Let me tell you a customer service story: My wife and I both have the same type of cell phone -- the Razr v3. If it wasn't for the poor build quality and the second rate software-engineering, these phones might be good.
Recently my wife's phone, which had been replaced due to a cracked screen, started to shut down randomly, so I filed an insurance claim. The procedure, as you probably know, is they send you a replacement and you return the defective phone. We had opted for insurance so the replacement both times was done by , the sole insurer offered by our miserable cell service provider, .
Let me digress and note that despite two columns that were critical of T-Mobile's service and that were also syndicated in The New York Times' Technology section, I've had no responses from T-Mobile management or their PR people. I'm torn between being surprised and not being hardly surprised at all.
Anyway, through a series of events too complex to go into, I accidentally returned the wrong phone (remember, the phones are, or rather were, identical). Some days later I realized that the wrong phone had been returned and called to straighten things out.
The customer disservice rep I spoke to seemed to have remarkable difficulty understanding the problem so I asked for a supervisor and, of course, I got one of those unsympathetic, passive aggressive people who sound on the edge of being rude (but never rude enough to call them on it) and who pedantically explained the bloody obvious in excruciating detail. I think their goal is to simply try to wear you down so you will just go away.
The supervisor informed me that the incorrectly received phone had most likely been received and, as is done with all returns, stripped and or trashed. No, I could not get the phone back and as the expected phone had, according to their systems, not been received yet, I would be charged for the missing return unless I did return it.
I pointed out that, yes, it was all my fault but as they logged all incoming serial numbers couldn't they confirm that a phone had been received, tell their system to not charge me, and help me out? No, that wasn't possible so I would have to return the correct phone. And be out a phone? Yes. And they couldn't do anything at all? No. Really? Yes.
And that was that. There have been many times when I've received less than stellar customer service but this was world class.
Obviously this supervisor didn't want to help me, but even when the CSR or supervisor does care they often can't do anything. I've often asked CSRs at large companies whether they ever get to talk to their management about problems and issues in dealing with customers and never once have I heard, "Oh yes, we get to give the company feedback." It's a fact that what goes on at the pointy end of customer service is not of great interest to the majority of large organizations, particularly in the high-tech world.
So, if you are involved in customer service or in IT at a company that provides customer service you have a huge opportunity to identify the limitations of the service your company provides and improve it. At Asurion, wouldn't you have expected the entry of an unexpected serial number by the receiving team to have triggered an exception? Shouldn't the system have flagged that as a customer service issue? Am I just naive expecting that a large company would actually care?
Now, please excuse me. While I'd like to dissect this topic some more I've got to go and send my old phone to Asurion and then go get a new phone. And cancel the cell phone insurance.