Watch Call Center, a short, amusing, film (12 minutes) about a characteristically unhelpful customer service hotline.
csr
Complaints: Verizon CSRs on Motorola V710
By 3.15.06
Business as usual for Verizon Customer Service Representative #1: a customer writes in, frustrated but polite, with a cogent complaint. When shopping for their phone, they were misleaded and/or lied to about the phone’s functionality by a Verizon employee. While the customer does not demand a refund, they are looking for some sort of acknowledgment that they have been wronged and want to know what Verizon is going to do in the future to prevent their sales reps from selling products based upon misleading and dishonest claims.
Massive Citibank Fraud Alert
By 3.6.06
Boing Boing posted a link yesterday to a first-hand account of a massive Citibank fraud crisis which has frozen countless people out of their accounts. No real details on what has actually occurred at Citibank have been given, but a lot of people have been impacted with their Citibank ATM and Credit Cards alike.
Witness a Sprint Rep on the Verge of Cracking
By 2.16.06
Paul H writes (our intro for us):
Having some persistent problems with a PCS modem, I sent an email to Sprint customer service via the form on their website. I didn’t expect that the people answering the general questions would be able to help me, but I wasn’t in the mood for discussing my problems with someone in India, nor could I find any real technical support on Sprint’s website.
Braindead Customer Service: Logitech
By 2.15.06
Thank you for your recent inquiry about your Gaming Console.
Consumers Speak: H&R Block’s Free Offer, Only $5.95
By 2.3.06
Dan F. writes in with this chat log from H&R Block’s online support system.
Here is the IM exchange I just had with H&R Block after attempting to use the “free” 1040 return service they pitched to me via e-mail. I own to some early crankiness but keep in mind their “fast” online response had kept me waiting a lot longer than it would have taken to do my taxes the old fashioned way:
CSR of the Week: Zachary Byron Helm
By 1.31.06
We are delighted to have been contacted by Zachary Byron Helm [pictured], the mohawked warrior of T-Mobile’s customer service, whose picture we posted just last week.
At The Other End of the Line: (Purported) T-Mobile Edition
By 1.26.06
We have it on good word that this is a picture from inside a T-Mobile call center. While we want to point out that yes, he frightens us, we have to grudgingly applaud his ability to carve out his own embarrassing style in the midst of a sea of cubicles.
Who Has More Authority: Stores or Customer Service?
By 1.25.06
A complaint about a bad customer service experience with Sprint from Adam H. (which we will reproduced after the jump) got us to thinking: Do customer service employees who work in the ‘billing’ offices of phone companies like Sprint have more authority to fix payment issues than the person at your local carrier-owned phone retail store? We have a inclination that one needs to call into the service centers to get any sort of billing resolution, but wouldn’t it make sense for at least the managers at the retail operations to have the authority to fix errors, as well? Perhaps it is a trust issue—makes it too easy to tweak bills for friends when you can work with them face-to-face.
Former Cingular CSR Speaks: “Having worked there I would never do business with them.”
By 1.12.06
Steve W. is a reformed call center representative for Cingular who wrote in just to share his experiences during the storied Cingular/AT&T merger. If you ever had any reason to wonder why your account might have been screwed up during the transfer, his account sheds quite a bit of light.
I just wanted to drop you guys a line about Cingular. I was until recently an employee, I was a Call Center Rep. for the Northeast Region, thats pretty much everything north of Virginia not including NYC and New Jersey. Also I’m not particularly disgruntled, I left of my own accord for a better position but I thought I would shed some light on the practices that lead to the problems that some of your readers experience.
A Brief Moment of Western Union Logic
By 1.10.06
Offering a friend a bit of a slump-time bump, today we sent some money via Western Union. Since it was the first time we had used their service, they requested that we call their call center to confirm something. They didn’t state what.
Apple Genius Bar Soho Crashes, Burns
By 1.9.06
The Apple Store in Soho (Manhattan) is a favorite of ours, but only because we enjoy running our greasy thumbs across the once-immaculate products on display. The Genius Bar—Apple’s haughty name for their customer service desk—we avoid with extreme prejudice; We’d rather mail our faulty products back to Apple than wait in a line for hours to talk to a service tech—especially when their service can be so uneven.
Time Warner CEO Helps Customer on Street Scare Time Warner Employee
By 1.5.06
From the NY Post (purportedly; We couldn’t find a link, but we’re dumb.)
January 4, 2006 — TIME Warner CEO Dick Parsons stuck up for one of his customers during a stroll down Seventh Avenue on Monday morning. Hedge fund manager Jeff Green was on his cellphone arguing with a Time Warner Cable customer service rep when he recognized Parsons on the street and walked over to him. Parsons patiently listened as Green recounted how he’d gotten up early to pick up a new cable box in person – thus bypassing a $30 installation fee – only to find out the office was closed when he’d been told it would be open. The service rep, who wasn’t being especially cooperative, suddenly changed his tune and agreed to waive the installation fee when Green informed him Parsons was standing next to him and was sympathetic to his plight.
Clearly the answer to our customer service problem is to create more CEOs. As many as one per customer. (Thanks, David!)
Consumers Speak: “Going a little easy on Amazon, aren’t you?”
By 1.4.06
Reader Ray R. writes:
The company’s infamous “customer relations” policy must be among the worst going. My christmas orders for nephew and niece went completely astray and I wasn’t informed at all. When I phone head office in Seattle on Jan. 3 I get put through to Kham in India. She was polite enough, but the best she was going to offer was a $15 voucher, even though the $24 recharchable battery, the only part of the order being filled, was going to be delivered anyway, even though it was useless without the toy boat it was supposed to run, which was not being delivered. So, they’re refunding me about $100 for two presents not delivered and giving me a $15 voucher, but not refunding the useless battery — not to mention the cost of the phone call, the hassle of tracking them down, the fact that I look like a deadbeat uncle for not delivering presents thanks to Amazon.
Ancient Apple Customer Support Calls on MP3
By 12.27.05
While we stand by our conviction that customer service agents are often lack-witted bobbins designed to unravel our will to complain, we also acknowledge that some customers are slobbering, batshit animals. And since we can’t record ourselves calling in and being a prick, because we are always the most gentle of breezes, we’re glad that some folks doing old-school technical support for Apple for the foresight to record customers plotzing out over their Apple II’s.
Consumers Speak: Lenovo’s Tricky Customer Service
By 12.22.05
Ever since IBM sold their industry standard Thinkpad line of laptops to Lenovo, some have worried if the quality of the units would suffer. On the whole, it seems they haven’t—they continue to review well, performance-wise.
HP Techs Can’t Find Answer on Own Web Site
By 12.15.05
Reader Nick A’s experiences with HP’s tech support are disappointing, to say the least, especially when he finally fixed his problem with his HP computer by finding the solution on their website himself—after calling their phone support twice.
Commentors Point / Counterpoint: Attitude Relevance in Good Customer Service
In response to a recent post in which we posited that a customer’s attitude when dealing with a CSR was important when trying to guarantee good service from the pallid, hateful peons of your local call service center, our comments section experienced a flurry of seven responses, arguing whether or not it made a lick of difference. Here’s a couple of the more interesting ones.