I call it a “data crime” when someone is abusing or misusing data. When we understand these stories and their implications, it can help us learn from the mistakes and prevent future data crimes. The stories can also be helpful if you must explain the importance of data management to someone.
The Story
One financial institution bought another financial institution. The company then notified me that I did not have a beneficiary set up. I reminded them that I did have one set up with the old company, and I asked what they did with it.
Not being able to answer that question, the customer representative told me how to enter a new beneficiary from scratch, including entering the social security number. I suggested that since not everyone has a social security number, that might be why it didn’t transition to the new database.
He then insisted everyone had a social security number. I reminded him that a social security number was a U.S.-centric number, at which point he put me on hold for about the fourth time.
The solution was to enter the social security number as nine zeroes (or ones, but I found the zeroes worked).
What We Learned
This was just a sad situation. Nothing about this interaction should have been extraordinary, and yet it was.
Data needed to move from one database to another. Even if it was a sudden company purchase, which I don’t think it was, data should have errored out when there was no social security number. They should have been checking the error log and working on a resolution before it became a customer problem. If it had been a planned purchase with plenty of lead-up time, they would have had plenty of time to examine the data and cover all scenarios.
While the majority of beneficiaries probably have social security numbers, mine can’t be an isolated case, so how many customers were impacted?
Customer care, which I believe was in the country, seemed completely unaware of who got social security numbers. Even if they were in another country, they should have been aware of the rules that applied to their employer. They shouldn’t have needed education from a customer.
What are they going to do when some day they look at the data and have to pay out to a beneficiary with a social security number of nine zeroes or nine ones? This should be something they plan for, yet I have no confidence they are doing so.
