Last year when I
wrote a little piece for Reader’s
Digest Canada about how to get better customer service, one
of the key themes was keeping your cool.
In retrospect, I
feel a little weird about that advice since, personally, I’ve found
that losing my cool—at least just a bit—can work wonders.
Especially when most customer service agents are so intent on
following a script, they treat anything the customer tells them as a
nuisance not to be believed. Getting emotional is risky, but it can
be a way to get an employee to abandon a templated approach and
listen in order to figure out the real problem—and solve it.
Last week I heard
weird sounds from behind my house. I got left the work I was doing on
my computer and went outside to investigate. In the dark I could see
a family of raccoons, screeching and screaming at the top of a
utility pole, as if they had been chased up there by something. They
were inching nervously out onto the communications wire that runs
along the back of my yard, which butts up against the yards of
several of my neighbours. I had never seen raccoons walk on wires
like that before. It was quite a drama.
I went back to my
computer to discover my Internet was out and that my phone wasn’t
working. The next morning the phone was back, though too static-y to
have a comfortable conversation.
To me the cause was
pretty obvious. My Internet drops out periodically in the fall and
spring when the squirrels are in a frenzy, and my phone line gets
mildly static-y when it’s raining. The weight of the raccoons seems
to be the last straw for a communications line that was moody at the
best of times. When a Bell technician visited last year when I
changed my Internet plan, he told me the line was in bad shape and
should be replaced, though the technician I scheduled to do that
never showed up.
But trying talking
about raccoons and chronic static problems to customer service people
at my phone company, Primus. With each of the nine calls (or maybe
more—I stopped counting) I had to make to solve the problem and
with each of the two technicians who showed up, it was almost
impossible to convince them that my theory—a raccoon-damaged
line—could possibly be correct.
Had I restarted my
modem? Yes, more than a dozen times. Was the cable to the modem less
than three feet long? Yes, for more than a decade. Yes, there were
filters on the phone line and, as far as I knew, they hadn’t
dematerialized the night of the raccoon drama.
I understand that a
lot of telecom customers don’t understand tech stuff. I understand
that if I hadn’t seen the raccoons on the line that I wouldn’t
have had any idea what might have caused the Internet outage and the
phone static—it was an unusual piece of evidence to have. I
understand that telecom companies want to troubleshoot simple things
before investing time and money into fixing hardware. But to be
disbelieved, dismissed and condescended to for the better part of a
week was exasperating.
After a couple of
days, the phone static became episodic; only 70 per cent or so my
calls were inaudible. So I had one customer service agent tell me
that my line was just fine because they could hear me just fine, so
if I was still having an Internet problem—had I reset the modem?
She got angry with me when I interrupted her wildly inaccurate
description of my problem. The fact that I had successfully been
using my phone and Internet for years, had seen the line being
damaged and had talked to several other agents, some of who agreed
with me, was irrelevant to her. She had her script and she was
sticking to it. By this time, I had realized that the customer
service ticket for my problem was wildly inaccurate, failing even to
note that I had no Internet service. Yet for everyone I talked to,
this ticket was the truth and I, as the customer, was an obstacle to
the truth. It was customer service as theatre, not problem-solving.
But what a depressing show it was.
Finally a Bell
technician arrived. My telecom, Primus, rents Bell’s lines so Bell
is kind of the landlord in this situation, Primus is the tenant and
I, apparently, play the role of subletter (no wonder nobody listened
to me). The technician agreed the outside lines were static-y and in
bad shape. Yes, they should be fixed. But he needed to go up a pole
in my neighbour’s yard to get to the lines and my neighbour’s
yard was locked. I needed to schedule another technician to visit
when I would be sure there’d be access. (It turns out the Bell
technician hadn’t bothered to knock on the door of my neighbour who
was home and would have readily given him access.)
When the second
technician arrived the next day, it was like none of my previous
conversations or the previous technician’s visited had ever
happened. I had to tell him four times that the Internet went out
moments after raccoons stepped onto the wire. He didn’t seem to
believe me. Had I restarted my modem? At the time of his visit, the
phone wasn’t especially static-y. He fiddled with some switches on
the hub down the street, took note of the absence of static and told
me the problem was fixed. If I was still having Internet problems,
which I was, I’d have to call tech support again—the line was
fine.
That’s when I lost
it. Didn’t the guy from yesterday file a report? Didn’t you read
it? If the problem is intermittent, as I’ve said innumerable times,
then of course, the line may be fine right now—that doesn’t mean
it’s fixed. Why doesn’t my not having Internet and having a
static-y phone for days outweigh the 10 minutes you’ve been here?
Why can’t you just believe me and fix the problem I’m describing
to you? Why can’t you just fix the problem? Why can’t you just
fix the problem?
As I was pleading
with him, the Bell guy fell silent, walked away from me, got in his
van and drove away as I stood there, aghast. Primus called me on my
cell to tell me the problem had been fixed. “How would you know?”
My Internet was still out and the static had already come back on the
phone line. But the technician had already called to close the ticket
and the ticket had been closed.
Then I realized what
bothered me even more than not being listened to as a customer—that
the various customer service agents, tech support people,
dispatchers, managers and technicians don’t talk to or listen to
each other except to report “Job done, clear the ticket.” Each
interaction had taken place in a vacuum, as if no information had
previously been collected or changed hand. Today’s technician
doesn’t build on the work of yesterday’s; he starts from scratch.
But if companies
aren’t going to listen to their customers, their employees should
at least be listening to each other. This failure to absorb and share
information is not only infuriating for customers, it costs companies
money as they chase easy solutions to non-problems even though, after
more phone calls and more false steps and more aborted technician
visits, they will eventually have to fix the real problem—or lose
the customer.
My story has
something of a happy ending. After my emotional pleading with the
second Bell technician to please, please, please fix the cable, he
had driven away. I went back in the housing feeling totally defeated.
Who needs phone and Internet anyway?
Fifteen minutes
later, I saw the technician up on top of the pole, right where the
raccoons had been four days earlier. He strung new cable into my
backyard.
The technician had
taken pity on a desperate man, had listened to the desperate man and,
against all conventional wisdom, taken action.
Less than 15 minutes
later, the static was gone and my Internet worked perfectly. The
customer who had been dismissed at every step of the way had been
right all along.
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