Yesterday, January 3, 2008, was remarkable in our household for having two distinct experiences with customer service relating to electronic devices in our home. One was very good; the other, inexcusable. Both came down to the same principles: do what you promise to do and treat people right. In one case, I didn’t know I had a problem, but the company informed me, and did what they said they would do to make it right. In the second case, I knew I had a problem and the companies involved did not do what they said they would do to make it right.
Experience 1: Medical Device Replacement
In mid-December, 2007 I received a letter from the maker of my continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, ResMed, that the device was being recalled due to the potential for failure of the power supply connection. I called the telephone number in their letter to schedule a replacement, and was told I would receive a call in four to six weeks to schedule a replacement. Just three weeks later, I received a call to schedule the replacement, and I arranged to meet the service person at my house during my lunch hour yesterday to swap out the device.
I drove up to my house at the appointed time, and the service person drove up right behind me. We walked into my house together, he explained the process for aligning the settings on my replacement CPAP with those on my old unit, he asked me if I had any questions, and then he left. The whole process took twenty minutes, and I was back in my office in a timely fashion to take care of, among other things, Experience 2.
Experience 2: Repair of Satellite Television Equipment
On December 24, 2007, our satellite television service abruptly stopped. I called my service provider, DirecTV, to arrange to have a technician come out and repair it. At that time, I was told that the soonest anyone could come out was January 3, 2008. Resigned to living without any television through Christmas and New Year’s, I scheduled for the appointment window offered, 8:00am to Noon on January 3. I was surprised that we would be charged for the repair service, as we do not own the equipment; DirecTV owns it. We lease the equipment, and it was irritating to me that we would be charged to repair equipment that we do not own and did not damage. The problem was not caused by any action we took or did not take.
After stopping at home over lunch to meet a different service person (see Experience 1 above), I was surprised to learn that the DirecTV service person had not come to our house during the scheduled time. On my way back to my office, I called DirecTV, and was told that I should contact their contract service provider, Premier Communications. I called Premier, who called the assigned service person, who advised that he was running late on a job and would be at our house at 1:30pm. My wife (a stay-at-home mom) called at 1:30 to say that there was no sign of anyone to fix our service. Another round of calls to both DirecTV and Premier elicited the information that the service person was still working on another job and would be at our house at 2:45pm.
I’m sure you can guess what happened at 2:45pm. Yes, no service person from DirecTV/Premier. A third round of calls moved the estimated time of arrival to between 6:00pm and 7:00pm. At 6:45pm, with no sign of anyone coming and (of course) no call to let us know if anyone would show up, I called DirecTV and Premier yet again. This time I received a promise that the service person would be at our home in an hour (around 7:45pm). Another wait, no calls, no service person, and after another round of calls at 7:45pm, I was advised that although my wife had stayed home all day waiting for the repair person and I had stayed home all evening while my wife went out with our 8-year-old daughter, we would apparently not be getting our television service fixed until January 9.
At 8:50pm, just as I was putting our 4-year-old daughter to bed, the service person finally actually showed up. He complained that he spent five hours on the phone during the day answering questions about where he was (apparently he missed three other appointments as well), but he actually did fix the problem (apparently our switch had malfunctioned due to a power surge, and required resetting) within about half an hour and by 9:30pm our service was restored.
As you can imagine, Experience 2 was a disaster for a lot of reasons. First, DirecTV made us repeated promises, which they broke. My wife calls those “lies.” Second, throughout the process of missing repeated appointment times, we never received even one telephone call from either DirecTV or Premier. No communication explaining that they would be late, no notification of any kind. It was entirely up to us to figure out what was going on. Third, neither Premier nor DirecTV gave us any kind of reason as to why they made commitments they couldn’t keep, nor why they never contacted us to tell us they wouldn’t be able to keep their commitments. The one thing DirecTV did for us was provide us with a $100 service credit, because apparently they have an on-time service guarantee and obviously they were not compliant with that guarantee in our case.
Ultimately, I am quite surprised by my feelings about these 2 experiences. In both cases, in the end I got what I wanted: correctly functioning electronic equipment. However, in Experience 1, I am pleased with the service I got and would recommend the companies involved to anyone I know. In Experience 2, my satellite television service was repaired, and I received a $100 service credit, and yet I would emphatically NOT recommend the services of either DirecTV or Premier Communications to anyone. I think it comes down to a few simple principles: (1) If you make promises, keep them. (2) If you can’t keep your promises, proactively communicate that information and have clear reasons why you cannot keep your promises and a plan for what you will do to make up for it. (3) Paying someone for their trouble helps, but doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
It’s just that simple.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment