by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: April 14, 2010

A recent call to the customer service department of a major telecommunications firm resulted in a claim that the customer had somehow signed up for an upgrade to the service at a cost of $15 a month. The customer had not upgraded the service.

The customer service representative went through changes of excuse three or four times before becoming aggressive and argumentative, especially when a supervisor was demanded. The issue was resolved, but the overall lack of knowledge, terrible behavior and attitude from the customer service representative, and improvement only after a supervisor was demanded is indicative of much of customer service these days.

Employees and former employees of this firm will not hesitate to give some insights into the terrible customer service: a major merger resulted in the chaotic and abusive working environment that the employees have to suffer. Often, the employees can not even stand each other! There are virtually no union contractual issues that are not circumvented, and layoffs, rumors of layoffs and a host of other problems have been going on for years. As a result, the employees simply do not care.

The size of the firm and the limited options available for customers in some areas to go to a competitor also add to the lack of concern for customer issues. The customer service call centers are aware that the firm is too big for any consumer complaints, lawsuits and online complaint forums to matter.

As a result of unfettered and poorly managed growth, most complaints happen because of technical problems and issues where the hastily installed equipment is creating phantom and unanticipated costs show up on bills, but it takes enormous amounts of time to straighten them out.

Amazingly, many technical support call centers offer excellent, professional and successful support. Companies that have managed their growth properly have managed to maintain excellent customer support centers. But many have dropped the ball on managing customer support departments and personnel. Worse, some even use jail inmates or prisoners to get involved in our personal business!

But the biggest failure of customer support lies in having a specific problem and having to get through an automated system that only allows voice commands, forces the caller to go through diversionary "frequently asked questions" or advertising, and puts up as many barriers as possible to getting a living human being to communicate with! The customer then may have to deal

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