Thank You Angela 407125

We had a disaster at our house earlier this week. One of our satellite receivers is not working. We called the customer service number to get this resolved. They really need to change the name of this to “we’ll kinda help you but not fix your problem”. It’s one of those automated systems. You know the kind: “Thank you for calling. Please state the problem you are having.” After several attempts and several minutes, they finally get us connected to a live person.

The customer service representative did her best to help us, but could do no more. She put us on hold for several more minutes and connected us with another department. Another customer service representative (Angela 407125) was very patient and tried to be helpful. I was a bit upset–okay, angry. I took it out on her. Definitely the wrong thing to do. So I asked for her supervisor and told him that Angela did a great job being calm and trying to difuse the situation.

But while talking to the supervisor, the other satellite receiver which was working just fine prior to the call, stopped working. He had to transfer me back to Angela. (Oh, and I did apologize to Angela for my behavior and told her she is doing a good job.)

After several more minutes of troubleshooting, being put on hold, and more troubleshooting, Angela could not help. She is sending the solution (gosh, I hope) overnight. In summary, prior to calling customer service, we had one good and one bad receiver. After the call zero good and two bad.

I don’t blame the representatives. They are doing the best the can to help people like me. I imagine they get to hear a lot of grief and anger from people. But I do blame their customer service process. It’s terrible for customers. The call lasted nearly 40 minutes, solved nothing, and might have created additional technical issues.

Unfortunately, this example is all too common today. I think customer service is a lost art. Is any business out there working on fixing this?