I have a painfully low tolerance for lousy customer service.
I can accept and understand that problems occasionally happen with all services. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking telecom, TV, airlines, whatever. In my view, what distinguishes great companies is how they respond to these troubles.
Why is it so hard to find service excellence in consumer telecommunications services? Sometimes, it just seems telecom service providers are willing to annoy their customers, one at a time. I’d like to believe this is an unintended consequence, rather than a strategy – but there seems to be uniformity in the delivery of disappointment through mediocrity.
My latest experience is with my high speed internet service provider (you know who you are). In the spirit of the season, I will leave out the details, but customer service rep I280 and her boss, Greg, didn’t seem to want to hear that your auto-dialling announcement machine was broken and bothering me. Greg claimed he was as high up as escalation could go. If senior management wants to hear about it, call me – I have it documented. It will be fun to compare his notes to mine.
The report of the Telecom Policy Review panel called for a new Telecom Consumer Agency. Customer service and consumer issues will be advanced as market forces lead the regulation of the industry. I don’t think that these issues should necessarily get resolved by a government body. But I’d love to see a publication of comparative tracking reports, the way that US airlines are scored on various performance indicators. Track outages as a start, as I suggested 2 months ago.
That little bit of information would lead to more informed and more empowered consumers. Then we can talk about real market forces.