I've had excellent results with local--more or less--Verizon CSRs.
They've been very helpful and generous with credits and offers. It pays
to be persistent, as my friend was.
I expect no less. Hence my surprise. My customers would not be
happy with outsourced tech support, in fact they'd call me directly
if they had less than a prompt, helpful and knowledgeable response.
I'm glad your friend was well served. That's the kind of response I'd
take as a matter of course. Verizon doesn't compete on price, with a
union workforce we can't. Where we hope to shine is on knowledge,
service delivery, reliability and responsiveness.
I discussed my experience with my team today, as an object lesson
in how to do it wrong. We just don't operate that way. Granted the
people I called didn't know who I was or would have cared if they
did, but the bottom line is that I was a customer with a problem.
Yes, my problem was fixed, but the methodology and the presentation
absolutely sucked. That would not happen in my shop. I should not
have to travel to India, then run around Robin Hood's barn whilst
being misinformed about a problem that I was completely capable
of technically understanding.
That is freaking unacceptable. It should not be necessary for me to
escalate to supervision to fix a Verizon glitch. Which I did not do
because it is more important to me to understand what the typical
experience is like than to fix the problem immediately, which I could
have done at any time--because I have connections.
But most people don't. I know that it is torture for senior citizens
to navigate phone menus, which is why I'm my mother's tech support.
We don't do a good job in this area, you pretty much have to know
an insider to get satisfaction. That didn't use to be the case. You
once could call one number and the first thing you'd hear was a
friendly voice speaking your brand of English, maybe someone you
knew. Maybe not, but they'd listen, and if they couldn't solve the
problem right there they'd find someone who could.
Not any more.
Believe me, I was pissed off with a capital "P". Actually, I still am.
If my 81 year old mother has a DSL issue, is she calling India?
Will they solve the problem?
This has gone too far, I'm raising Hell. At some point the bean
counting has to stop and the ethics and values have to kick back in.
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