How a $2.72 Credit Card Balance Cost a Bank Nearly $1 Million
In one horrible customer service experience
Twenty-five years ago, I called my (now former) bank to cancel a credit card that I hadn’t used for a couple of years. It still had a credit balance of $2.72 – the result of a slight overpayment.
My expectation when I made the call to cancel was a straightforward, pleasant, two-minute conversation. I wasn’t calling to complain about anything and I wasn’t really worried about the fate of the $2.72. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Fifteen abrupt, rude and unhelpful minutes later, the call ended – followed by me moving all of my accounts, credit cards, investments and our mortgage to another bank the very next day. It was that bad.
The bank has no idea
Twenty-five years have now passed, and I still haven’t done business with this bank. And to this day, whenever I think of this bank, see one of their ads or their logo on a piece of marketing, I still get a bad taste in my mouth. I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago and three things struck me.
- I’m a pretty easy-going guy, and I don’t tend to carry a lot of baggage around – yet despite the time that has passed, one experience twenty-five years ago still defines how I perceive this bank.
- The person I dealt with was just one of over 100,000 people employed by the bank. She wasn’t the CEO, a vice president or anyone in a senior role. She didn’t write policies or draft corporate strategy. She was a front-line call-center employee who, to me, became the face (or voice) of the bank.
- This bank has no idea that this one front-line employee, in just fifteen minutes, ultimately cost them nearly seven figures in revenue.
This isn't a unique story
My experience is hardly unique. I’ve met countless people over the years who have shared stories about defecting from a company because of horrible customer service – and that’s just scratching the surface. A 2025 Havas CX study of 59,000 consumers across eight countries found that 59% abandoned a brand after just a single poor experience. A number of other recent studies have reported similar findings.
I have questions - you should have them too
Do you know what the average cost of a lost customer is for your company? Do you know how many of your customers defect every year? Once you have those numbers, the math becomes straightforward – and leads to one more question: Do you know how much of that churn was preventable?
The most interesting question, though, comes after you’ve actually done all the math – and you’re trying to determine whether or not to hire another person for a customer service role, invest in customer service training, or take some other proactive action. The question is a simple one:
How many customers can your company afford to lose?
