Saturday, March 1, 2008

Customer Service Hell


Okay, we've all experienced good customer service and let's be honest - when it happens it is surprising. Especially when it is on the telephone. Unfortunately, this isn't one of those stories.

I just spent 90 minutes of my life on the line with a representative from Sprint/Nextel trying to figure out why I couldn't log in. I think I could have gotten more answers if I would have walked to the retail store and talked to the newest employee. The results would have been the same. After all that time, I still have no resolution.

Has that ever happened to you? You make your way through the voice mail maze at the beginning of the call that goes something like this:

"Thank you for calling (insert "unable to deliver on service promises company" here)"

"Your call is very important to us...please type in your phone number, account number, birth date, address, social security number, license number and several random numbers of your choosing"

Once you finally get a live human you can barely hear them and it takes you forever to explain what you're trying to get resolved.

Ugh!This poor rep (she actually wasn't bad - not her fault that the website wasn't cooperating) tried to log in as me, I tried to log in as me and nothing! Just a roundabout that dumps out into a cul-de-sac and then back again.

Finally, we made a break through and had to answer several levels of "security" multiple choice questions such as which of the following addresses have you never lived at, what kind of car do you own at this address and what do you think is happening on Lost? Okay, the last one didn't really happen but at least it would have made it kind of fun.

To make a long blog short, we ended up with no resolution. Just a "work order ticket" that should be resolved in the next 72 hours! Whew, good thing it wasn't the doctor's office I was calling.

All I can say is it didn't make me anxious to call any other companies and fight through the "on hold" battles that always seem to ensue. But I know I'll have to very soon so I'll rest up, do some on-hold exercises and study my Geography from areas outside of the United States so at least I'll have something to talk about with my operator.

How do you handle telephone customer service systems?

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