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Customer Circus!

That is what we call it in the business. When you deliver customer service for a living you get to see what a three ring circus really looks like from the inside. After spending a dozen years working and managing in technical support for high tech firms, I can tell you that there is a right way and a wrong way to get what you want from the clowns. I was a clown, I know the secrets. Here is a quick story to relate a classic situation in customer circus, what was done wrong here by the customer and what was eventually done right. This is a true story!

The situation: Internet service at your home stops working between 4:00pm and 4:30pm every day, after which every piece of networking equipment in your house including any computer has to be restarted to get it back to working but for who knows how long.

The customer: Woman of the house with two kids who have to get to after school activities (in this case hockey practice and play rehearsal.)

The company: Local cable company.

The call: First call to the cable company is made at 4:30 pm after the connection is working again and the eternally patient woman is on hold for 20 minutes after navigating 6 levels of voice prompts. Once the distinctly accented clown on the other end of the phone finally picks up, the woman explains the situation and asks if the clown can help solve the problem. The clown asks the woman to hold again while they "check on it." After another 5 minutes of hold, the clown returns to ask "what was the problem again?" clearly indicating that what they had really done was take another call while she was on hold. At this point, the woman is almost out of time and asks again for help upon which the clown asks her to hold one more time while they "check on something else," when promptly, the woman hears a dial tone. The woman at this point loses her temper, calls back, waits another 15 minutes until a lady clown answers and the woman raises her voice and threatens that if they put her on hold again, she will cancel her service. This clown repeats the need to put her on hold in order to check out the problem by going over the network and connecting to the woman's cable modem and seeing if it is working. The fuming woman finally agrees to wait while informing her children that they will be late for their activities and picking up her other phone to call their respective coaches and teachers. After another 6 minutes, the clown voice squeaks, "I can not find anything wrong with the connection."

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