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Activity Base Costing

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READ THIS ARTICLE BEFORE READING THE BNB CASE

UNEQUAL TREATMENT
ALIENATING CUSTOMERS ISN’T ALWAYS A BAD IDEA, MANY FIRMS DISCOVER

Banks, Others Base Service On Whether an Account Is Profitable or a Drain

‘Redlining in the Worst Form’
By Rick Brooks
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

CHARLOTTE, N.C.–Fielding phone calls at First Union Corp.’s huge customer service center here, Amy Hathcock is surrounded by reminders to deliver the personal touch. Televisions hang from the ceiling so she can glance at the Weather Channel to see if her latest caller just came in from the rain; a bumper sticker in her cubicle encourages, “Practice random kindness & senseless acts of beauty.”
But when it comes to answering yes or no to a customer who wants a lower credit card interest rate or to escape the bank’s $28 bounced-check fee, there is nothing random about it. The service all depends on the color of a tiny square—green, yellow or red—that pops up on Ms. Hathcock’s computer screen next to the customer’s name.
For customers who get a red pop-up, Ms. Hathcock rarely budges; these are the ones whose accounts lose money for the bank. Green means the customers generate hefty profits for First Union and should be granted waivers. Yellow is for in-between customers: There’s a chance to negotiate. The bank’s computer system, called “Einstein,” takes just 15 seconds to pull up the ranking on a customer, using a formula that First Union declines to detail of minimum balances, account activity, branch visits and other variables.

The Non-Egalitarian Approach
“Everyone isn’t all the same anymore,” says Steven G. Boehm, general manager of First Union’s customer-information center, where agents will handle about 45 million customer calls this year.
After years of casting a wide net to lure as many consumers as possible, banks and many other industries are becoming

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