October 11, 2009
By Richmond Shreve
When enterprises grow large they too often grow impersonal and unresponsive, much like government agencies. But competition can and does punish the enterprise that neglects customer service. Verizon faces just this situation.
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A week ago our local radio station WCFA was off the air for 36 hours
because the Verizon telephone line between the studio and the
transmitter failed. It was the third such incident in three months.
Although the transmitter site is only six miles distant, the physical
circuit is 100 miles long because the hub where lines terminate
is 50 miles away.
Last week the local Cape Bank branch was brought to
its knees with a similar failure of a dedicated circuit to their
centralized computer system.
These difficulties are not uncommon, and it's not
hard to find people who will add their personal story of frustration
and dissatisfaction. A common factor in these stories is the difficulty
of communicating with Verizon to get problems resolved. First, when you
call you get an automated menu that seeks to direct your call. In
the case of the radio station, none of the choices were applicable
because the problem was not with conventional telephone service, but
with a dedicated circuit -- a leased line. There was no menu option for leased
lines. The choices boiled down to getting new service, or
providing the telephone number of the malfunctioning phone. The is
no telephone number for a leased line, and Verizon offered no way to
speak to a sentient being for help.
The radio station's chief engineer spent the better part of an hour
trying to connect with someone at Verizon who knew enough about
Verizon's own telephone business to know where to report a failure of
the leased line. He was transferred from one clueless person to another
until by chance he found someone who knew the correct number to call.
The response was bureaucratic, slow, and frustrating. In the end they issued
a work ticket promising that in due course someone would get around to it - probably the next day.
Contrast this with Comcast. Fed up with Verizon, WCFA's engineer called
the cable company to explore using a dedicated internet connection to
link studio and transmitter. His initial phone call connected him
to an automated menu, but unlike the Verizon experience, he easily
connected with a real live person. That person didn't know the answers
to his questions, but she knew who did and remained on the line to be
sure the call transferred properly. The second person understood what
was wanted, discussed the matter intelligently, and offered to have a local sales engineer call to work out
the technical requirements and provide a quote. The quote turned out to be less than half the monthly cost of the unsatisfactory Verizon service.
The difference in experiences was like night and day. Comcast has
evidently learned from the sorry reputation that cable companies in
general once shared for bad customer service and has fixed the worst of
their problems. Now that they are competitive with traditional
telecommunications carriers for both the phone and broadband service
business, they are aggressively seeking it. But it probably will
not be the quality of the technical infrastructure that wins the day in
the competitive race -- it will be customer service. Dealing with
Verizon is like dealing with the government bureaucracy; it is
impersonal, lethargic, and frustrating. Unfortunately Verizon is not
alone, many large companies have grown too big to provide good service,
and unlike the government, there are competitive options. The
big companies that learn to react promptly with personal service, like small companies do, will
prevail.
Authors Website: http://rbshreve.com
Authors Bio:
Richmond Shreve is a retired business executive whose careers began in electronics (USN) and broadcasting in the 1960s. Over the years he has maintained a hobby interest in amateur radio, and the audio-visual arts while working in sales and marketing. For the last thirty years he was co-owner and CEO of the Middlebrook Crossroads business park (Edmar Corporation) in Bridgewater, NJ. He holds a lifetime FCC Second Class Commercial license, and an amateur radio General Class license (W2EMU). In 2012 Richmond retired from instructing sports car owners in high performance driving techniques at major tracks including NJ Motorsports Park, Watkins Glen, and Summit Point. He is the author and publisher of the Instructor Candidate Manual used by BMWCCA and other car clubs to train their on-track instructors.
Prior to moving to Newtown,PA, he volunteered as chief engineer of WCFA the Cape May, NJ community radio station as well as working as a gaffer on the Cape May Film Festival technical crew, a driver/engineer in the Cape May Point Volunteer Fire Company, served as its Treasurer and as Treasurer of its Firemen's Relief Association. He edited and printed the Cape May Point Taxpayer's Association Newsletter.
As a computer power user, graphic artist, photographer, and website designer he helps nonprofits build and maintain web sites. He is a fromer Vestry member of the Episcopal Church of the Advent.
Richmond is a citizen journalist and former Senior Editor at OpEdNews.com, a progressive news and opinion site on the internet.
Richmond lives with his wife Marguerite Chandler in Newtown, PA wher he continues to write essays ad short fiction. They travel extensively with their fifth wheel RV.
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Books:
Lost River Anthology (Amazon.com)
Instructor Candidate Manual (LuLu.com)