Have you ever been on the phone with a Customer Service Rep for so long and you are still not getting your issue taken care of and you lose your temper and begin speaking out of character due to frustration? This is how I felt the other day on the phone with Verizon DSL Customer Service February 1, 2008. My mother has had Verizon DSL for over a year and a half and all of a sudden on January 15, 2008 her service all of a sudden stopped working. She initially called Verizon and they basically told her that there was something that she did wrong that caused the service to no longer work properly. After the second time speaking with the Verizon CS, I told my mom that I would come by and check to see what the issue was with her service. I went through all of the steps that the installation cd which was provided by Verizon to basically figure out that the issue was the modem. So I called the customer service number on January 20 to talk to someone about the issue with the DSL service. After going through all of the automated operators I was finally patched to an operator that stated that the issue ticket that my mother had opened had been closed because they thought that her service was running. When I stated that the service was not up they proceeded to walk me through all of the steps that the CD took me through previously. I played along and after 1 hour still no service. I told the CS rep that I think it is the modem. Their response it could not be the modem maybe it was something that your mom downloaded. So next I was asked to disconnect the computer from the modem to run a line test to the modem that failed as well. The CS rep then finally comes up with the bright idea that they will send someone out to the house and check the service in the house the next day between the hours of 9 am and 7 pm and someone had to be there or they would not even try and fix the problem. After my mom waited all day for someone to show up the Technician called at 6:30 pm and said that the outside line was working and that they was not coming out to the house. Of course the service was still not working. My mother did tell me until a week later. The next time I called I was a little irritated so I think I may have said some things that I cannot post in this blog but they ended up sending my mother another modem so we will start this entire process over again once the modem comes in.
I decided to try and look on Verizons' website to see if they had any blogs pertaining to their DSL issues and ask I scrolled through their blogs they all were more like marketing ploys about new releases or stating how great their service is. After reading "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto" located in Naked Conversations, I was able to see what Verizons purpose for blogging was and that was to market their products. In the book Naked Conversations a true corporate blog site will post good and bad things about their products. Does Verizon really care about their customers? I did a little more searching on the internet to see if there were any other complaints about the DSL issue and found a site complaints.com that had some feedback on how to deal with the DSL issues. There is a posting in the complaints.com DSL issues from a Verizon employee that says when you speak with an operator you should immediately escalate your call to their manager you have a better chance of your issues being resolved. I am not a big fan of Comcast Cable but I dont have the issues that my mom has had with Verizon. WHY are the customers always getting the short end of the stick? How can we level out the playing ground without having the march on Congress steps? Listen and tell me what you think can be done to make this process better for the customer.
Comic from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmo20241.jpg
Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble/Shel Israel
YouTube Video from: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2853658307743442928
5 comments:
Please don't get me started with Verizon. I am one of the unfortunate people stuck with a one-year contract and I'm in DSL hell...it slows down to a crawl after 6 pm and forget calling the support people because they just blame your pc or your wireless modem. Unfortunately, the roots of these problems lie in the company culture of employee neglect and chaos. If you have ever tried calling their billing department, you will know what I mean...they seem to be operating in a vacuum. Perhaps they need to start an internal blog first so that they know what's going on withn the company, before they try to find out what's happening with their customers.
I've only had an account with Comcast, so I can't speak about Verizon specifically. But I think this might be a problem with cable/internet/phone companies in general for 2 primary reasons. One, they rely on the fact that the majority of their customers are satisfied, and therefore, tend not to understand the frustrations of an individual customer (who likely has no idea how to fix a broken modem). And second, the CS people, at least from my experience, usually don't have a strong technical background, and so will repeatedly assure you that they'll log your complaint, send someone out, but not be able to answer a question over the phone. The whole process is aggravating, and it's about to get a lot worse -- my parents are going through the same issue with Comcast! Will let you know how that pans out...
Jasmin - Completely agree!! Here is the thing that I've figured out as of late, and maybe this was already common knowledge... BUT Comcast outsources its on-site tech service. Which wouldn't necessarily be an issue, I mean a lot of organizations outsource the service part of their company. The thing that happens with Comcast though is that whenever you setup an appointment with a Comcast person, they forward it to another company. That company then calls and asks all the same questions that the comcast person asked (like they don't believe we talked to comcast or something). Then, like all home service organizations, give you some asinine window of opportunity, like during the day (WHILE I'm AT WORK) to drop by. And if you miss that time frame, they can't come for another week. So you want to complain right, well complaining to comcast does nothing, b/c they dont really have management over this other company that was suppose to come out, and you NEVER get the number for the other company. Big joke. Around here (Arlington), comcast has a monopoly on most apartment buildings which I also think is what is killing the customer service.
Bryan - Comcast does have a monopoly in this area for most large buildings. I read something very disturbing at http://www.answers.com/topic/comcast-corporation?cat=biz-fin
about comcast. Here is what it said:
"Comcast spends millions of dollars annually on government relationships. Regularly Comcast employs the spouses, sons and daughters of influential mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued local monopoly and preferred market allocations, many of which have been questioned as unethical.
In 2004 the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey found that Comcast had the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, including the Internal Revenue Service."
There needs to be some better regulations put in place to protect the consumers against these monopolies.
Also Comcast does contract out the work that it does for in home customer service. Verizon does this as well. The workers that come out at least with respect to wiring are contractors that verizon hires. So they really are not connected with the company so to speak.
I just spent the last 3 days without a DSL connection because Verizon's customer support reps were horrible. Do you know how maddening it is to have piles of homework and a modem you know works but no password to log in. It's infuriating...as are their unhelpful employees. I seriously spent an hour on the phone every day trying to get this resolved for the last three days!!!! I finally came up with my own solution, took it to three different departments and got around their "rules." My ingenuity and tenacity paid off but I'm still frustrated because it should not have taken hours out of my life to resolve a simple issue.
So helpful to have your blog to vent on as I was toying with the idea of sharing my frustrations in the same manner:-) Thanks
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