Customer service is not just a necessary evil

Posted by Tammy Parker Thursday, February 12th, 2009

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You would think that by now, US mobile operators would have learned that delivering decent customer service can be a competitive advantage and that providing dismal customer service is always a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, that message appears to have gotten lost.

I recently sought help from Verizon Wireless’ tech support because the mailboxes I had set up on my BlackBerry for my personal and work e-mail addresses had disappeared. The icons still existed, and there were still old e-mails in the mailboxes, but according to the device, no mailboxes had been set up, and therefore, e-mail was no longer being received by the gadget.

I went to the screen I thought I had used to set up the mailboxes before and successfully set up my personal e-mail again, but I could not get my work e-mail address configured to work with the BlackBerry. I went to the local Verizon store, where the saleswoman also could not set up the mailbox, despite telling me she was an expert at that task. She told me to go home and call Verizon tech support.

I did as instructed. The young woman at the technical-support department was friendly but provided no useful assistance whatsoever. I knew I was in trouble when she pinpointed my problem as stemming from the fact that I already had my personal e-mail set up and said that “you can only have one e-mail account set up to receive e-mail on your BlackBerry at any one time.” Verizon’s tech-support staffer, through some power on her end, deleted my personal mailbox from my BlackBerry account and told me to again try setting up my work e-mail account, reiterating that I can only have a single account set up on a BlackBerry device.

I’m sure Verizon and Research in Motion would be shocked to hear this bit of advice, which all of their advertising refutes. According to www.blackberry.com, “your BlackBerry smartphone allows you to send and receive email from up to 10 supported email accounts.”

Using the instructions given to me by Verizon’s BlackBerry “specialist,” I still could not configure my BlackBerry for push e-mail from my work account. About two hours later, I realized that I could configure the account if I used a different setup screen than the one that both the store clerk and tech-support agent had told me to use. I also got my personal e-mail address set up – again – since it had been deleted remotely by Verizon tech support. So, all’s well that ends well. I just wish I had not wasted my time consulting Verizon’s not-so-tech-savvy reps.

Of course, one of the biggest US customer-service debacles hailed from the halls of Sprint Nextel, which a few years ago compounded its already lackluster customer service with the not-too-great idea that it could save money by outsourcing some of its customer service to call centers. This would have been a great idea if the new customer-service agents’ skills had been sufficient, but they weren’t. And the money being saved could not make up for the exodus of subscribers that was caused by poor customer service.

I know a hair stylist who received a Sprint smartphone as a gift from her daughter about two years ago. The stylist had difficulty setting up something on the phone and called Sprint’s customer support three times, reaching, in her words, “ladies in India who were very nice, but I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.”

The “ladies” were more likely in the Philippines, where they were employed by a company to which Sprint had outsourced its customer-service functions. Many US companies outsource call-center services to the Philippines (as well as India) to save money, but that can obviously backfire if overall customer service suffers because of language problems and poor training. Other anecdotes have revealed that Sprint’s Philippine call centers relied upon heavily scripted responses because the agents there had very little technical expertise.

The hair stylist finally took her smartphone back to Sprint and bought a Sidekick from T-Mobile.

Sprint eventually figured out that customer service is essential to stemming its skyrocketing churn and plummeting customer numbers. In early 2008, the company set about revamping its approach to dealing with customers. About a year later, on Feb. 4, the operator announced the news that a customer-satisfaction study issued by J.D. Power & Associates showed significant improvement by Sprint.

An independent study by Pali Research – the research arm of Pali Capital – regarding wireless customer-care-response times concluded that Sprint jumped from “worst to first” place in 3Q08. And Sprint again ranked first in the 4Q08 study.

But after such a precipitous subscription-count decline, it takes time to turn things around. In 3Q08, Sprint’s customer exodus continued to the tune of 1.3 million subs, 1.1 million of whom fled its iDEN network and 243,000 of whom exited the CDMA network.

Even if Sprint’s 4Q08 figures come in substantially stronger, the lesson for all mobile operators is that customer service is more than just a necessary evil; it’s the bedrock upon which your business is built.

Verizon, are you taking note?

tammy.parker@informa.com