蘋果公司上月推出信用卡，期盼著像在手機領域那樣顛覆這個價值1750億美元的行業。在引人注目的春季發布會上，蘋果簡單地做了推介，并用制作精良的視頻展示了這款鈦合金信用卡。首席執行官蒂姆·庫克說這是50年來對信用卡的“最重大改變”。

發布很容易。

蘋果及其合作伙伴高盛在消費信用卡領域屬于新手。蘋果通過Apple Pay涉足了移動支付業務。高盛則有Marcus個人貸款平臺。現在，兩家公司必須快速學習并掌握支付糾紛處理、客戶服務和出對賬單等繁雜程序。

爭議處理尤其棘手。有時候持卡人會認不出向他們收費的商家。還有些時候，實體卡或者卡號被盜后會出現套購。另外，消費者還可能因為對所購商品不滿而就收費提出異議。

高盛將負責處理這些糾紛。這對聯合發行的信用卡來說是常見做法。但就蘋果而言，讓別的公司跟自己的用戶打交道實屬罕見。這家總部設在加州庫比蒂諾的大型科技企業更愿意掌控所有產品的端到端體驗，包括和消費者的互動。

此外，蘋果將看不到這張信用卡上發生的交易，高盛則不會為了做廣告或其他營銷活動而出售這些數據。兩家公司都拒絕發表評論。

蘋果將利用iMessage來幫助高盛。這項短信服務可能會負責處理簡單事務，比如更改地址。蘋果的Wallet軟件還有點擊呼叫功能，它可以幫用戶和蘋果的客服代表連線。但如果出現糾紛，蘋果的客服代表就會將用戶轉接給高盛，讓后者來解決問題。

為銀行和保險公司提供客服協助的Smart Communications公司的首席執行官詹姆斯·布朗說：“我相信會有一小部分人對那樣的服務通話程序感到完全滿意。”但如果蘋果“真的想進入大眾市場，他們就需要參考那些應用面更廣的客戶溝通和出對賬單的方法，并采用后者的模式”。

高盛的呼叫中心運營經驗有限。歷史上，該公司在大多數時間里都主要服務企業客戶，而不是消費者。不過，它的Marcus個人貸款業務最近贏得了一項消費者滿意獎。

在美國運通于2017年進行的調查中，約40%的美國消費者表示，如果是在處理較復雜的問題，他們就更有可能選擇人工客服，而不是在線聊天或移動App這樣的自助服務工具。

摩根大通過去四年的消費者服務成本下降了15%，原因是它把80%以上的交易都轉移到了自助渠道，比如摩根大通的移動App或者網站。據該公司的消費業務負責人戈登·史密斯介紹，雖然呼叫中心接聽的電話數量基本未變，但每通電話的成本下降了7%。

跟高盛合作前，蘋果還得設法防止出現一個常見的糾紛問題，那就是消費者在對賬單上看到自己弄不明白的交易記錄，原因是它出現在一個不熟悉的商家名下。

Apple Pay的副總裁詹妮弗·貝利在上個月的發布會上表示：“如今，我們中的許多人都可能在對賬單上看到這樣的交易記錄，上面的商家名稱很神秘，解讀起來相當困難。有了Apple Card，我們就可以通過機器學習和Apple Maps把這些亂糟糟的東西變成大家能識別的名稱和地址。”

以前蘋果就曾經遇到過消費信用卡糾紛問題。比如，美國運通就曾經提到，消費者經常會就iTunes收費，也就是購買App和歌曲時支付的款項提出異議。

在美國運通于3月召開的投資者見面會上，該公司的首席策略官穆罕默德·巴迪說：“我們注意到，在iTunes上購物的消費者提出的爭議異常多。他們在對賬單上看到iTunes上有一筆他們不知道的收費，這是因為他們忘了這筆費用包括多項交易，比如有一部電影，還有一款游戲。”

蘋果和美國運通一起在數字對賬單上添加了一個鏈接，直接指向iTunes發票，消費者可以在發票上看到自己買了什么東西。巴迪表示，此舉讓持卡人糾紛“顯著減少”。

然而，要想更進一步來重新設計呆板的信用卡對賬單，蘋果和高盛的可操作空間就不大了。

按照美聯儲的規定，銀行必須使用“易讀的字體和字號”，一般是Arial和10號字。披露利息時，銀行則須使用16磅字體。監管部門還要求“段落之間留有足夠空白”，而且文字和背景要有足夠強的顏色對比。（財富中文網）

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

Apple Inc. launched a credit card last month, hoping to upend a $175 billion industry much like it did the phone business. At a splashy event, the company made a simple sales pitch and showed off the titanium product in a slick video. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called it the “most significant change” to cards in 50 years.

Unveiling it was the easy part.

Apple and partner Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are relative newbies to consumer credit. Apple has dabbled through its mobile payments service Apple Pay. Goldman offers Marcus personal loans. Now, both companies must learn quickly to master the messy process of payment disputes, customer service, and statements.

Disputes are particularly tricky. Sometimes cardholders don’t recognize a merchant that they actually paid. Other times, the physical card or card number is stolen, leading to fraudulent purchases. And consumers can dispute a charge because they’re unhappy with a product they bought.

Goldman will handle disputes. That’s common for co-branded credit cards. But it’s rare for Apple to let another company work with its users. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant prefers to manage the end-to-end experience of all its products, including customer interactions.

Apple also won’t see transactions from the new card, and Goldman won’t sell the data for advertising or other marketing. Both companies declined to comment.

Apple is tapping its iMessage texting service to help Goldman. That may handle simple issues like changing an address. There’s also a click-to-call feature in Apple’s Wallet app. That will put users through to an Apple support representative. But if there’s a dispute, the Apple rep will pass the caller to Goldman to resolve the issue.

“I’m sure there’s a small segment of the population that will be completely satisfied with that chat route for servicing,” said James Brown, chief executive officer of Smart Communications, which helps banks and insurers with customer service. However, if Apple “really wants to move into the mass market they’ll need to adopt forms of the other communication methods and statement methods that are more widely used.”

Goldman Sachs has limited experience running call centers, having focused on corporate customers, not consumers, for most of its existence. Still, its Marcus personal loan operation won an award for customer satisfaction recently.

Roughly 40% of U.S. consumers in a 2017 survey by American Express Co. said they are more likely to seek out a human representative on the phone rather than self-service support like online chat or a mobile app if they’re dealing with a more complex issue.

At JPMorgan Chase & Co., the cost of serving customers dropped 15% in the last four years as more than 80% of the bank’s transactions have migrated to self-service channels, such as the firm’s mobile apps or its website. While the number of call center calls is about the same, the cost of each call is down 7%, according to Gordon Smith, head of the lender’s consumer arm.

Apple will try to head off one common dispute problem before it reaches Goldman: When customers see a transaction on their statement they don’t understand because it’s listed under an unfamiliar merchant name.

“Many of you looking at your credit card statements today might recognize seeing transactions that look like this: cryptic merchant names that are pretty hard to decipher,” Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, said during the event last month. “With Apple Card, we use machine learning and Apple Maps to transform this mess into names and locations that you’ll recognize.”

Apple has had its own trouble with consumer credit-card disputes in the past. American Express, for example, noticed customers often challenged charges from iTunes, which covers purchases like apps and songs.

“We noticed that when customers shop on iTunes, they had an unusual number of disputes,” Mohammed Badi, chief strategy officer of AmEx, said at the company’s investor day in March. “On their statement, they’d see a charge next to iTunes that they didn’t recognize, forgetting it might be made up of multiple transactions: a movie, a game.”

Apple worked with AmEx to provide a direct link from digital statements to the iTunes receipt to show consumers what they bought. That produced a “significant reduction” in cardholder disputes, Badi said.

When it comes to redesigning the fusty card statement further, Apple and Goldman don’t have much wiggle room, though.

Banks are required to use a “readable font style and font size,” typically Arial size 10, according to Federal Reserve regulations. For interest rate disclosures, banks are required to use 16-point font. Regulations also require there to be “adequate spacing between paragraphs” and sufficient contrast between the colors of the text and the colors of the background.