I don’t want to “Hear You Now”

After moving into a new house, I waited all day for Verizon to show up yesterday. They never came.  For various reasons, my order was mishandled time and again.  The process was made worse by the automated line I had to continuously navigate each time I needed to call to find out where they were.  It kept asking permission to access my account to see if there were more products and services they could sell me.  After three separate calls throughout the day asking where they were, I was finally routed to poor Jackie in some distant call center.  After an excruciating hour for both of us, she figured out how to correct the mistake and work around the system to ensure someone came to my house the next morning.

Sure enough, Ed, a 22 year veteran, arrived within the prescribed four hour window.  Ed had a wonderful demeanor and shared my frustration with systems in place that did not work (he recently had to move from paper to a blackberry interface that made his job more difficult.) 

Now you might think this blog post is a complaint, but it’s not.  It’s actually a wish for Verizon to change their story.  They have a great product and they have people who obviously care about the work they do.  But both Jackie and Ed shared stories of their frustration as well.  If anyone from Verizon is reading this, you might think this is disloyal. But because of Jackie and Ed, Verizon kept a customer.  Me.

Perhaps its time to spend less on mindless television commercials that shout “Can You Hear Me Now?” and focus more on Jackie and Ed.  I fully realize ad campaigns serve a different purpose than customer service, but my advice to Verizon and others who rely on people to interact with customers daily -- stop trying to sell me things and focus on those people who are living out your story.  Jackie and Ed actually heard me – your automated system that kept telling me you wanted to sell me more products and services certainly “did not hear me now”.   Perhaps diverting media dollars to shout at me to the people who have a conversation with me would make me feel better about your story and actually want to buy more.

-Julie