American Century: A+ for Customer Service

I made a mistake this year. I contributed too much to my Roth IRA. All those numbers. All those IRS forms. It changes every year, and it is all incomprehensible. Luckily, my personal electronic accountant friend, TurboTax, caught the mistake.

So, I picked up the phone and called American Century Investments, who is holding the tiny bit of money that is my Roth IRA.

Wow. What an amazing customer service experience.

• There are no menus. You call and the auto-attendant says "A customer service rep will be with you soon," and they mean soon. I waited about 30 seconds, and we're only 9 days from TAX DAY.
• I spoke to 2 reps; they both spoke perfect english and understood exactly what the problem was and what I needed. Recharacterize $ X from 2008 to 2009? Absolutely.
• And without prompting she gave me all the info I needed at the end of the call: The current date and time, her time zone, her name, the confirmation number for the change, the dollar amount of the change, and when I'd see it in my account.

Really amazing. Kudos to American Century. But stay tuned ... my friends have been sharing stories of not-so-nice customer service, so I'll be ranting on that, soon!