Customer Service: Utility Companies
One of my least favorite things to do is call the cable company or the company that provides my Internet service.
I try not to get short with the person on the line (they're just trying to feed their children). All too often, this takes a good bit of effort -- when you're disconnected three times, meaning you're forced to wade through their electronic gatekeeping three times, and then you get somebody on the line whose command of English rivals my command of Portuguese.
Your experience may vary. But, probably not a hell of a lot.
Comments
I had one cable CSR dude actually start telling me about how handsome he was and he is in a very unfulfilled marriage....yikes. It was about a nine on the tension scale.
It was even more weird because obviously, he had access to my phone number and house address. I was left speechless.
So I guess this would fall under the "don't flirt with the customer" rule of manners. Ewww.
Posted by: Feebie at September 1, 2010 7:18 AM
I have to deal with three different phone companies at work. I have learned that if I have problem I need to call them FIRST thing in the morning - the later in the day you wait, the better chance that a) you'll be on hold for two hours and b) the least capable person will be helping you. Oh, and don't EVER call about a misapplied payment until you actually get a threat to turn off the phone - no one can help you because it would involve actual math skills. If you wait until you get directed to the collection people, THEY seem to know how to solve the problem.
If this is how bad the business service is, I shudder to think about the people who handle personal lines.
Posted by: Ann at September 1, 2010 4:59 PM
It's not just public utilities. It's any large organization: credit card, Anthem Blue Cross, and yes phone service providers.
What drives me berserk are voice menu trees that simulate a conversational tone while actually prolonging the interaction, and forcing me to listen to commercial messages like "Did you know that our new Foo service is now twice as affordable? Blahblahblah…" when all I really want is to talk to an agent. It's worse if I'm already late for work and this happens. Good luck if the option you want isn't on their menu, and no amount of button pressing, or not pressing anything, or saying "agent! AGENT!!" into the phone only elicits another "[robot sigh] I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you entered."
Then they tell me that the call may be monitored etc - and that my call is important to them. Do they think I'm so stupid that I can't spot this simple ruse?
Also the constant canned messages rather than hold music means I have to constantly listen to the phone because it's not so apparent when an actual agent gets on the line. This takes all my attention, and for what? Now I can't even multitask.
I can't imagine what life must be like for people with disabilities, or dyslexia, or limited English, people who can't communicate well via gadgets to begin with. Someone could just be confused and stay on the line, but even that isn't guaranteed to put you through - just the endless voice menu loop.
Just once, I'd like to reach an agent in 10 seconds or less, ask a simple question, and get a straightforward answer! Instead, the agents all speak off of canned scripts with a lot of fluff that takes too long to say. It would also be nice if the agents had better command of the English language.
I think it's the new marketing theory that companies should have "relationships" with their customers, and "relationship" is defined as "more talk, less action". They want to take up my valuable time informing me of all the things they can now do for me, but when I actually need them to do something, it takes forever just to make the request. Maybe it's this feminized view of relationships where "talking about the relationship" is seen as the pinnacle of successful relating. It's like an endless encounter group where it's the journey matters, not the destination. Well, when I call my service provider, I'm not looking for a new friend, I just want something fixed.
Customer support via email or chat is just as bad. You just know the agents are on three calls at once. They don't even read the problem statement before pasting in a bunch of boilerplate that doesn't even apply.
The message is really, "We're not listening! We're not listening! La la la la la!" or maybe it should be "Bwa ha ha ha!"
Posted by: vi at September 1, 2010 7:14 PM
Your comment about the phone tree reminded me of one.
It may have changed since this happened to me a couple years ago, but I discovered when I tried to call about our UPS account at work that, unless you go through the entire phone tree and make some sort of choice (and it's all voice activated, I HATE those) you ABSOLUTELY cannot get a human. Seriously. If you wait long enough and don't pick anything, it just hangs up on you. Of course, if you pick something you have to pick the next thing, ad nauseum, but if you try the "hit zero until you get a person" trick, it hangs up on you.
There was no way to get a human without spending a minimum of ten minutes on the phone going through all the options. And God help you if you picked the wrong one.
Posted by: Ann at September 1, 2010 9:24 PM
This was about 3 years ago and by this point I'd worked 1 year in collections and about 5 in customer service positions. I live with roommates and one had lost his job and had to move to a cheaper place. This guy was behind on his cell-phone bill. Every single freaking day at 8 am, 10 am, 2 pm and 4:30 pm the company's collection would call. I work nights and after a 3 weeks of increasing calls I was seriously in danger of losing my job because of this company.
I'd tried everything I could think of to get them to stop. I asked them to call his cell phone number because, my mistake for thinking that someone who identified themselves as cell phone company would actually have their client's cell phone number. I pleaded them to send a notice to his new address. I had my brother pretend to be this guy so that he could tell them that he'd only accept written notice which they refused . At the end of the second week I threatened to sue as they were harassing someone who wasn't their client.
At this point I think I pissed them off. Because they stated calling every 2 hours from 6 am to 10 pm. At the end of the third week I made a snide comment to the guy at the other end about this being poor customer service. To which the phone monkey replied that I wasn't a customer of this company so it wasn't poor customer service. At this point I gave the man a half hour lecture about exactly what customer service was and why what this company was doing was driving away business. I don't know why the guy didn't hang up because I would have. At least they stopped calling after that except for the occasional call for a roommate.
Posted by: Nicky at September 2, 2010 6:29 AM
16 hours of waiting for something that couldn't actually be done, thanks to Time Warner Cable.
I have a Series 2 non-HD TiVo in my apartment, and I want to hook it up to a spare TV. So, I call Time Warner:
"I have a Series 2 TiVo--can I hook it up to your digital cable?"
"Sure!"
"Really? I don't think there's a CableCARD slot in it."
"Yeah, we can do that, we do that all the time.
"Great, can I pick up the card and install it myself?
"No, you have to schedule a technician."
"OK...when?"
"We have this Saturday open."
"Great."
Saturday comes, and I wait at home from 9 AM to 5 PM for the cable guy. No one shows up. I call them.
"Oh, your technician was very busy today, he couldn't make it."
"Well, get a technician over here. I just spend 8 hours of my day doing nothing waiting for your guy."
"I can't do that."
"There are no technicians in Lower Manhattan?"
"Sir, I don't know if you know this, but there was a plane crash in the Hudson. People died." (This was the day of that small plane/helicopter crash).
"What does that have to do with anything? Were your technicians jumping the water to rescue people?"
Eventually she reschedules for next Saturday. Again, I wait all day, and the technician finally shows up at 4 PM.
"Yeah, we can't put a CableCARD in this."
I switched to Verizon FIOS the first day it became available in my building.
Posted by: Brian at September 2, 2010 8:12 PM
Does it have to be a utility? I have had horrible experiences with two companies. I take every opportunity to give them both bad publicity.
The first was Getty Images. They called our mom'n'pop company a few years ago, just before Christmas, threatening to sue us for stealing their pictures and using them on the Internet. We had licensed the pics, but from a different company. That company had been bought up by Getty Images and somehow in the process all records of our purchases lost. The woman on the phone confidently said "we've never lost a case." Our lawyar said that court costs would exceed the settlement they offered, so we should grit our tetth and pay. Which we did. Several months later there was an article in a magazine about this - they were going after lots of businesses. Turned out that they never actually took anyone to court - it was pure extortion. But, indeed, the woman told us the truth: they had never lost a case.
The other is GMAC. My mother died a couple of months ago, and had a leased car from GMAC. Their staff are unfailingly polite (even when you totally lose it and cuss them out - I'm embarrassed about that).
But they do everything imaginable to prevent you from terminating the lease, tell you that you owe money when you don't, etc, etc. Very draining in an already difficult time - probably hoping you'll pay them thousands just to get rid of them. Sorry, no humor here, as this is still fresh...and also still not over.
Like Amy's experience with BofA, any bad pbif I can give them bad publicity, I would be happy to.
Posted by: Bradley13 at September 2, 2010 9:06 PM
Before international calling cards were prevalent, I used to call my overseas family members on a regular enough basis that I subscribed to an international calling plan. I moved locally and kept the same phone company, but was unable to keep my telephone number. Still, I kept the same account number and asked them to transfer my plan over to the new address/phone number.
After one month, I realized that I was being billed exorbitant rates, as they failed to transfer over my old plan. I called and asked that they fix the situation and adjust the bill. They assured me that they would.
Next month comes, and not only have they not deducted their overcharges from the previous month, they continued to bill me at a non-plan rate. I called again, and again I was assured that this would be taken care of.
It wasn't. This continued for months. I had even asked for managers to help correct the situation, but it was never corrected. It wasn't until I wrote the FCC (and copied the phone company) about this company's practices that a manager finally called me and fixed all the problems. She was rude and kept saying, "Did you HAVE to write the FCC?" I always try to keep my calm during these calls, as I am interested in solving my problems without ruining my day further by getting angry.
After that call and after I made sure all my prior bills and payments were in order, I signed up with a competing phone company. Their rates were a little higher, but I couldn't put up with my old phone company anymore. Then I get a call from the old phone company out of the blue, where the same manager starts screaming at me. She was upset that I decided to switch companies after she fixed my problems for me. I don't think she ever realized that how she and her company treated me was a problem...
Posted by: Louise at June 18, 2013 6:46 PM
Long Butte Water Systems of Bend Oregon has a monopoly on water supply for 250 residents of Tumalo OR. They are a husband/wife operated and are extremely rude! I was told today to call the PUC from the wife owner Becky Hodge. No one should have to put up with these people.
Posted by: Dale Halpin at September 3, 2013 11:50 PM