This Is What Good Customer Service Looks Like

Customer service is more than a smile and a wave

If you have a smart phone, and most people do these days, you realize just how much our lives are controlled by that electronic item we travel everywhere with. There are apps on our phones that allow us to find our car, find our keys, find our friends, or my favorite, find my phone. That is all fine and good unless your phone dies, just as ours did this past Sunday. Talk about feeling completely lost—wow!

Our phone went out on Sunday morning and would not open or even take a charge. So, off to Verizon to get it fixed.

I am not a shill for Verizon, but I think the following is a good example of what quality customer service looks like.

Once we got to Verizon, we were informed that our phone had died a happy death and could not be resuscitated. Fortunately, we had insurance, which means we could receive a new phone at no charge. We were told that a new phone would arrive on Tuesday from FedEx. And as promised a new phone arrived right on time.

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Comments

differences in expectations for "role model"

My perspective on your experience is not quite to the level of glee that you seem to have.

I would describe your experience as “basic” service, at best. My daughter also had a phone die recently (her phone went to the bottom of a lake while hiking with friends at summer camp). Her phone is also through Verizon and insured.

My experience was very similar to yours. My wife went to the Verizon store to replace the phone under the insurance. Received very similar treatment, order the new one and wait. This is where our views of “role model world class” and “basic” diverge. Up to this point, the service was adequate. Friendly people, nice conversations, etc. Adequate and very basic. Nice, cheerful, friendly, polite, nothing wrong AND nothing notable.

Where I look to have “role model world class” would be for a “wow” factor, not the “basic” service and the attitude of “you’re not a paying customer so you get to wait”. And we did, and they delivered right on time, just as expected: not before or late. Again nothing “role model”, just expected, Basic.

IF a service provider wanted to emulate “role model” status in my eyes, they would have taken one of the phones in their inventory, activated it, done all the activities they would do for any new customer and sent us on our way. This would have registered as above average to me. The next step to get to “role model” would have been to ask for my daughter’s address and mailed it directly to her all ready to go. Then she would have received the fully functional, ready to go device in the 2 days it took to just get the device that then needed her to perform all the activities of activating, restoring, etc. THAT would be role model world class service.

What we received was adequate, basic service. It’s unfortunate that today’s erosion of service has people thinking this is somehow “role model” and “world class”.