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February 04, 2008
Customer Service Achilles Multiple Heels
I was listening to NPR this morning give approval for Luddites’ everywhere to not take the Triple bundles. I was shocked how bad the reporting was. No discussion of the Quadruple play. No mention of the tax breaks, by going with the triple play of cable operators. And concerns that HDTV was going to eat up the pipes for voice calls. I was incensed.
But then they talked about the call center phone calls and the unbundling issues associated with the service. This part rang true to me. I was thinking of Dan Hesse’s recent move back to Sprint from Embarq, and it occurred to me that he was in the ideal position to help with help desks. I have no proof of what I am about to say.
But traditionally the local service is the place where calls center reps are associated with the charge. Now think about the divestiture of Embarq and the complaints about Sprint’s call center staff. The shedding of the local cost, did not properly take in the customer good will to the call center.
I am not a big fan of call centers and phone stores. I have stories about better treatment at my Grocery store’s deli counter than at the wireless store fronts. I also have called call center problems that transfer my call like they were a peer to peer network messing with my mind.
In the irony of life, it maybe the phone company’s obsession with single number service, is a misplaced view that the customer wanted a single number for themselves, when what they wanted was a single point of contact from their carrier.
Posted by carl at February 4, 2008 10:31 AM