This morning I called Consumer Cellular about replacing the landline at our cabin with a Wireless Home Phone Base. Ezekiel answered before the automated message was done. He took time to listen and he provided full information to all my questions.
Last week I called the local Sears store to check if they had the Phone Base in stock. First, I got an automatic response about the purpose of my call. Eventually I was asked what department I wanted. I finally got a person; but that person was not in the store, he was who knows how far away. He didn't think it was available, but before he checked, he wanted my first and last name! What does my name have to do with my request for information? I said this is taking too long and hung up. Once upon a time, one got a store operator who pleasantly asked (generally) some variant of "How may I direct your call?" She transferred you to that department, and if a clerk was not serving other customers, answered the phone and gave a simple yes, no, or "I'll check" answer.
This morning I also called Gopher State One Call http://www.gopherstateonecall.org, a non-profit that dispatches utilities to locate underground pipes and cables before an excavation. We want to plant a tree close to a buried gas line. I had to wait for several minutes to talk to Gabe, but he was thorough and friendly about getting all the information that he needed to dispatch someone. He said it should be done within 48 hours.
This afternoon I looked out the front door and noticed a yellow line and a small yellow flag in our front yard. Comfort Systems, our water and gas utility, had already marked the location of the buried pipe. Comfort Systems is part of the City of Duluth's Public Works and Utilities Department.
On the other hand, after many weeks and many calls, our internet connection with CenturyLink is now stable and staying above 75% of the "up to 7Mbps" speed. One of the round and round discussions I had was about getting a new modem. We still are using our eight-year-old or so modem. It seems something was done in our area that none of the customer service people were made privy to. The customer service was all over the map as far as ability goes. See "Round robin service robbin' my time".
I'm still waiting for a local store to respond to a question I emailed them a couple weeks ago.
Again, it is not the financial form of an organization, for-profit corporation, non-profit corporation, or government agency, that determines the level of customer service; it is the people and leadership of an organization that determines these. If customer service is an organization's priority, revenue will follow. If the bottom-line is an organization's priority, customer service will suffer. Unfortunately, in the latter case, there are often not enough choices for customers to easily switch to another organization.
