Posted by Shelley
I received an email last week from someone who had attended a Scott McKain ‘Ultimate Customer Experience’ presentation. This email was an explanation of a personal experience he had with Verizon — although he had been a valued customer for some 10 years, Verizon was willing to lose his business rather than attempt a resolution of the problem he was experiencing with his service. His situation isn’t exactly like the one I’m currently experiencing, but his feelings of frustration are identical.
Living in a rural area, there’s always been only one choice for local phone service. It’s not like there was another carrier that you could pick up if you were dissatisfied with the service you received from another. I grew comfortable with this business relationship — and when other options became available, I resisted the change and remained loyal to the company with which I had done business throughout the years. I picked up Verizon cell service and DSL connectivity, in addition to my business land lines.
As a loyal customer, I chose Verizon DSL for the 2nd time when I moved my office to another location. I repeated attempts to rectify a slow connection at this location without success — numerous calls were made and none of their representatives seemed to care that my speed was often a blazing 2 (yes, TWO) download and 46 upload, while other times I had no connection at all. I was told it could be my router. Hello? Verizon, you SOLD me that router about 3 months ago — why not offer to help by sending out another?
This loyal Verizon customer now has Insight cable as a connectivity account. In this case, it was SPEED that mattered. Not simply the speed of my new connection, but also the speed in which my service was in place, and the speed in which my concerns were addressed.
Verizon finally made a weak attempt to provide what I’m sure they feel is an ultimate customer experience. They had a representative call to ask if my now closed ticket (even though I clearly stated I was NOT happy with my intermittent connection) was handled efficiently. After explaining that I was very dissatisfied — enough so that they are losing my business — the representative explained that there wasn’t anything she could do, it was merely her job to call. I’ve yet to hear back from Verizon.