It’s strange, the way some customer/CSR encounters go so well when others seem headed for failure before the first sentence is finished. When Nix called to complain about being mistakenly sent a $100 gift card offer that she can’t take advantage of, the Verizon rep on the other end not only addressed the real issues, but later sent a $50 gift card to Nix as a goodwill gesture.

Here’s Nix’s story:

Last Saturday I got a postcard in the mail from Verizon. It said that if I call a certain number to move my service and order Fios, they’ll have my service turned on in time for our moving day, and also will give us a gift card for $100! The problem? We moved LAST YEAR, and Fios still isn’t available in our new neighborhood. We were also never offered a gift card when I called that same number to have my service moved. I called the number and explained to the nice girl who answered that I understood that the postcard being sent to me was a mistake, but it was a rather annoying one that was borderline on being insulting. I explained that we had already moved, we are not able to get Fios, and we were never offered a gift card.

She apologized profusely, which was really what I was looking for, but she kept going. She made sure I was on all of the available “do not disturb” lists internally (I wasn’t, she corrected it), made sure I was getting the lowest possible rate monthly for our DSL service (I wasn’t, she corrected it to the tune of $5 savings a month), then also gave me credit for one month of free DSL.

I was more than happy with all of that, thanked her profusely and ended the call.

Today in the mail, I got a gift card. It was only for $50, but it was still a gift card I was in no way expecting. That CSR went so completely above and beyond what she had to do, certainly more than most of them ever do. As soon as I was done bragging to my friends, I knew writing y’all was the next step.

We imagine some readers will say Nix didn’t “deserve” the $50 gift card, but Nix acknowledges she didn’t expect it or ask for it. What’s more important is that a CSR took the time to figure out why Nix received the wrong offer, corrected the problem, and then adjusted her monthly bill in the customer’s favor. To add a partial-promotion gift card on top of that, as a way of acknowledging that you recently moved and would have been eligible for the FiOS promotion had it been available in your area, is completely above and beyond. We don’t know if the economics of this sort of customer appreciation is truly sustainable, but surely Verizon has just given Nix lots of good reasons to choose Verizon over a competitor in the future.

(Photo: Gustty)

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