Wow and be Wowed!

I handle the number porting for my company and spoke with a customer today who is experiencing trouble transferring her number to us. When porting numbers from one carrier to another, the lines must remain active. However, in this customer’s case, she was told by her provider that it must be cancelled. This caused the port request to be rejected and the number non-functioning. She was losing business calls and almost sobbing on the phine to me. Boo! Not good!

I have dealt with this many a time and my first attempt at a resolution is to have the customer reactivate the line with their provider, however she attempted this and she was having trouble communicating to them what she needed to do. So, my next action step is to call the provider for her.

Now, I have done this many a time and let me tell you, phone providers do not like to speak with the company they are losing service to. I have been yelled at, told I have no authorization to talk about a customer and even hung up on. I find that I have to try several times to help the customer and in some cases, am unsuccessful due to a difficult carrier. So I told my customer upfront that this may not be successful but I will try.

I dialed the customer service line for this provider and my call was answered in a few minutes. The representative was relaxed and friendly, listening to me and taking notes. He then checked with his supervisor and placed me on hold.

“Here we go.” I thought. “Another disconnect.”

He returned to the line saying just what I needed to hear:

They can restore the customer’s account and number!

The agent was amazingly kind and empathetic about the whole issue. I truly couldn’t thank him enough on behalf of this customer AND for restoring my faith in working with other providers.

I spoke with a new customer yesterday who began the conversation with, “I am not an idiot like all you csrs think. I don’t want the run around or to be talked down to.”

Yikes, he must have had some bad customer service experiences to open with that line.

After a several minutes into my conversation with him, giving him silence and allowing him the floor to speak, I noticed his demeanor change. He began to relax. When I began to speak and addressed each issue he had, we were able to work together and resolve the issue. No one felt like an idiot.

I later followed up with him via email and he said that his experience with me was “hands down the best” he has had with a support rep. Tragic it took this long to get to that point, however!

My focus here in sharing these stories is about how we build expectations based on past experiences. We carry them with is and build a wall of protection to prepare for the worst. When that wall is knocked down by exceeded expectations, we are left with a refreshing new sense of trust and faith in the support.

I truly hope that I will always shatter negative customer service stereotypes and surprise our customers, allowing them to believe that the opportunity to be wowed is theirs. It’s also nice to know that I will also have these experiences.

So let’s wow and be wowed! Cheers!