Ade in Business

I recently had a decent experience with my cable provider’s technical support (Insight Communications), and that’s something that I never thought would happen. I’ve had a lot of complaints about dealing with Insight. It started with the cable modem installation when they wouldn’t activate me over the phone, but required a certified technician to come to my house and set it up for me. I had to wait a couple weeks to find a time that worked out so I could sit at home from 8am-12am, so was really frustrated about having to use dialup for all that time. When the technician came to my house, no joke, he screwed the coaxial cable into the modem, called the home office and told them it was ready. That was it — two minutes. Too bad my lack of certification didn’t prepare me for plugging in cables.

So a few days ago I came home from a two day business trip where I was away from a computer most of the time. I was eager to get caught up on emails, RSS feeds, etc., but was dismayed to find my Internet connection out. In short, it was down for almost 24 hours, and I called Insight twice during that time to try to get a status update on the problem. (By the way, I called their toll-free number both times even though a local number is available because, well, if they keep me from working the least I can do is stick them with a $0.10 toll each time I call).

Insight’s recently launched an advertising campaign touting their customer service. I rarely see TV commercials, but managed to catch one recently where the CEO is walking through a neighborhood and ends up helping some old lady make dinner. It was so cheesy it made me want to wretch, but if their goal is to provide that level of service then more power to them. After calling them, I noticed a few great things they’ve done that drastically improve their level of service (none of them relating to their CEO’s cooking ability):

1. Short response times. I’m used to sitting on hold with Insight, and recall once waiting on hold with them for over 30 minutes (give or take) just to speak to a live person. However, both times I called them (around 1am and 10am) I got a live person within a minute after going through the automated attendant.
2. Two choice menus. There were a few things they did right with their automated attendant. The first was that each menu I hit only had two choices - press 1 or 2. I hit more menus than I would have if the menu was compressed to 2 or 3 with 5 choices each, but I estimate that it took a lot less time. I didn’t have to listen to a handful of irrelevant prompts and there was a lot less potential for making a mistake.
3. No voice-activated prompts. I don’t think Insight had this before, but I’m mentioning it anyway since I hate them so much and am happy whenever a company keeps their good ol’ touch-tone prompts. I recently had to go through a voice-activated system for American Airlines. It worked poorly so I had to keep repeating things and I felt stupid talking to an automated system since someone else was in the room at the time. What’s the benefit of using these? I don’t see how it’s any quicker to say “yes” or “no” than to press 1 or 2. And nobody’s fooled into thinking they’re talking to a live person so it doesn’t give you that human feel that I would guess companies find appealing.
4. An apology and a promise. The automated attendant and each support rep I talked to led out with an apology for the problems I was experiencing. Each also promised to “make it right”. Sure, it was scripted, but the promise made it seem like the apology wasn’t an empty formality. So many tech support people lead out with an accusation (”Did you power off your computer and stand on your head for 30 seconds before calling?”) that it makes a sincere apology feel 10x more refreshing. I was mad for having to call, and they diffused the anger quickly by accepting blame and responsibility.

Even though the experience brought Insight up a notch in my eyes, the one thing they did wrong garnered them a mediocre grade:

1. Not enough information. Each time I called the rep told me, “It says here that there’s an outage in the area.” That gave me no ETA or understanding about the scope of the problem. Sure, it was good to know that it wasn’t a problem with my modem, but it didn’t give me much else. Even if what they told me was way over my head, that gives me something concrete — “I can get back to digg.com when the flux capacitor is replaced.”

I’m glad to see they’re working on their support, and hoping it just keeps getting better. Of course, I hope my Internet connection never goes out again and I don’t have to call. Being away from a steady Internet connection for 72 hours isn’t something I’m used to.