Dear thewizardofosborne.typepad.com,
Sorry that I've been so horribly belated in updating your design and writing some new posts. You've got a new design now (yes, it still needs work, I know) and new posts will be coming shortly. I SWEAR. I've seriously got a whole list of ideas in my Sandy account just waiting to be written.
Hang in there, blog. I promise to have you back to your sarcastically sassy self soon.
Love,
Wizard
Dear Wizard,
Where are you? I've called and paged and emailed and sent text messages and left voice mails and twittered and...you're nowhere to be found. You promised to redesign me on New Year's day. New colors. New header graphic. You promised to start writing more frequently. But what have I gotten so far? Bupkus! Nada! Zippo!
You've let me down. I'm not sure I have the energy to sustain this one-sided relationship anymore. (sniff) So you'd best do something about this situation before the end of the month or...or...WE'RE THROUGH!
Yours,
thewizardofosborne.typepad.com
I don't typically get too worked up about customer service at retail stores, I suppose because my expectations are so low that it's hard to dissatisfy me to the point of aggravation. But after a morning full of feedback from happy Lijit customers, and knowing that providing good customer service just takes some creative effort and common sense, I had to write about the customer service experience we had today with Verizon. (...and I hope this makes Todd feel like he's not the only one writing about bad customer service.)
My husband's BlackBerry recently went on the fritz -- it could still generate tones, but could no longer vibrate. He'd received an email from Verizon saying that he was eligible to upgrade his phone, so this seemed the perfect time to head to the nearest Verizon store and pick up a shiny-new BlackBerry 8830. They wanted $299 for the phone (after a $100 rebate and a 2-year contract renewal), but since my husband was due for an upgrade, we knew they'd give us an additional $100 off. Seemed like a reasonable deal, so off we went.
Well, as the lovely miss G. at the store on W. 120th Ave. in Broomfield explained, when my husband and I had combined our contracts back in '05, somehow my line had become the primary line on our account and only the primary line is eligible for the extra $100 off and if we tried to make my husband's line the primary line right now, we'd lose the $100 discount altogether. I couldn't even try to give/gift/transfer my discount to him, even though I was going to be eligible for it myself in just a few days.
After we fussed for a while, she said she'd "see what she could do" and went over to her computer. She came back, gave us a bunch of useless data (not info mind you, just data) and said that there was nothing she or her manager could do. She made that statement in a way that implied she'd spoken with her manager, but given that he was standing at another terminal and we never saw them exchange words, we're not sure how she knew that there was nothing he could do to help. Sure, maybe Verizon retail employees are telepathic. Or maybe they refer to their computer system as "their manager". It's hard to tell. After we explained to miss G. that this whole exchange was total nonsense and that her lack of helpfulness was strongly encouraging us to switch providers, she said, "Yes, you could do that." We started heading towards the door.
What really sealed the deal on this particular experience was that just before we hit the door, my husband said to the (apparently telepathic) store manager, J., "This has been a terrible customer service experience. Really terrible." J. made no move to stop us, no attempt to try and salvage our experience, nothing. He just uttered a weak, "I'm sorry," and that was it. Wow. As we got in the car we literally started to laugh about how fantastically bad our experience in that store had been. It was absolutely appalling.
Since my husband still needed a new BlackBerry and we like Verizon's coverage, we decided to give them one last chance and headed up to the store at I-25 and Hwy 7. We walked in and I explained to the sales person that we'd just had a horrible customer service experience at their Broomfield store and our fate with Verizon was now in his hands. (No pressure.) Intelligently, he immediately handed us over to his manager, B. B. listened to our story, took about two seconds to come up with a totally reasonable solution that met our needs, and 30 some minutes later, my husband walked out with a brand new BlackBerry 8830.
Nothing B. did was hard. Nothing he did was something the first store couldn't do. His solution didn't require any rocket science (so far as I could tell), just a little bit of creative effort and common sense. Since I assume the first store could've been creative too and surely has some common sense tucked away somewhere in case of emergency, it seems that they must have actually chosen not to provide a good experience. That's pretty sad. Luckily for Verizon, we chose to give them a second chance. You don't get many second chances, so choose to use your creative efforts and common sense to provide a good customer service experience. It's totally worth it.
I don't have a post to go with this title yet, but it's something I'd like to write about someday. My Mom is a college-level math teacher, my Dad has undergrad and master's degrees in electrical engineering (plus an MBA), and their group of friends (who I strangely hung around with a lot when I was in high school) consisted of an odd mix of folks who had all built their own experimental aircraft (and came from a variety of rather technical backgrounds).
I know being raised by this pack of nerds shaped me in special (?) ways and made me who I am today. For example, I am strangely comfortable sitting in meetings primarily attended by very technical guys, even when what's being discussed sounds to me like, "If we can regulate the flam-jam in such a way as to recombobulate the sendetertiary frimgigger, we'll be totally good to go."
And as soon as I figure out where I want to go with all of this, I'll write more about it.
I haven't fully planned out what all topics I'll comment on in this blog, but here are the ones I'm considering currently: cars, travel, TV, food, the workplace, Product Management, stand-up/improv comedy, horseback riding and Greyhounds. All good stuff. Can you hardly wait?
Welcome to my first blog and first blog post, for that matter. I used to be very anti-blog -- I couldn't really understand why people thought their random mental musings were important enough to offer up for the world's reading pleasure -- but then I thought, "Hey, why not." So, here I am. I hope you enjoy the inside of my head as much as I do.
