[cafebee]

> For better or worse, the side channels are not an accident. They are extremely intentionally designed. Accessing them often requires performance of being a professional-managerial class member or otherwise knowing some financial industry shibboleths

What is meant by side channels here? Is it writing "a paper letter to the VP of Retail Banking", as mentioned elsewhere in the article? That doesn't seem "intentionally designed", so the author must be referring to something else, but I don't have the imagination to guess it

[RationalDino]

That is an example of a side channel.

That's the kind of thing done by people who the bank really doesn't want to offend. The bank decided it wants that to work for them. Therefore the bank created a way of making sure it works.

That it is not documented or advertised is a feature.

[timerol]

The "intentionally designed" part isn't just the mail, it's the process that comes after receiving mail. The VP of Retail Banking does not read their own mail. Who does read that mail? How are various letters delegated to appropriate teams? What letters are discarded or given a canned response? How does the bank make sure that it doesn't ghost people (most of the time)? It basically needs an entire support system, which may or may not rely on parts of the official support system

[seraphine]

Not sure if this is what he meant but you can call a bank or visit a branch, get a phone number for a specific department and call them directly and get almost VIP levels of helpful service in my experience.

Something that would entail hours of phone support thru official channels cut down to 15 minutes. Once you discover this there's no going back and it all depends on who you ask, and how you ask.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

The paper letter would be one such side channel. [e-mail] would be an even better such example. You will get a response from a "Executive Customer Relations" team, which is likely still a tiered tech support team, but the lowest tier is already capable of actually solving most problems that would get completely stuck in the regular support queue. It doesn't get much more intentionally designed than that.

For banks and other regulated industries, if something is a sufficient clusterfuck of incompetence and getting-the-runaround, filing a complaint at some supervisory authority also works. That generally gets the attention of the "troubleshooting" team mentioned, which is usually all it takes. The supervisory authorities know this, and most complaints likely get resolved this way (getting it in front of someone with some level of competence and authority).

I think the tiering structure is reasonable (some of my requests simply need a Tier 1 person to press a button that they have and I don't), and I've seen cases get escalated appropriately, but when the escalation fails/doesn't happen quickly it's incredibly infuriating.

Other side channels can be (real examples):

- legal department (note: this can be a one-way street and can make the company only talk to you through a lawyer, but if e.g. you have a complaint with a company that would result in a small claims court judge shake their head over the company's behavior, and are willing to take it to small claims court, this can be really effective). To reach them and get their attention, filing a small claims court case can be effective!

- Really bad feedback (0/10 on every category, including the "are you satisfied with the person on the other end", not just the company) on a customer satisfaction survey

- Social media (the common way to escalate "beyond the abilities of normal support channels" issues with tech companies). There are teams specifically for tracking and escalating social media feedback, but that's again a tiered system. Bigger shitstorm = higher tier.