zero is not an option

Jimbo got mad about something again this morning, and when Jimbo gets mad he tells the world.

I have been a happy DirecTV customer for many years and I called them this morning (as I have numerous times in the past to make changes to my service). The purpose of my call this morning was to cancel my service. I dialed their customer service number and received no satisfaction, because none of the options worked for me. All of the available options were to add to my service rather to subtract from it. Most disgusting to me was the fact that I was unable to access a real person. The closest I came was to get an electronic operator telling me zero was not an option. I eventually gave up and logged in and set up online access to my account. The option I was looking for, however, was not apparent on their website. Fortunately, on their website I was able to find a different phone number to call and I eventually accessed a live person. Unfortunately, by that time Jimbo was somewhat peeved.

I explained to the first person I talked to that I wanted to cancel my service. After I explained my dilemma, she asked me for all of my account information and then, she asked me the address to which I wanted to transfer my service so she could set up an appointment. I reiterated to her that there would be no transfer. I explained this was going to be a cancellation rather than a transfer. She said she couldn’t do that and would transfer me to someone else. I was slightly more peeved at that point and asked her whether I would be talking to a real person or a voice mail when she transferred me. She assured me it would be a real person, and it was. At his request, I reiterated to him my account information and explained my dissatisfaction with the DirecTV customer service telephone system. He explained to me that most of their customers got all of the answers they needed and were able to use the telephone system to achieve what they wanted. I explained to him I wasn’t most customers and made certain he understood the lack of pleasure derived from my on-phone and online customer service experience.

I am no longer a DirecTV customer. I think they provide a great service and I think their quality of their programming is wonderful (although I used to have a lot of trouble accessing the weather channel during stormy weather when I really thought it would be good to watch to see if I was in danger). In my rural location the storms would take DirecTV off the air frequently. As long as the weather was good, so was I. But, as far as their customer service is concerned DirecTV is a piece of crap. They deserve to go bankrupt and I hope they do. And, now I hear the monthly rate is going up next month.

Hang your head in shame DirecTV. Hang your head in shame.

I was mellowed out and calm when I came home from work this afternoon and noticed the blinking light on the phone was trying to get a message to me. This time the caller was Sprint PCS, but unfortunately not a real person, just an automated telemarketer. Apparently, someone in Jimbo’s new extended family had paid a visit to a Sprint PCS store lately and the robot on the phone was thanking us for doing it and offering us an opportunity to participate in a survey and put ourselves into a drawing to win a cash prize. Then, the robot got all pissy and advised us that we had run out of time to participate in the survey. My first reaction was that there could be nothing any more inane than Sprint’s voice mail talking to our answering machine and getting ticked off because we didn’t respond in a timely fashion. Then it dawned on me that the Sprint robot was facing the same dilemma that I was in not being able to reach a real person. The major difference, however, was that we don’t have any economic or financial interest in providing a service to the people who call us while we are at work. We won’t go out of business because we don’t have a real person to answer the phone. With any luck at all, Sprint will not share our fate and they will, indeed, go out of business.

I can imagine the guy in the black trench coat climbing off his bus and announcing, “Hey, everybody! I work for a real jacked-up company. You wouldn’t believe some of the crap we pull with our telemarketing system. If anyone ever deserved to go belly up, we sure do. The only thing we could do any worse in the way we handle our business would be if we took our two best customers and had all our employees urinate on them.”

And, then he’d say, “And we have these freakin’ robots who do telemarketing and they ask our customers’ answering machines to participate in a survey and then the robots get upset when the customer’s answering machine doesn’t answer back. I just hope our robots know Asimov’s first rule of robotics, otherwise they might try to harm our customers physically. That would suck, and it would be bad customer relations. But I guess I work for a company that really doesn’t care about customers.”

I think our large corporations could use a lesson in telephone etiquette. I don’t think they realize that the customers who put the food on their table need to be treated as human beings and that good customer service and survival are synonymous terms in business. There is nothing wrong with voice mail, and automated receptionists, but the customer should always have the option of speaking to a human being if his question or complaint doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter world of automated answering systems. Sure, an automated system will work for the majority of callers, but when someone needs an answer that requires something more complicated than pressing one, two or three, that customer deserves service, rather than disservice. The company that can’t provide that service deserves to join the ranks of the forgotten companies whose failures to provide what their customers wanted resulted in their demise.

And, as consumers, we have a duty to make sure their demise comes sooner rather than later. We have an obligation to stop using those companies and to let the effects of economic Darwinism topple them from the ranks of financial powerhouse to an answer in a trivia contest. Oh, ye mighty corporations, hear my cry from the wilderness, ignore customer service at your own peril. If you won’t do it right, someone else will come along to do it better. It’s the first law of economic survival. If your supply doesn’t meet the demand, then someone else’s supply will.

But right now, there is a supply of orange sherbet in the freezer that is destined to meet my demand for the same.

In Jimbo’s world we never defy the law of supply and demand.