Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Wonders of Customer (Dis)Service

Here I am, sitting on a call with a cable company that I won't name, but it's name rhymes with "blight mouse".

How is it that the service representatives for these companies can be completely devoid of logical sequence?


My problem is this: I can't call my mother. She has a number in area code 307, exchange 672 (1-307-672-xxxx). I call her every week, sometimes multiple times and have never had a problem with calling her from "blight mouse".

Now, I get, "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and try again."

Now, I reported a few considerations to the service representative to help him quickly diagnose the problem:

  • I can dial out from the phone just fine: In fact, I was talking to him on that line. That would logically establish that it is not a problem with my phone, or the cable modem.
  • I can dial other long-distance numbers: I could reach my sister in California without any problem at all, which would logically establish that it is not a problem with my dialing long distance.
  • I can call my mother from my cell phone: I didn't talk long, but that would logically establish that it's not a problem with my mother's phone service.

So guess what his first attempt was to resolve the problem? Anybody? Anybody?

Yep, you got it: Reset my cable modem.

Logic does not exist in service personnel today.

UPDATE  NEXT DAY
Clearly someone there has logical sequence, because it was fixed by the next morning; 9:30 AM.  So I'm forced to qualify my statement: It's the front line—the support desk—that has no logical sequence.
;

2 comments:

  1. I barely swallowed my tea before spitting it all over the laptop over "blight mouse". These posts should carry a warning.

    Did they ever figure it out?

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  2. I was thinking that the problem with customer service is two fold:

    The average high school graduate these days is lucky to be able to tie his own shoes. They teach to the test, meaning teachers cram their students heads full of information long enough to test, after which, since it was all trivia and there hasn't been time to ask anything like "why", a short-term memory purge takes place and said student no longer remembers any of it.

    The average customer isn't usually able to figure out what the blinking lights do (other than hypnotize them) let alone follow logical steps to narrow down the issue. Probably you were better equipped to figure out the situation than they.

    Resetting the cable modem would only work if blocked numbers were directed from the cable modem or if it is possible that one of the necessary numbers is rerouting to a completely other binary set. But the modem, itself is usually not running those functions. He would have been better to reset the cable server. Wonder if he ever did.

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