In an interview with a local Washingon DC paper, Russell Simmons said RushCard has changed processors four times in the past without issues, but the last one had a “tsunami” of problems that led to the outage.
“We made the transfer of processes four separate times in the past and the next thing you know, I get a text message that we sent to our customers that we were down for two hours,” said Simmons, the iconic business magnate who founded Def Jam Records and the Phat Farm clothing line. “Our call center usually gets about 600 calls and now it’s [getting] 600,000 calls.”
Simmons said he is focused on regaining customer trust, which is the most important place to start. RushCard will need to focus on its current customers as a way of maintaining its fundamental business. While many customers were up and running quickly, even those people could be at risk of defecting if they fear future problems. The fee holiday and establishment of a fund to make people whole after they had to pay late fees will help, but ensuring that basic operations run smoothly will be the cornerstone of the effort. RushCard may see itself with increased customer service costs, as customers may be prone to checking balances and talking to customer service early and often. The investment will pay off, if RushCard can reassure those customers and get them to stay.
Overview by Ben Jackson, Director, Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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