My Experience with Bad and Better Customer Service – Continued

In a previous post two weeks ago, Laziness, Priorities, and Customer Service, I wrote about a recent horrible customer service experience I am in the middle of with my local phone/cable/internet provider. Stories of bad service like that are fairly common place these days, but there are still stories of good experiences that happen. While we are more prone to remember with great detail the bad experiences, we should also seek to recall the good ones. First though, I would like to add a little more of the bad from this same situation.

When I ended my last post, the cable company had come out and found that indeed it appeared lightning had struck the ground close to where the coaxial was buried underground, sending a surge through the cable and frying all items directly attached to a coaxial cable in my house. So, the cable to the house from the road needed replaced, requiring a team to come out and bury a new line. I was awaiting a response from the company as to when this would get done, but never heard from them.

This is one of the top no-nos of customer service – and returning calls to the customer should be a top priority. On another side note, I also had also filed an insurance claim with the company to see if they will cover the repair or replacement of the damaged items, but after two calls and messages to the person handling the case, I have not heard word one from them even acknowledging the case - sad indeed.

I finally called them myself on Saturday, after two days of silence, and was told they had scheduled the new line to be buried on the following Thursday, and then a technician will come out Friday to adjust and set everything up in the house. WHAT?!? Another week with absolutely no telephone service, not to mention internet and cable (not necessities, I know). I was informed they do not work on weekends, and this happened to be a three day weekend on top of that. They are this backed up on work and yet do not have a weekend crew working to keep wait times down? Unbelievable!

Again, there appeared to be no priority on getting my phone reconnected. I explained to them that there were many times when my children would be home alone and had no way to call out if something arose, not to mention how many important calls I have probably missed (would have been nice if they at least offered to turn on an in-line answering service while I waited); but nothing seemed to change the priority of my case. So, I was forced to wait.

Thursday came and went, and when I got home from work to discover they had not been out, I called the company to inquire. As I spoke with them at 6:30PM, the lady on the line actually told me they work till 7:00 and could still be coming out that night. I chuckled at the silliness and ignorance of her. Needless to say, no one came.

The next appointment for the guy to come out and fix up things was on Friday afternoon. So, I decided to wait and see what happened, thinking maybe the cable would be buried in the morning. Sure enough, close to the appointed time, I received a call from the technician telling me he was in route to my house. I asked him if he was going to be burying the cable himself, since that had not been done. Of course he was not doing that, but when he got to the house, he actually got on the phone with supervisors asking what the deal was with the cable burying crew. Within an hour or so he had them out there, and a couple hours later, the cable was buried and power was restored. He then went about testing and getting everything in the house up to working order.

He was quick and knew what he was doing. He identified things like a weak signal, and reported it so a new maintenance crew would come out and address it. He installed all that I needed, and was very helpful in making sure everything inside and out were done and complete before he left my house at close to 7:00PM that evening, which was close to six hours after he had arrived.

I have my services restored, but still no equipment to connect to it, and no word on whether my case is going to be handled either way. So out of the numerous people from the company who seemed clueless as to how to provide good customer service, there was finally one who indeed gave the company a good name with his work.

One good apple can not always save a whole basket of rotten ones though, and the other local phone/cable/internet competitor for these services will be out this week to switch me to their service. This was not my first bad experience I had with the other company, but it will be the last. Bad customer service does have its consequences, as they shall see.