When Customer Service Is A Misnomer

Sure you learn a lot from the best, but I think you can often learn even more from others, especially when they do everything they can wrong.

Our culpit this week is: T-Mobile. I have one of the new fangled Treo 600's. Nice unit (hate the keyboard), but it's first generation and a little flaky at times.

Well, now there's an upgrade. "Wow," I thought, "maybe they'd get the bugs out." Or not.

The unit would not take the upload. I tried and tried to get it to work to no avail. So what does one do, when one is stumped? Call Technical Support.

Let's see, I call and the idiot voice response system asks my phone number, then my last 4 digits of my social security number. I get though, only to get a person who asks the same information again! (Why wasn't my data moved along with the phone call, T-Mobile?)I asked this person to put me through to the Treo 600 support group. The woman said something like "Blah, Blah, Blah," and asked if she met my expectations. "Not exactly," I said.

Then I got person number 2, who starts with the same script. Come on now, I am 11 minutes into this phone call and I just want a tech support person. More garbage about verifying my account. I'm not sure what's to verify: I have a Treo, all the units are new, so I have to be under warranty. I demand and finally get a Supervisor.

The Supervisor goes through her script, and keeps telling me what I not only know, but have told her previously. We have a communications gap. (I suspect she is off shore, as she claims that she is in Upstate New York, yet doesn't know where the 212 area code is.) She says she has called Palm One for help. I am left wondering why she didn't just put me through to Palm One in the first place.

It's now minute 30, and I really have to leave my office. Thirty minutes, and zero has been accomplished.

What is the lesson here boys and girls? Learn from T-Mobile's mistakes. You don't make customers jump a hundred hurdles. You provide trained support people who don't take forever to fix a problem. You listen to your customer, especially when they seem to know what they are talking about.Oh and before you release an upgrade, maybe you test it, and train your staff on it. T-Mobile, take note.