Business ProfileforAmerican Safety Council, Inc.

BBB has received a pattern of consumer complaints alleging the following: consumers allege that they are unable to reach customer service in a timely manner via chat, email or by phone. Many allege they are being locked out of the system by the biometrics security system. These same consumers can't reach anyone in customer service to rectify issues which have caused them to not finish the program within the designated time frame.

On February 21, 2023, BBB submitted a written request to the company encouraging them to address the pattern of complaints. The business responded with the following:

We take this feedback very seriously and you have our full cooperation to address and eliminate the patterns of complaints. In addition to various steps we have already taken to improve customer satisfaction, we are actively working to implement the following solutions to eliminate these patterns of complaint:

1.                  Improving customer instructions on how to use the biometric security systems, focusing on common problems and offering video-based tutorials. To start, we have enhanced our frequently asked questions (https://www.newyorksafetycouncil.com/defensive-driving-faqs/) and in-course documentation so that customers may self-service through online support.

2.      Engineering a solution to automatically unlock a customer’s course after they fail the regulatory biometric security requirements. As their top priority, our technology team is developing a solution to automatically restart a customer’s course if they fail to secure successful biometric identity verification after the number of attempts established by the regulatory authority. This means customers will not be required to contact our customer care team if they are locked out of their course due to biometric security failure.

3.      Finally, with respect to longer than expected response times, we are actively staffing up to reduce our hold times across phone, chat, and email in response to spikes in volume. We have hired six full-time customer care agents, with three having started employment in late February, and three more starting March 6.

We are committed to implement the steps above, many of which are being worked on by our technology team now, as well as any additional steps needed to eliminate these patterns of complaint so that we can improve customer satisfaction.