Customer Disservice

I had a problem with my Internet access.

So I called tech support about noon yesterday. Ray tells me he sees the problem, it will be fixed, and our connection should be up again within four hours.

Four o'clock, check the connection. No dice. Call tech support again.

Tricia tells me she will expedite the order. Should be up in 30 minutes. I ask her if I'll need to reset the modem or anything. She assures me I won't, it should just come on and be fine.

It isn't. At five-thirty I call again. Another CSR (didn't catch her name) tells me she sees the calls at 12:04 and 4:10, with the expedite request. *She* says it could take four (more) hours, usually it's 48, but with an expedite it drops to 24.

Nine last night, still no connection. Call the tech support line. I get a recorded message telling me the "24/7" office is closed, to call back during normal business hours, or I can go to their website for help and information.

IF I COULD GET TO THE WEBSITE, I WOULDN'T BE HAVING TO CALL TECH SUPPORT, NOW WOULD I?

This morning, call again. Debra tells me that from what she sees, our connection was fine as of 10:25.

I tell her it certainly isn't, and I want to talk to a supervisor. She tells me she will find one, but the supervisor won't be able to do anything more than she would be. So I explain to her the repeated calls and the fact that every CSR told me a different time frame, and not a single one of them was right.

When I worked in sales, customer service, and customer retention (ick), I learned the same thing in all three jobs: Under-promise, Over-deliver. It's not that hard. If you are positive that connection will be fixed in four hours, you tell the customer it will be twelve. They won't like it. They will bitch and moan. But when they check in five hours, just because they are hopeful and impatient, and the problem is fixed *only* five hours into the time frame, they are happy. They thought they'd have to wait twice as long.

You never, ever, EVER tell the customer "30 minutes" unless you are delivering pizza.

So when I talked to the supervisor, I gave her polite what-for and suggested they give better training to their CSRs. These poor people sit in their cubes all day, having angry, frustrated people like me calling and verbally dancing on the edge of abuse. The last thing they need is shoddy training and craptacular tools making the customers angrier.

She agrees, then advises me she will connect me directly with a tech-support agent instead of just transferring me to their call queue, and suggests I reset the modem and reboot my computer while we wait so that when the tech comes on the line, we can skip that time-consuming part of the process.

"Wait a minute," I say. "I was told I wouldn't have to reset the modem."

"Well, yes you do," the supervisor informs me. "I apologize for the misinformation, but when the connection is affected like this, you always have to reset the modem from there, we can't do it from here."

So. I reset and reboot. By the time the tech comes on the line, I have my connection restored and don't need to talk to her. But I vent anyway, now completely fed up with the entire mess and as close to profanity as I've been in such a situation in a very long time.

"I appreciate you letting me know your concerns and I apologize for any inconvenience," Maria the tech tells me with the bland, rote-memorization they have all used. And then she twists the knife:

"Thank you for choosing [company] for your Internet service. We appreciate your business. Have a nice day."