I would say NEVER, except if you are trying to watch a show, On Demand. My cable company has an option, which I pay for, called On Demand. So if I want to watch a show that was already on TV or a movie, or check out an exercise class, all I have to do is hit the little blue button on my remote and DEMAND to see it. It’s the only place I can legally be demanding. And I like it!
My little 2 year old granddaughter likes to be demanding too. She especially likes to demand her Mickey Mouse Clubhouse friends to appear on TV in an instant. Like many American households we have TVs in several rooms and all have this ability. One day, we were in the guest room and I was trying to get some things done, so I said, “Who wants to watch Mickey?” to keep one little meddling girl occupied on something other than removing all the items I was carefully placing in drawers and closets to organize.
I pressed my little blue button and I got an error message, with an error code. And it said I didn’t appear to have enough credits to make this selection. Credits? Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is FREE!! “Where’s Mickey, Grammy?” My palms got sweaty, I started repeating the same steps over and over to find Mickey but I still kept getting the same message, and still hearing, “Where’s Mickey, Grammy?” which quickly turned into, “I want Mickey!” which quickly turned into tears and a meltdown, and needless to say the organization of the guest room went out the window for the day.
That evening, when I finished everything I had to do after dinner, I called Verizon. Some of you may have already heard other Verizon horror stories from me so you know I went into this with very little hope. Listen carefully and see if you can identify at least 5 things the customer service people did wrong or could have done better.
I called the number on my screen that was included in the error message. He said he couldn’t help because but the Issuance Department could take care of this right away for me once they see why I don’t have enough credits. What credits? It’s supposed to be FREE ON DEMAND! But I said, fine. The next person took 4 minutes (I can see that on my phone) to look up my account information which I already punched in to the phone and told the first guy. Then she said she would have to transfer me to TEC Support because it looks like I have plenty of credit on my limit to order. To order a free show??????? Now I’m getting to the end of my rope. I refused to be transferred back to someone who already transferred me to her. OK, that might have been a little DEMANDING.
Now she put me on hold while she spoke to a supervisor. She came back and said she could try to reset my system, but it could take up to an hour. I was already on the phone for 20 minutes. I refused. I told her they won, and I will continue to accept their poor customer service because I just don’t have the energy to continue. Whenever I have a bad experience with a company, it makes me re-evaluate the way my staff I and treat our customers. When there is a misunderstanding, are we doing things that help satisfy the customer, or are we actually making them angrier?
Think about what you would have done differently if you were the customer service representative? Tune in next week and we will discuss………..
Thoughts…….. Contact me at abbe@TECResourceCenter.com
