decently? it has nothing to do with the business model. There must be dozens of ways to ensure your customer service systems treat people properly, and you're clearly doing none of them. Don't fix this case, fix your systems.

tehlike 4y ago
You should notice that a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on, and cases like this might trigger a deeper look on his side. Whether affirm has this kind of issues as a pattern or not, i don't know. But assuming malintent is not a great pov imho.
- uoaei 4y ago
  > a CEO may not necessarily be aware of everything going on "Everything" in the micro sense, sure. "Everything" in the macro sense, well, that's literally the job description of CEO, so it sounds like you think the CEO does not deserve criticism. If customer service is not working to the benefit of customers, I'd say that's something a CEO should already be aware of and represents a lack in organizational awareness, which compromises executive duties. Just because the job is hard doesn't mean we should give anyone a break. Assuming the role and responsibilities of CEO is completely voluntary. I don't think anyone is assuming malice; intent has nothing to do with this. The outcome of each interaction is only what matters here.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    You are making plenty of assumptions. But let's entertain what you said is true. What if this is a recent regression that even his people (c-level, vp level etc) is trying to solve recently? Assuming CEO has visibility into every macro thing(who decides what is macro?) at any given point in time is not fair, especially these days when there is so much economic volatility to be honest, which impacts his company more than many others. He doesn't get a pass because he is the CEO. I believe him to be a decent humble person, that will make a honest attempt to address this specific problem and at large. That's all.
senko 4y ago
>> Please email me [...] it will help us prevent poor customer experiences. > I hope he doesn't. [...] Don't fix this case, fix your systems. He's literally trying to do exactly that (and acknowledged the customer is pissed and likely can't be bothered to). How would you hande this situation? Not the hypothetical "I'd never let this happen", because if you haven't given at least someone a bad customer experience, you didn't have customers.
- chernevik 4y ago
  I would send them an email at the address listed in their HN profile (it's there, I checked). I would NOT respond to a complaint like this on Hacker News with some performative demonstration of concern. I would ask my VP for customer service to explain the state of the operation and why this case is such a mess. Who knows, maybe they aren't getting adequate resources or support. I'd do a deep dive: - What are our average call hold times? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC these calls? - When we promise to contact a customer, what is our average response time? standard deviations? what is our response to outliers? - How do we QC the quality of those responses? - What are our escalation procedures? How often / effectively are they invoked? - What is our track record with credit bureau reports -- how often are they challenged? what is the outcome of those challenges? - What is our plan for customer service? How do we know it is properly resourced? I'd expect answers to these questions in a day or so, if they can't answer these quickly they aren't the right person. I would be preparing to tell my board, subject to the answers received above, that we have serious problems in customer support, we need new leadership/strategy there, and this might be expensive. These are the guesses of a zero-management experience dude. I'm sure a real CEO would have a better list -- but they should be doing something serious about problems that are clearly systematic.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    Something can be both performative, and honest at the same time. He probably got notified by someone in the company that this is getting attention, he felt responsible so he responded AND got people to pull numbers for example.
arcastroe 4y ago
> I hope he doesnt. I personally find Max's (CEO's) response great, and his direct reply and personal note/care is one of the best possible outcomes in this situation. I wouldn't want to discourage this kind of response.
AmericanOP 4y ago
The only appropriate response is a public flogging. I also hope he validates my cynicism rather than solve the problem.

michaelmrose 4y ago

It is great that you are trying to help but a customer support situation where there is no actual recourse but complaining on hacker news can't possibly scale and while functional orgs absolutely DO drop the ball sometimes they don't drop the ball repeatedly. From my experience something like this not getting escalated and then escalated again until somebody can handle it is that the system process is broken. In other words there is no sane universe where you learn about this problem on hacker news. How do you plan to fix THAT.

shmoogy 4y ago
Bringing the attention of a systematic failure/issue to a CEO that may be caused by policies that force KPIs internally that lead to frustrating encounters is the best way to resolve these kinds of issues.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  I have never seen the CEO of any organization I've ever worked for fix anything of note even company or life threatening situations unless it was actually to the point of threatening the immediate existence of cash flows right away as in this quarter. Honestly anyone who expects Affirm to fix an issue where a fraction of 1% of users are fucked and 99% are OK is dreaming. All it would have to do to negative the benefit of such is for it to increase costs by 1% The smart folks reading this thread have just learned that its wise not to do business with affirm because its not worth the hassle.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    I was an engineer at Google, in admob specifically. We would get issues all over the place. 99% was publisher bug, but it would help us detect patterns and potentially improve the API, or onboarding flow etc. On the 1% we would sometimes figure out later because support Frontline didn't realize the issue properly and we had to address it few months later. All that is is a feedback. I believe we tried to do better by people but our scale probably grew faster than our process could scale. And i say this as a victim of Google's account support (or lack thereof). It is horrible, but you figure nothing is perfect. "Smart folks" tend to know how sausage is made and take things into account and not simply abandon. Don't project your own opinion on others.

bigtones 4y ago

Max, you should personally read some of your negative NPS feedback after service interactions to get a better understanding of what is going wrong in your business. If you're not already using NPS surveys after customer interactions and then looking at the detractors on how to improve your service, you should start now. Could be really enlightening.

supersync 4y ago

Max, check out “The Effortless Experience” - how Verizon took care of this same challenge. There’s a way to provide cost optimized customer service that doesn’t put the burden on the customer to drive the process.

crest 4y ago

You‘ve been given enough details to get your shop in order. Your processes are broken by design if support staff is provided neither with the means to escalate nor resolve issues. It’s time to let your actions or lack of there of speak instead of a cheap damage control post on hacker news attempting to redirect communications into private channels.