Customer Service

"We have a good client, who trusts us, who likes our work, who pays their bills on time. They don't deserve to be thrown out the door for a wink from American [Airlines]." -- Don Draper, Mad Men, Episode 202

About 8 years ago, Riggs Bank held a mandatory seminar on customer service. All employees in the DC metro area were required to attend a session. In that seminar, I learned that there are two categories of dissatisfied customers. There are the scary ones who will yell in your face and make a scene, but will let you know what they're upset about and what you should do to fix the problem, and will usually walk away from the encounter steamed, but more or less satisfied with the solution. And then there are the quiet ones who may not make a complaint at all. Companies fear these customers, because these are the ones who will simply take their business elsewhere and will tell everyone else in the world why they did so; thus the company loses business and suffers a negative reputation. Unfortunately for merchants the world over, I am of the latter type.

Husband and I have been Verizon Wireless customers for about 7 years. We have faithfully paid our bill in full, on time, every time. We have brought them business over the years in the form of family members and friends. Husband and I have one of the most expensive calling plans. We stayed with them when our very expensive calling plan failed to include a text quota on Husband's phone, meaning we're charged every time he sends or receives a text. We even stayed with them when our house developed dead patches and the idiot support guy (read that any way you choose) tried to tell me that it was because a mobile phone is meant to be mobile when it is used, and that my calls were dropping because a building isn't mobile. Don't ever pitch that excuse to a telecommunications major.

I have generally been pleased with their New Every Two system: I get a free phone, and their customers appear to be using the latest technology. You could even deposit your old phone in a little box in their stores, and Verizon would refurbish the phones and donate them to battered women's shelters. As time progressed and phones became more and more advanced, they changed the offer to a discount of a set amount off of any phone when you re-upped your contract. Because I'm a cheapskate and neither know how nor care to use most of the new tricks on modern phones, I continued to get my phone for free because any phone I chose was so basic that its price was less than my discount.

My most recent upgrade came up in December 2008. I went online to pick out my new phone, but there was exactly one new phone that was less than the discount; all others cost money above and beyond the discount or were - get this - "certified pre-owned." Why would Verizon try to sell me a used phone? And where were they getting these used phones? The shelter donation boxes, perhaps? Regardless, the sole free new/un-used phone, while ugly, had all the features I wanted (namely, speed dial, vibrate or silent setting, color graphics, and flip open/close), so I went ahead and got it. I activated my new phone in January.

No later than June, I noticed my phone was acting a little funny. Sometimes I would pick it up and it would be completely off, even though I could have sworn I charged it full only a day or two ago. Sometimes it would drop the signal and shut off, mid-call, from the middle of Fairfax County. And sometimes when I would plug it into the charger, it told me that I was using a non-supported battery. Odd... that's the battery that came with the phone, plugged into the charger that came with the phone.

The frequency of this annoyance reached a fever pitch in August over the course of Julie's wedding, when a reliable connection became crucial for coordinating with Husband, who was driving a separate car. Finding that it had shut off on me yet again for no reason, only my respect for the hotel's interior decorating and Julie's father's bill kept me from beating my phone against the table until it shattered into the same number of pieces as my sanity. I vowed to march into the nearest Verizon Wireless store, post-wedding, and insist - nay, demand! - that they replace my phone with a new one, and I wanted it to have all the bells and whistles possible, especially ones I wouldn't even use, just on principle, else I would remove my business from their clutches.

My righteous indignation, however, only goes so far, especially when tempered with my general laziness. I, in fact, did not go marching into the nearest Verizon Wireless store until Sept 9, and only then because it happened to be next door to the restaurant at which I met a friend for dinner. I only wish I had been prepared and worn sneakers that day instead of pumps.

The front kiosk of the spotlight-lit store was overrun with customers who appeared to need intense technological help, so I positioned myself around the cell phones. After a few minutes of looking helplessly about - usually a cattle call for salespeople - and finding myself yet alone, I went over and dithered with one of the fancy pants touchscreens that they scatter around the shop under the guise of helping you find the best item for you, but really only giving you something to play with while you stand around like a fool and convincing you that the proprieters of such an advanced store must know what they're doing. I was merely convinced that my obvious distress or the potential for a sale (and therefore commission) would attract a salesperson.

A few minutes later, having discovered that their touch screen materials are as useless as their website and that their staff remained as oblivious as ever, I located a salesman who was talking to a customer. I stood patiently to the side, waiting for him to finish helping her so that he'd be free to help me. He finished talking with her, and she walked off. He smiled at me, asked what he could help me with, and graciously guided me through the process of exchanging my demonically possessed phone for something shiny and new, and I went away pleased, my continued patronage of Verizon Wireless reinforced.

Oh wait. That's not what happened at all.

He finished talking with her, and she walked off. He glanced at me and the plaintive and tired expression on my face, and TURNED HIS BACK ON ME. Was he helping another customer who had been there longer than I and whom I had merely failed to notice before? Nope. He was just standing there, looking around, thinking of all the better things he had to do than to address a lost customer.

I suppose I could have tapped him on the shoulder and asked for his help, but I could not be sure exactly what would have come out of my mouth in the face of such rudeness. Instead, every fiber of my being tensed to bursting, I walked over to another kiosk under the FiOS area of the store where a young woman stood, nametag on display, and tightly asked, "Do you work here?" Perhaps a hint of red-hot fury glinted in my eyes, perhaps a note of barely repressed homicidal rage escaped my voice, but she took one look at me and - I swear - gulped. Good girl that she was, she put on a pretty smile, affirmed that she did, patiently listened to my complaint, and gently led me over to the front kiosk to get my name on the list.

Verizon Wireless stores are painstakingly designed by condescending twerps to be deliberately confusing so as to make their customers feel like blithering idiots. Ostensibly, the goal is so that you will be groomed to do idiotic things, like dropping $400 on a portable telephone that will be obsolete in two months. The existing, intuitive model of salesmanship and customer service, in which salespeople reach out to customers and customers feel free to ask any available salesperson for help, seems insufficient to Verizon's business plan. Rather, you are expected to know to walk up to the front kiosk and have them type your name into a service queue, resulting in a unique customer care hydra of the sign-in sheet at a doctor's office, the take-a-number dispenser of a delicatessan, and the round-the-block lines for toilet paper in Soviet Russia. If you don't know to do this, no one is obliged to tell you, not even to determine whether your name is on the various screens displaying the queue. Instead, they are entitled to ignore your pea-brained self because it's your own fault that you didn't know, Stupid. You are then expected to mill about the store until the salesperson finds you, whenever that may be. After that, God help you.

After about 15 minutes of attempting to feign interest in the various phones and finally resorting to pacing figure-8s near the laptop section (need I point out again that I'm in work clothes and heels, and chairs are scarce), SalesGuy finally manages to find me. I tell him I'm not going to yell at him because I know he has to deal with people yelling at him all day long and that has to suck, but this phone is a piece of crap (actual words) and I've only had it since January and I want to know what they're going to do about it. We go over to the Service desk and he dinks around with the phone for a while and finally has his eureka moment: "It's the battery!" Way to go, genius. Einstein proceeds to check their online inventory, tells me that they have a replacement battery, and disappears into the back. He reappears to check the online inventory again because he "swear[s] it was just there!" And back he goes. He returns toting a new incarnation of my old crappy phone. Apparently Inventory lied to him, and he's going to replace my phone. Oh happy day.

While Righteous Indignation Rosie would have told him just what he could do with the same-model replacement, Real Life Rosie is far more dormouse than Domina. However, when I did manage to get the nerve to say something about how I had no reason to believe this one wouldn't also crash and burn and that I'd prefer a different phone altogether, Einstein was happy to oblige. He told me that they could get me the 1-year replacement price on a different phone, whatever that means. For even the low-end-but-not-POS phones, that was about $80. So, I took my replacement POS phone, left the store, and am now shopping new carriers.

That quote at the top sums up everything that is wrong with customer service these days. Companies will go into contortions to attract new customers, offering them the world if only they'll favor Company with their business. But once they've got you, you might as well be last season's pashmina cast into a corner of the closet because it's too much of a hassle to go to the dry cleaners. While gifts and benefits rain down to get new business, nothing but the minimum is done to retain old business. And that is just not right.

If you need me, I'll be comparing plans from AT&T and T-Mobile. Maybe if Husband and I change over to one of them, Verizon will fall over itself to win us back.