All companies say they care about their customers, in fact big corporations spend millions of dollars on CRM softwares, trainings, etc.
Ok, it all sounds good. You are a big corporation, you have millions of customers, and with the state of the art softwares, now you know all the information about your customers. But how about the internal communication within the company? Isn’t this an important part of CRM?
Here’s a story of what happened recently;
We have decided to move to a new suite within our building. It is 3 times larger, and it has a great Manhattan view. We have moved all the office within a day or two, and Verizon was supposed to come over to setup our local phone line and DSL. This was in July 17th, and today is August 3rd. At the floor where our office is, there are 40 offices, most (almost all) use Verizon as their local phone company. Verizon’s headquarters are across the East River, and I can see them from my window everyday. Now, after so many phone calls, they can’t figure out why couldn’t set the service up.
After a few days, I have called them and reminded them that we had still been waiting for the installation. The lady on the phone talked about some cabling problems outside the building, and has blamed the engineering department. Today, after 5-6 phone calls, some customer service person used this exact sentence:
“How am I supposed to know why your phone wasn’t installed?”
And I replied:
“I’m sorry, I thought I have called Verizon.”
Then she said:
“Yes this is Verizon.”
Then I said:
“I guess I will take the subway to your headquarters and start screaming at the lobby”.
She was confused…
I was confused…
As a small business owner, I never thought about blaming an employee or a department if a problem occurs with a customer in the company.
I have had similar problems with different corporations in the past.
I remember spending 3 hours 30 minutes within a phone loop (customer reps in India) when I tried to solve a wrong shipment with Dell.
As a prospective customer, I will give a few more days to Verizon, then I’ll call another company for local phone service, and DSL.
I’m sure they are losing so many customers even before they officially become their customers.