Cell Phone Customer Service Ranked Next to Last

Paulrothrock writes "A recent report shows that cell phone companies are the second lowest ranked industry in terms of customer service, just above cable companies. Also, they are second only to car dealers in number complaints to Better Business Bureaus. Complaints include being charged a fee to cancel a cell phone contract for a deceased husband and being double-billed for using an online bill-pay system. I guess I've been lucky, the only problem I've had is getting reception."

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[prostoalex]

Top US wireless companies by customer:
- Verizon
- Singular
- AT&T
- Sprint

The most hated cell phone companies (their customer service has something to do with it, I think):
- T-Mobile
- Sprint
- AT&T Wireless
- Cingular

Re:An interesting story.

[Engineer Andy]

This is true and can be found at NZ herald story

Cingular Customer Service

[Rai]

I worked for Cingular Customer Service for a year or so and I can safely say at least 75% of the employees in the call center with me were underqualified, undereducated, partially-trained (and rushed thru that), and had bad attitudes towards their work and their customers. These reps were notorious for giving inaccurate imformation. If you called 3 difference reps with the same question, you were going to get at least 2 different answers (the joke was "This is Cingular. We have no consistency here.")

They were mostly unfamiliar with Cingular service/plans/phones/etc because Cingular's training system is basically a webpage called 'The Learning Edge' that reps could just click thru without reading (the test at the end even gave you the answers if you knew how to cheat it.) The main tool for communicating was email which few reps read. There was also a problem with getting user accounts set up so a lot of reps didn't have access to all the tools and information they needed to do the job. And God help you if you needed a password reset.

Twice a month, a Quality Assurance rep will monitor a rep's call to make sure the rep says the right verbage ("Thank you for calling Cingular Wireless where our goal is blah blah blah...") and handles the call correctly. However, on every call, reps are scored by call stats which basically tell how quickly the rep gets the customer off the phone and moves on to the next caller. Giving accurate information and being courtesy to the customer seemed to take second priority to call handle time.

Managers weren't much better. Most of them don't want to be bothered with customer's calls and will keep sending the rep back to the customer until they hang up. Some managers were just lazy and rather than take the call, they would just tell the rep to give the customer want they wanted. Of course, this was fine for most customers, but after millions of dollars in unjustified credits were given, Cingular decided to implement 'protocol training' which basically says no more credits on customer's bills unless there's an unquestionable mistake on Cingular's part. Actually, this seemed somewhat fair because there are a lot of customers who call in and make up some bullshit story to get a late fee or some roaming charge taken off (one lazy guy I spoke with didn't even bother to make up a story. he just called and politely asked "I need a courtesy credit on my bill.")

I finally got fed up with being one of the few reps who actually cared about the job and made a decent effort towards correcting customer's issues. I quit and moved on. I still use Cingular service because it's the best in my area, but I only call customer service when there's no other way around it. If I can, I go into company-owned store to make changes and such (though there are some things that stores don't have access to.) Here's some advice on calling in if you have to.

1. Always get the name, CUID (cingular user id), and call center location of the person you are speaking with. They are required to give this to you. Document this with the date and time and reason you are calling. Keep this information for the next two billing cycles (or whatever length of time applies to your situation.)

2. If you make any changes to your account, find out when the changes will go into effect and if any charges or service will be prorated.

3. Even if the call goes perfectly well, call back and verify everything the previous rep told you and make sure any requested changes have been done. This may sound unecessary, but I once changed a rate plan with a feature addition that took 3 calls to get it right. Yes, THREE calls!

4. Be polite to the rep. Attitude begats attitude. If you're nice, most of the reps will be nice to you. If you're an asshole, the rep will do nothing for you (and probably note your account so no one else will either.)

Hope this helps.