How I put my recruiting skills to work to get better customer service from a phone company!
Putting recruiting skills to work to get better customer service.
Recently I noticed a significant drop in my internet speed at my office. I have a 6Mbps DSL service to support my recruiting activities and it’s quite honestly faster than I need. Over the last couple of months I noticed a gradual slowdown in my connection, but since it was still usable so I didn’t complain.
Last week I noticed a sharp slowdown seemingly almost to dial-up speeds. Testing revealed that I was getting 0.42 – 0.45 Mbps – or approximately 7.5% of what I am supposed to.
I called customer support at my DSL provider (a well known telephone company) and was given some of the WORST customer support I’ve ever experienced, even in dealing with telephone or cable operators. I mean this was rude, incompetent, and downright lazy customer support. I was told by the tier 1 support representative that I should learn to live with the reduced service because there was “latency” in the area and they would be fixing it on March 20th 2012, (3 months from now) and there is nothing that can be done in the mean time. This was also the 2nd time in a week I had called to complain about the unusable service.
The worst part was when I was trying to even get a credit for the drastically reduced service after being transferred to what was honestly a very personable and well intentioned billing representative, I was transferred to the cancellation department without asking to be, where I was told “You are under contract and you shouldn’t complain about bad service when you are already getting a discount”. She wouldn’t even listen to the argument that if I have no hope of even getting more than 7.5% of what I’m paying for then my contract shouldn’t be an issue.
How did my recruiting skills come into play to remedy this problem? After the extremely rude cancellation department representative refused to let me cancel during our call, I used my recruiting skills to find direct contact information for 25 of the top “C level” and “VP level” executives at the company. The ones in charge of the IT infrastructure, operations, finance, sales, marketing, and customer service.
They each received a personalized e-mail and many received a voicemail to their direct dial lines explaining the issue. Within 5 minutes I had a call from a C level executive promising me that the issue would be fixed ASAP. I continued to get call after call and e-mail after e-mail, and within a couple of hours started to see improvement, and since it was late in the afternoon, I was put first on the list for an on-site service call the next morning, and by the time the serviceman arrived the problem had apparently been fixed.
These are the same skills that I use every day as a recruiter. Networking through the company to identify the correct person within the company to solve a problem, reaching out by e-mail and telephone to explain what I am offering them, (or in this case what they weren’t doing properly), and working with the correct person toward a successful result.
Now why is it that my repeated calls to the customer support department got me absolutely no results when the service tech said they could have easily looked at their screen and saw that there was almost no signal to my modem? But when the issue was escalated to someone who actually cares about customer service the problem was addressed in detail almost immediately?
The higher up’s in the company probably view customer support as an expense, and not the single most important connection that they have with the customer.
Why does this happen? Management sees no revenue generated directly from the customer support department. This is categorically wrong. I ran a web hosting company for over 10 years. We had 100% compounded sales growth for ten straight years, extremely low customer churn, an extremely low advertising budget, and 80% of our growth came from existing customers upgrading their service, adding service, or referring friends. Why would our customers do this? Because we had the best customer support available.
Every customer knew that they had the option to escalate any customer support issue directly to the president of the company, and had my direct cell number. And they would call, many times at 3am at which time, instead of asking why they were bothering me at 3am, I would ask them in my friendliest tone, “What’s wrong, How can I help”.
This was our differentiator. We had a global client base, a 15 person support staff (who also doubled as our sales staff, we didn’t separate the two), and every client knew that every person in the company right up to the president cared about their service, and was accessible 24x7x365. We didn’t sell disk space and bandwidth, we sold customer service.
How did I make sure my support staff took support seriously, and treated every customer like an old friend? After every customer support ticket was submitted and resolved, there was a link to a survey that the customer filled out and was sent directly to my inbox. I knew who worked the ticket, what the issue was, what the resolution was, how long it took, and the customer’s satisfaction with the time, the resolution, and most importantly of all, the customer service representatives attitude. The service representatives income, and continued employment relied on getting positive reviews. The better the reviews the more money the rep made.
If large cable and phone companies would get the message that customer service is what drives sales, not marketing and advertisements. I never would have had to write the following letter and send it to 25 top executives to get service.
Hi XXX,
I’m a business customer in Madison Ohio Acct # ******
I pay for 6 Mbps service, and am currently receiving 0.45 Mbps service.
During a 40 minute phone call today, I called customer support, they told me not to worry because it’s a known latency issue in the area and will be fixed by March 20th. I asked if there was any credit available for the downtime, or any other kind of customer service to be offered, I was transferred to the billing department where a friendly representative checked into it for me, and told me that I should not expect an improvement in service for the next 3 months – March 20th. She put me on hold again to check on something and 5 minutes later I was transferred to the cancellation department (without asking to be transferred) and I decided to take this as a sign that I should cancel my service and switch to roadrunner, which I use at home and has NEVER given me anything even remotely approaching the slow speeds that I’m experiencing right now. The cancellation department refused to let me cancel my service saying “You are under contract and you shouldn’t complain about bad service when you are already getting a discount”
I somehow fail to see how I’m supposed to not worry about it for over 3 months. Additionally, why has there been no notice given to customers that this issue is occurring? I also fail to understand why I should be told that I am not able to cancel or receive any compensation for an internet connection that is so slow as to be unusable when I’m paying for a 6Mbps and only getting 0.45Mbps I’m getting 7.5% of what I’m paying for. The real issue is that I rely on my internet connection in order to operate my business.
As an executive recruiter I am on the phone with IT decision makers in my area as well as nationwide, every day of the week, every week of the year. I’ll certainly be asking them their experiences with ********* internet, and sharing mine.
Maybe you’d be interested in sharing your resume, I would be more than happy to connect you with a company that doesn’t think that their customers deserve to receive less than 8% of what they are paying for for 3 months at a time and like it.
John Kaufman
President
Nexmation, LLC.
Phone: 440-387-4589 Ext 100
Fax: 440-387-4589
Web: www.nexmation.com
Profile: http://www.nexmation.com/staff/it-recruiter-john-kaufman/
Services: http://www.nexmation.com/recruiting-staffing-consulting-services/
Reviews: http://www.nexmation.com/testimonials/
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