Again with the customer service
I think it’s me, I really do. Or customer service is so bad that the whole world is just apathetic about it and cannot deal. Since I'm paranoid I'll go with the first. That gives me a little more faith in mankind.
A major telephone company in Southern California that was just bought out by the company that was broken up in the early eighties for having a monopoly on the telecommunications and who shall remain nameless is now the new bane of my existence. Since I just moved I figured I'd be smart and call ahead to have my service hooked up by the time I was settled in as opposed to moving and waiting a week. 2 weeks early I called. The service was to be set up on the 1st and DSL ready to go on the 3rd. The 1st came and went, so did the 2nd and there was no dial tone. So on morning of the 3rd I called their 800 number and that's where the fun began. It began with the automated guy who asks questions to better direct your call but never understands what you're saying and always asks you to repeat yourself. Oh, he sounds friendly, but when you have him ask the same question over and over and over again with no change in his oh-so cheery inflection it can become down-right maddening. That lead to being bounced around to 7 different people all in different departments none of which communicates with the other. The final person actually tried to be helpful. He got another a technician liaison on the phone and I had 2 people telling my service wasn't going to be turned on any time soon, at the same time! 1 hour, one minute and 40 seconds later I was getting off the phone with no solution to my problem. I was told that someone could come on Wednesday - 4 days after it was supposed to be hooked up.
Well, I got off the phone after yelling a bit and trying to understand how I was going to be penalized for someone else's mistake - the technician came, couldn't find the junction box and left without giving me the courtesy of a note. So I called back after I left the meeting I was late to - this was 1 hour later - and a nice woman, probably in her late 40s informed me that no one could hook up my service until Friday and there was no one who could change that. So I asked to speak to a manager. She told me one could call me back but that won't help. In fact no one in the company could change the hook up date. There was no one I could talk to and no one who could help me. BIG COMPANY little person. That's right, the company owns us and there's nothing we can do about it. That was the message this 40 something lady was imparting to me. Well, suffice it to say there was a bit of yelling on my part.
I figured I'd call a technician directly - one who had helped me with my boss' phone. He offered to look into it but made no promises to being able to hook up the phone line. A prince among men, truly. I mean this sincerely because my friend the technician called me the next day and sadly he was unable to help me directly, but he "reminded" me of the manager's direct number and wished me the best.
Long story not so short - the manager sent someone out to me today and will most likely push my order through business affairs to have the dial tone turned on. So a silver lining by the names of German, Dennis and James. None of which work for customer service and all of which were truly helpful.
Customer service is designed to keep you in a loop so long you get frustrated and give up. The more automated the service the more likely you're going to say "fuck it" and apathetically deal with your problem. You'll no doubt be frustrated at first, but that will pass and you can look forward to drooling on yourself and sitting in a pile of your own filth. This is what the big corporations, the big companies, are hoping for. I'm sure there is a room of older gentlemen who all sit around and wonder how they can create more money and less work. Customer Service seems to be the 1st place they looked and the days of a person who takes pride in his work talking to you and genuinely helping you find what you're looking for are long gone. You'll be lucky to even get a person. And if they are sitting in America and not in some distant land with a computer screen giving them a set of if/then situations consider yourself lucky. The truth of the matter is it will only get worse unless someone finds a way to change the current trend moving away from person to person communication. Pretty soon we won't have the random person sitting waiting for the poor schmuck who braved the Minotaur maze of automation. Pretty soon, if we're so unlucky, it will all me automation made to sound like the cheerful helpful soul of a time long gone.
Beware. The likelihood of companies looking to run your life is high and in most cases may already be happening.
A major telephone company in Southern California that was just bought out by the company that was broken up in the early eighties for having a monopoly on the telecommunications and who shall remain nameless is now the new bane of my existence. Since I just moved I figured I'd be smart and call ahead to have my service hooked up by the time I was settled in as opposed to moving and waiting a week. 2 weeks early I called. The service was to be set up on the 1st and DSL ready to go on the 3rd. The 1st came and went, so did the 2nd and there was no dial tone. So on morning of the 3rd I called their 800 number and that's where the fun began. It began with the automated guy who asks questions to better direct your call but never understands what you're saying and always asks you to repeat yourself. Oh, he sounds friendly, but when you have him ask the same question over and over and over again with no change in his oh-so cheery inflection it can become down-right maddening. That lead to being bounced around to 7 different people all in different departments none of which communicates with the other. The final person actually tried to be helpful. He got another a technician liaison on the phone and I had 2 people telling my service wasn't going to be turned on any time soon, at the same time! 1 hour, one minute and 40 seconds later I was getting off the phone with no solution to my problem. I was told that someone could come on Wednesday - 4 days after it was supposed to be hooked up.
Well, I got off the phone after yelling a bit and trying to understand how I was going to be penalized for someone else's mistake - the technician came, couldn't find the junction box and left without giving me the courtesy of a note. So I called back after I left the meeting I was late to - this was 1 hour later - and a nice woman, probably in her late 40s informed me that no one could hook up my service until Friday and there was no one who could change that. So I asked to speak to a manager. She told me one could call me back but that won't help. In fact no one in the company could change the hook up date. There was no one I could talk to and no one who could help me. BIG COMPANY little person. That's right, the company owns us and there's nothing we can do about it. That was the message this 40 something lady was imparting to me. Well, suffice it to say there was a bit of yelling on my part.
I figured I'd call a technician directly - one who had helped me with my boss' phone. He offered to look into it but made no promises to being able to hook up the phone line. A prince among men, truly. I mean this sincerely because my friend the technician called me the next day and sadly he was unable to help me directly, but he "reminded" me of the manager's direct number and wished me the best.
Long story not so short - the manager sent someone out to me today and will most likely push my order through business affairs to have the dial tone turned on. So a silver lining by the names of German, Dennis and James. None of which work for customer service and all of which were truly helpful.
Customer service is designed to keep you in a loop so long you get frustrated and give up. The more automated the service the more likely you're going to say "fuck it" and apathetically deal with your problem. You'll no doubt be frustrated at first, but that will pass and you can look forward to drooling on yourself and sitting in a pile of your own filth. This is what the big corporations, the big companies, are hoping for. I'm sure there is a room of older gentlemen who all sit around and wonder how they can create more money and less work. Customer Service seems to be the 1st place they looked and the days of a person who takes pride in his work talking to you and genuinely helping you find what you're looking for are long gone. You'll be lucky to even get a person. And if they are sitting in America and not in some distant land with a computer screen giving them a set of if/then situations consider yourself lucky. The truth of the matter is it will only get worse unless someone finds a way to change the current trend moving away from person to person communication. Pretty soon we won't have the random person sitting waiting for the poor schmuck who braved the Minotaur maze of automation. Pretty soon, if we're so unlucky, it will all me automation made to sound like the cheerful helpful soul of a time long gone.
Beware. The likelihood of companies looking to run your life is high and in most cases may already be happening.
posted by Adam Donshik at 11:44 PM
3 Comments:
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