Perils of Providing Unreliable Support Systems
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| I didn't mean to scream, honestly! |
Whoever was on the other side of the phone, I truly apologize.
I didn’t mean to scream at you. I just
wanted to scream at your company, and you were in the way.
As you may have guessed, I was furious at this one
telecommunication company for the way they treated me as a paying customer earlier
this week. The brand claims to provide various channels for customers to ‘so call’ contact them but none of those
channels actually worked. I tried calling their support line and after a few gazillion
minutes of holding on the line, the automated answering machine prompted me to
go back to the website to solve my problem. Who
does that!? Nevertheless, I kept my cool (it is Ramadan, after all) and
searched for alternatives.
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| "Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words" - Wise line, Bappu. |
Patiently (I
still had some at this point in time), I tried the online chat again and after
almost many hours of trying, I got to chat with someone named Andy. Again, the
same question was raised. Apparently, my contract will only expire in
September; hence I need to pay an early termination penalty. “After paying, please go the website and fill
up the form again,” said the Support fellow. My patience was seriously
thinning at this point in time because I couldn’t just email one person and get
this over and done with! Alas, there’s no need to pull off a ‘Gandhi’ and tell
Andy I won’t eat until he’s taken care of everything. I simply paid, filled up
the form and sent it.
I received an email a few hours later with this
message, “Madam, you need to pay an
outstanding amount before we could process the termination and after you have paid,
kindly fill up the form online,” At this point in time, my patience has
already flown out the window. I sent them a really ‘oh-some’ letter to read, stating that I paid the amount and filled
up the form. I channeled my inner Lennon and Yoko, though, and made sure the
letter was peacefully aggressive.
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| If MLK were still alive, I bet he'd give the girl on the other line this same exact look! |
If you feel irritated reading this, imagine how the
customers feel when they have to experience it first hand. I swear I will never
recommend that brand to anybody ever and I’ll always speak evil of the brand as
long as I live.
That’s how terrible customer service can destroy a
reputable brand. Even a peace-loving, anti-war activist can become vengeful.
And amazingly, after they terminated my account, I
received another email entitled: Retention Program Survey. Seriously? Who does this!?
By Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ
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