GENIUS FORUMS

My ISP failed me once too often last week, so I signed up with another company, which got hooked up today. I called my old ISP (or should I say ISNP for internet service non-provider, considering how often they were down for service or repairs) to discontinue services, and as part of the discontinuance process, they noted how frequently I'd called to complain about service being down and admitted it was an ongoing problem, then asked me "If we sent a master technician out to fix these problems, would you consider staying with our service?" Good grief! They reserve the master technicians for fixing problems only if customers are in the process of leaving? It reminded me of my ex when he tried to explain that he didn't really mean it when he said he wanted a divorce. Whether a business, personal, or spiritual relationship, if something is wrong, speak up about it, and then get it resolved at that time. This "threatening to leave" behavior - although I appreciate that if that's the way romantic relationships operate for the masses, why businesses would also adopt that silly practice - is nonsense. Businesses used to handle business more professionally - and rather than personal relationships adopting a more professional demeanor (such as don't say you want a divorce unless you actually want one), businesses are adopting the silly practices of romantic relationships.

Romantic relationships may operate that way, but the thing is they don't actually work that way. Just look at the divorce rates to confirm that. If something does not work well in the personal life, businesses do not need to adopt the practice for professional life - but they do just because that's the way things are done - badly.

Well, you know how it is - breaking up is hard to do. I suspect in the case of your ISP they just aren't able to provide that level of service as a matter of course and will only bite the bullet when loss of custom looms. Either that or they're just bad business people. It's interesting that society seems to have an automatically naive notion that tells them people in business know what they're doing, but the truth is most do not. Part of the Capitalism syndrome I suppose...

Dan Rowden wrote: It's interesting that society seems to have an automatically naive notion that tells them people in business know what they're doing, but the truth is most do not.

Yeah. When I worked at Wal-Mart many years ago, customers would always ask me like I was some kind of expert on the differences between various brands. Crud, I just read the label like everyone else, and asked them which features were more important or if the cost difference was worth it to them.

I guess I need to remember that most people don't think.

Elizabeth, did you ever think to escalate the service call to a supervisor? Supervisors are usually more knowledgeable of the companies' policies, and the service in general, and they are usually more aware of the severity of problems, whereas regular representatives can be rather uninformed due to the turnover rate for many of these hellish call centers.

Supervisors are usually more conditioned, and hardened to the job, a real workhorse/robot. I was always amazed by some of my past supervisors' work ethics. They were like knowledgeable labor tanks. Clever women tend to make the best supervisors because their memories are so effective in retaining trivial information.

Another technique to have problems quickly resolved is to use language that is threatening to the overall survival of the company as a whole, such as : "I was thinking of terminating my service if the issue cannot be resolved on this call", or "Due to these persistent technical problems, I have been calling around to other providers to get price quotes." and so on...

Reps are trained to respond to these sorts of threats with additional resources, like master technicians, more knowledgeable staff and so on. Sometimes the screen of options that general reps have does not contain some of the more complicated technical answers because they only represent the first tier of technical support.

Some centers have two tiers of technical support, and one can escalate to a supervisor in each tier.

If my technical issue is complicated, I ask what the structure of their center is, how many tiers they have and so on, and then I ask to be transferred to the most advanced tier, followed by an immediate escalation to a supervisor.

Reps immediately know that I have call center experience due to my ease in navigating through the center’s structures as a means to efficiently find the solution I’m looking for.

So they rip service out with no warning, and when customers call to find out what happened, customers are supposed to say something special to get an answer other than "yes, the connection in your area is down for service. It should be back in under 2 hours. Well, two hours is what the standard is ma'am, if it's already been longer than that, then we just don't know. There is nothing further we can tell you ma'am. Yes ma'am, some things need to be done during daylight hours, and other things are done at night. Sometimes we have to take everybody offline to do service, so it isn't just you ma'am." But there's a special master technician who could prevent that, if only you know the magic threat words? How stupid.

Elizabeth,

"yes, the connection in your area is down for service. It should be back in under 2 hours. Well, two hours is what the standard is ma'am, if it's already been longer than that, then we just don't know

The individuals that told you this information were probably first tier technical support (rookies), they probably didn’t know what they were talking about, as they read those sorts of answers off their computer screens. I’m just telling you that for further reference if you want real solutions to difficult technical problems, you need to escalate your way up the ladder until you find an individual that knows what their talking about.

From the complexity of your problem, a supervisor with 3-5 years is probably necessary, and there is probably only a limited number of individuals in the entire center that have that the correct answer for you, so you need to know the quickest way to reach them, and in order to do this, you need to understand the escalation process, and the hierarchy structure of the call center.

Thank you Ryan, I do appreciate your tutelage on how society actually operates. I see how things ought to be, but the stupendous number of ways that people manage to do things inanely is beyond my current parameters of guesswork. I do appreciate it when someone can translate that mess out there into a language that I can work with.