Life Imitates Blog
This past Monday I wrote one of this blog’s more popular posts, on The Mandate to Synch Social Media and Customer Service. In essence I argued that Twitter users were more likely to get good service than the Average Joe calling an #800 line, and that that was not going to be tenable for long.
This very same week, I bought a new Netgear router for my home office. I am not technical guy, but, I’ve set up a few routers in my time and never had a problem. This time? PROBLEM! I couldn’t get it working.
I called Comcast first. Hey, it falls under “Connectivity,” right? Well, the folks at Comcast were very helpful, right up to the point where I said I was having problems due to the new Netgear router. You could almost the support rep’s voice go dead. “Call Netgear. Bye.”
I tweeted plaintively to Frank Elliason of @ComcastCares fame. Frank went out of his way to help me out, even offering some late-night service from his own home office. We didn’t figure it out but I did appreciate the attempt. Still — it was only because I was a Twitter user that I got a Comcast rep to try to fix an issue with a 3rd party product.
So, I finally call the Netgear #800 line. Honestly I’d been avoiding it cuz I assumed that I’d have a bad experience. And I did.
Netgear put me on hold for 30 minutes; I waited for “the next available technical representative.” Terrible hold music, too, fwiw.
After 30 minutes, I get a recording saying to leave my name & phone number and they’ll “call me back.” You made me wait 30 minutes to leave a vmail? FAIL. But, I leave the vmail.
No call back. Two days go by. My family grumbles about my technical doltitude. They want their Internet back! Their frustration wears me out and I tweeted angrily to my 10,000 tweeps: “Dear @netgear. Your cust. service sucks so far. Thx for not calling back, as had been promised (after 30 min holdtime). Kthxbye.”
It was like a gun went off. I soon got a DM from @netgear, apologizing. I get the private phone# of a member of their “Executive Support Team.” She puts me in touch with her supervisor, who sends me to their very best tech guy. He’s superb!! My Internet was up and running after 15 minutes of patient technical walk-throughs. He transfers me back to his supervisor to recount my experience and ensure my complete satisfaction.
So yes, now I am a happy Netgear customer. But per my earlier post, I am still peeved that this executive-level treatment (from Netgear and Comcast) only came after I was identified on Twitter. What if my own Dad had had the same troubles? He’s not on Twitter. He’d have been the schmoe waiting helplessly for a call-back.
This is a common disconnect for now. But it won’t be acceptable forever.
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I’ve long had a problem with this disconnect. Beyond being unsustainable, it’s not ethical on the part of the business to treat customers with different access or influence differently. As Susan points out, this has long been the case–but that doesn’t make it right.
Personal example: way back before these channels were available, I had a problem with my cell phone billing. The service provider had cashed my check but didn’t credit the account–they insisted I was delinquent, and threatened numerous times to cut off my service. Luckily, I was working in the state legislature at the time, and was friends with one of the company’s lobbyists. She was able to fix my problem with one call–but it always left me thinking, what does someone without that access do?
Companies big and small need to understand that their reputations are only as good as their worst customer service rep. That is the front line, and no amount of dedicated customer service on Twitter is going to cover that up. Additionally, this, as someone else points out above, creates a perverse incentive for people to flock to Twitter to complain. This too, is unsustainable as it will be difficult to scale (I’ve been beating this drum since last Aug.)–I have no idea what the pay rates are at Comcast, but my guess is there is a spread between Frank’s salary and an entry-level, outsourced CSR phone rep. Companies cannot *afford* to have Twitter (or blogs, or insert whatever social media tool) become the de facto method of customer service.
Fix the service at the entry level, where it is best, and cheapest, for the problems to be addressed.
Great post Todd!