The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

This is Kevin Hegebarth and I would like to relate an experience of a poor customer service that I had. I recently purchased a wireless router and a range extender from a world renown wireless company. I was having difficulty having the two products to talk to one another. As a good customer I dutifully went on to this company's web site to try to find an answer to my problem. They had several different things in their FAQ that I could go research and try. I tried each one and none of them worked. After getting more frustrated as this process went on I called into their call center and was routed to a call center agent that was distinctively offshore and we were having a very difficult time understanding each other.

This specific agent told me that the FAQ's that were on the website were inadequate and out of date and that I needed to find another solution. He directed me to this company's FDP site. The information that she said I would find there I didn't so I had to call the call center again. I got another agent that again was decidedly offshore I could tell by the accent. She told me that no I was wrong, and that the information that I needed was indeed on there FDP website. I said that I couldn't find it and I asked her if the could either send me the drivers that I needed to make these two products work, or send me to someone that could. She finally reluctantly agreed to e-mail the drivers that I needed. The problem was that she e-mailed the wrong drivers to me.

At this time I am into about day 5 or day 6 which should be a very simple installation complete. My third phone call was again to an offshore agent (I could tell by the accent). Finally this person pointed me to the right drivers on the FDP and I was able to download them and finally install the products. Once I got the correct drivers installed the product wouldn't restart. Now I am on to the fourth call and the agent told me that the instructions that came with the driver were incomplete and I needed to follow a separate set of directions that she then e-mailed me. So I'm 7 or 8 days into this process and I have gone through the whole process of going to the company's website, calling the call center 4 or 5 times and getting a different story each and every time.

They gave me a case reference but I had to recite all the steps that I had gone through up to that point anyways even though I am presuming that those steps were referenced in my case. The problem was that the vendor of these two products had an incompatibility problem within their two products and the version of software that was sent with the router was incompatible with the version of software that was in the range extender. I had to change the version of firmware in the router to make it to communicate properly with the range extender.

The good news is at the end of the day when everything got sorted out and the product works fine. It's just the frustration of several phone calls and several e-mails waiting to come to me. What should have taken 15 to 20 min took 8 days and a lot of hair pulling. I probably spent close to 8 to 10 hours on it.

I finally got the problem resolved and the product working but it was very frustrating. For that 5 to 8 days that this process went on and the several days latency to get the e-mails and to get files downloaded to me made me think that I probably don't want to do business with this company in the future.

Kevin Hegebarth - Director, Witness Systems

My name is Shay Grinfeld, the CEO of e-Glue USA located in New Jersey. The good experience that I had was with a car insurance agency, where I went ahead and changed my car insurance.

The experience started in my researching over the internet and the clarity of all the information they found over there. While I was searching a window popped up with a chat as well.

Even before calling their center I started doing something online with them, in zooming up the education. I decided to call the center and continue the things that I started on the internet. To my surprise the integration between what I had done before calling and after calling was amazing. They managed to get all that information that I did online, and integrate it with what was going on in the call center.I got a feeling that we were connected. I did not loose my time by doing something on the internet and then calling. There was a reference number and the old information was almost at real time and I was able to continue where I stopped. Also the knowledge ability of the customer service representative was great. They were able to tap into their knowledge base very effectively and be able to react to my specific situation, my real time situation in a very effective way. They were knowledgeable but yet stated the regulations that I was calling from about my own situation in regards to my vehicle.

I felt that their connection between their CRM system or their system that they see my information in, and their database is amazing. They were able to utilize their knowledge base to the specific situation that I'm in. Many customers will say "let me put you on hold while I'm searching for that." I felt that they integrated knowledge and the CRM systems into almost one. I had two other experiences with other companies and this companies prices were competitive. I have been with this company now for about 8 to 9 months I have not had to call them back so this was my one and only experience with them.

My name is Frank Moreno I'm with Empirix, and the most recent customer service experience that I have had was trying to update my flight with an airline, using first class certificates. Calling into the main number, the IVR does not give you enough prompts to accomplish what I was trying to accomplish. So after a number of different times trying to zero out and get to an agent, it didn't work and it kept going back to the default menu. Basically I couldn't accomplish what I wanted through the service system. I finally had to call a different number and go through prompts and things like that, which brought me to an agent and the agent couldn't even accomplish what I wanted with flight timing and things like that.

You would think that because they offer these upgrade certificates on a regular basis, that calling into the self service application as a frequent flyer, that it would be one of the options. It was not even remotely available. Now I don't put a lot of weight into their frequent flyer program. I probably only use the airline based of the convenience of the flights. I have definitely found that other airlines have more convenient ways to accomplish what it is you are trying to accomplish.

Overall, the attempt to update my flight with just a simple upgrade certificate, doing that over the phone was a complete nightmare. I mean there was DTMF, an there was speech. I was on the phone in my car for about 45 minutes. Being thrown around from one application to another was a nightmare. Then when I finally got through to someone after a second phone call they couldn't accomplish anything. I've been a frequent flyer with this airline for years and they didn't even take into account what my status was on my frequent flyer. Overall I was very disappointed. This airline will definitely lose thousands of dollars from me because I fly quite a bit. At this point I am looking at other alternatives, when in the past it was always my number one choice. The customer service is definitely very important.

Frank Moreno - Director, Empirix