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Google Fiber Goes Down During World Series, Credits KC 2 Days of Service (pcmech.com)
kstatefan40 writes: Google Fiber went down in Kansas City during one of the most important times in the local market: Game 1 of the World Series between the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Yesterday, I got an apology from them via email, and even though I wasn't home during the outage, they're making up for it by proactively giving the entire market 2 days of service off of their next bill. The rest of the industry could really learn from their customer service.
When was the last time a telecom provider gave you a discount on your bill without you asking for it? The only times I've gotten much apology from my own ISP is when I threaten (with reason) to jump ship.
When was the last time a telecom provider gave you a discount on your bill without you asking for it? The only times I've gotten much apology from my own ISP is when I threaten (with reason) to jump ship.
When was the last time a telecom provider gave you a discount on your bill without you asking for it?
when was the last time a whole city lost service? what does this say about the redundancy of their infrastructure? people rely on utilities to provide a crucial function in their lives. electricity? natural gas? phones? if google wants to get serious about their fiber, they need to take on the responsibilities that come with being a public service provider.
They take it as a writeoff, and now:
People know there's such a thing as Google Fiber.
Big companies use it for real things.
Google is cool about customer service.
I wouldn't be surprised if they torched it on purpose just to make the point.
Had an outage a couple of weeks after install. I wasn't home so didn't even notice. Got an email crediting me for the day and showed up on next bill. It sucks that there are outages but it's nice that they give credit for them.
You would get an email explaining that the service interruption was a feature and your bill will go up by $22.50 from now on.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"The only times I've gotten much apology from my own ISP is when I threaten (with reason) to jump ship."
Well, don't expect even that half-assed effort in the future.
We watch our government ignore anti-monopoly laws. We watch companies try and buy each other for hundreds of billions, knowing full well the DOJ should certainly shoot down the deal. And then we watch those same companies try and try again until they find that loophole (or greased palm) that allows the deal to go through. And it does eventually go through. Every damn time.
We've watched our cellular market collapse into massive monopolies, with fixed pricing so obvious you couldn't help but blame collusion.
As monopolies continue to grow, don't expect to be treated with kindness, since you will truly be nothing more than a number to them when there's 500 million customers to manage. Google is demonstrating a massive exception here, and one I wish would take precedent for customer service to be reborn instead of the steaming pile of shit we have today.
I'm not holding my breath.
they're making up for it by proactively giving the entire market 2 days of service off of their next bill.
Two day's worth of service is an insignificant credit compared to the loss, especially during a special event.
Most providers of business IP transit have SLA credits available, starting from the time when the customer calls in to request the ticket be opened, by the way, in some cases these are refundable, and can require the provider paying cash, not just crediting future service in case of a full on outage.
A couple hours worth of outage would typically generate enough SLA credit to make an entire month and possibly two month's worth of service gratis.
So how come it's so unusual for a residential ISP to waive even 2 days, after a few hours unscheduled downtime?
And thus bad CSR's are the prime cause of customer loss, and not the other way around. That's excluding when they make promises to retain you that they know are rubbish, or it ends up costing the customer more and then they just cancel out of distrust of anything further.
Personally, I get through to supervisors. It's not hard. I'm not even very polite, I've just had a lot of experience (you'll see why below). But mainly because I know what I'm entitled to and what I'm not. If you give me problems, that's what recording the phone call is for. Ooops. A CSR out of a job for talking bullshit is much easier than losing a long-term customer precisely because the next CSR is paid the same and just another guy reading the same script.
It's not a question that large callcentres are always staffed by assholes, who all claim the supervisor "isn't available" (or not even there, that always gets a laugh from me too!) because that's exactly what they are told to do.
But that's not the end of the customer's power. In the UK, you can record the phone call. It's only "advised" to tell them you are recording and if THEY have a "calls may be recorded" warning - well... I don't need to tell them if I'm recording at all (I don't need to anyway, it's just polite).
And then the ball-game gets turned around. You're refusing to give me your name? You're refusing to accept notification of my cancellation? You failed to follow procedures? You put me on hold but never resolved the query that you went on hold to do? Oh, that little tape winging its way to head office is going to hurt and given that it's your JOB to help (no matter what your mythical never-present supervisor might train you to do), it's going to cost you.
Last time I phoned up with a complaint, I *did* get the mythical supervisor on the line (I always do, when I deem them necessary, but that's another matter) and I had the British Gas callcentre (if you live in Britain, you know they are one of the WORST for callcentres) that he was in charge of phoning local newsagents near me to discover one that they had a PayPoint in, that they could *pay* to stay open late, especially so that *I* alone (as in I had to present ID to the newsagent, who'd already shut up shop but had been paid to stay open only for me) could go over to them and top-up a pre-payment card to solve my problem. The problem was quite minor, their way of dealing with it wasn't, but I got my way and cost them a lot more money than basic compliance would ever have cost - by getting through to that supervisor and explaining what was happening.
I don't expect the minions on the front-line of the callcentre to understand that, they never do. But getting a supervisor isn't a fob-off that works when people are serious, and the supervisors know exactly when they have to act to not get caught.
And turning the tables of "No, that's fine, I'm recording that response, and your name was?" on them soon wakes them up because they know those kinds of games are stupid, immoral, not helpful, losing them customers, and sometimes illegal when they have a duty to act on the information given to them (i.e. cancellations).
I don't threaten callcentres and companies with court. They threaten me quite often. I've invited to initiate the court proceedings on behalf of at least two companies to save them time. Strangely it's NEVER got that far when they find out I have recordings and every letter and email ever sent or received. But I have screwed over any number of callcentre operatives who failed to do their job by playing such games and thinking it's cute to try to run rings around my efforts to do something quite reasonable. To my knowledge, I've cost at least two their jobs. One of them phoned me back up to threaten me because of that.
Being a dick on the phone to customers is all fun and games until it costs you your job. Because you ARE supposed to be there to help and you're really not important enough to lose even a medium sized customer over.
That's th
They gave everyone less than $5 and *that* is the customer service model to aspire to? "Sorry we suck, here's $5, go away"
My wife is also a mystery shopper that has cost many people their jobs at high-end restaurants, amusement parks, electronics stores, coffee shops, etc. The most common reason for being fired? Lying to the customer about stock availability (because they are too lazy and think that nobody will check) or about other policies or procedures they don't want to follow (returns, allergy situations at the restaurants, etc.).
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...