I’m not sure how to start this column — maybe “let’s
talk about customer service again, or the lack of it.”
“
Customer service” is an ill used title. When you contact “Customer
Service,” you don’t always get service. Some companies
like to refer to “Customer Care,” but that rarely
ever occurs because it is very unusual to find anyone in a
customer service department that “cares” about
your problem.
What
you do find is a long wait on hold listening to a poor selection
of music frequently broken up by ads for the company
you are calling to register a complaint. You also get the
customary one-liner joke, repeated over and over — “Your
call is important to us.” If our calls were important
to them, they would hire polite personnel and enough of
them to handle the load of calls they must receive.
If
a customer calls a company with a complaint, making them
wait an extensive amount of time is only going to
make them
mull over how unhappy they are about the product. The
wait time may allow a customer to build up enough anger that
by the time one of the (often) fast-talking, “I can’t
be bothered with you,” person answers, they will
get a blast of it.
Recently,
I called my cell phone company because my service has been,
at best, sporadic since I returned a month
ago. I waited on hold 20 minutes, then talked to a
young woman
who
ran me through the usual inquisition. She had me dial
a special number on the cell phone and tell her what
I had
already
explained it had said on my screen: “Error in
connection.”
I
patiently told her that was why I was calling from my landline.
She told me to remove the phone’s battery, wait a few
minutes, then re-install it and call her special number from
my cell phone. After I received the same “error in connection” message
yet again, I told her that was why I was calling.
The young woman had me try a few other tricks, all of which
failed. I told her I had heard there was a tower problem in
my area but when she checked, she saw no notice of any such
event. After all of this, I was asked to hold for a tech. While
holding, I got to hear how important my call was, warned my
conversation would be recorded and told all the techs were
busy, but I would get the next one available.
After
the usual 10 to 20 minute hold time, I got a tech named Michael,
who instructed me to take
my phone
apart,
including
the SIM card, and switch batteries, then reassemble
it. He also had me do changes to the phone’s settings, which
I later learned was a “factory wipe-out” back to
default settings. You may recall a photo that accompanied my
column in April about visiting the Hoover Dam. It was a picture
of the bridge over the dam I had waited four years to take.
I had placed it on my phone so I could show it to everyone
and forever be reminded of the moment I viewed it. You know
the saying: “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” That’s
how I felt about mine.
After
doing all the maneuvers requested by Michael, my picture
disappeared. When I asked him about
it, he responded, “I’m
sorry, it’s gone now.” That’s it — gone,
and he followed up with, “It cannot be
recovered.”
When
I asked about the problems with the tower in my area he responded, “There were no problems listed.” Believe
it or not, I continued working with Michael
for another hour or so as he asked me to
charge the
battery in
my old cell
phone and switch out SIM cards with it, which
seemed kind of risky
after losing my picture.
Michael
finally “gave up,” and
said he would assign a case number and
I should visit
a location
where
a tech could
examine my phone.
I
had asked the young lady to report my concerns about the
tower outage earlier
and a supervisor
called me — when
he could finally get through on my landline
that had been tied up for more than two
hours. He
said the local
tower
was indeed
under repair and phones in the area were
experiencing outages. He thought it should
be up and running
in about a week.
Don’t give up on this tale, it gets better. When I went
to the area center to have a tech examine my phone — it
was gone, replaced by a retail outlet. When I called in and
gave a new person the case number I received, she said the
tech who filed it reported, “the
customer took his phone apart.”
When
I asked about the tower problems she said, “That’s
life, weather and other events affect your service and we don’t
offer any guarantees.” I asked
for her supervisor, who told me I
had been
offered compensation of
half off my bill
and refused to accept it. Why would
I have refused? She then told me
she could
not
help me.
My
phone still is “sporadically” working when it
feels like it, has weird things in the settings — which
I am afraid to adjust — and
I will be making the 180-mile round
trip
to
visit a corporate
store to try
and salvage
it.
AS I SEE IT, customer service is a thing of the past.