Customer Service

Customer Service - The long lost art of a person providing a customer with assistance in a mild and friendly manner.

I had two run-ins with Customer Non-Service this week.

The first was when I needed to call AT&T about our U-verse service.  We have been AT&T customers for several years with many of their services and are happy with them, but any time there is an issue trying to speak to an actual person is like trying to break into Fort Knox.   Our TV's had been losing the signal quite often and after I would reboot the main router or the cable box they would fail on initialization.  We are a pretty tech savvy house so once I had done all that I knew to do and when reboot the router would no longer work I decided it was time to call.   The first time I called I never spoke to a person, instead a computer voice told me to please do all the steps that I had already done three times.  Then the computer voice politely informed me that the last step would fix the problem and since it would take up to 20 mins it was going to hang up the phone now.  It also informed me that a note was made and if I still had problems I could call back.  (Gee thanks).

I waited about an hour and suffered through several sighs and eye rolls from Maddy.  When I called back I was on hold about 10 minutes and enjoyed hearing all about how if I went to channel 411 it would give me helpful information regarding my tv service.  Finally a young man answered the phone and assured me that when we got off the phone my problem would be resolved.  After we did all the things I had now done 5 times, he stated that a service call would need to be scheduled.  I did not point out that my problem was not resolved, but while we were waiting on the service schedule information, he mentioned that I could go to channel 411 to get helpful information regarding my TV service I did let him know it is hard to read that information when you don't have a TV signal.   Four days later the service man showed up, rebooted the router and of course we all know what happened.....the TV's booted up just fine.


My second Customer Non-Service was with Wal-mart.  I know that is a surprise.  I had a very simple question regarding their price match policy.  (I may or may not have been asking about beer price matching for the Save on Brew business.)  A young lady answered the phone thanking me for calling Wal-mart, mumbled her name and wanted to know how she could help me.  When I said I had a question about price matching she transferred me to the service department.  The phone rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang.  It finally went to a voice mail box that was full so I could not have left a message even if I wanted to. 

There was an option to go back to the operator so I chose that option.  The same girl answered my call and I explained that she sent me to nowhere land and I just had a simple question regarding price matching.  She said hold please and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang.  It finally went to the same full voice mail box. Once again I chose to return to the operator.

The same girl picked up the phone again and when I stated again that I had a very easy question regarding the price match policy and she kept sending me to nowhere land.  She stated that she did not know about the price matching policy and that was why she was sending me to the service department.  She wanted to know if I wanted to be transferred there again.  When I stated no I did not want to be send to nowhere land again she told me to have a nice day and thanks for calling Wal-mart!