How Important is Customer Support? Alltel=FAIL
I’m in the midst of migrating my company’s cell pones to US Cellular from Alltel. There are a lot of reasons for the switch, including better reception and lower prices for our particular usage, but there is one glaring reason that I just can’t keep quiet about. Here’s the example from today’s workday that proved I had made the right choice.
US Cellular gave us a rep. Alltel gave us a 1-800 number. Our rep went painstakingly through our usage, helped me get the right plan together, saved us a bunch of money, and came personally to my office to see us through each stage.
Here’s an example of how it’s been with Alltel all along. The US Cellular folks are expediting one phone transfer for us so a guy traveling to SF can take the new phone, vice the old one, which has awful coverage. They put in port transfers for our phones, and found that one phone (of course the one we needed to move quickly) had a block on it. This is a simple thing for the folks at Alltel to remedy…a click of the mouse, and it’s done.
Anyway, they gave the US Cellular folks a 1-800 number. Sound familiar? They passed it to me. First call: I’m sorry sir, but even though you’ve been managing your account through this same number for two and a half years, we can’t find any name associated with it. It’s a business account now. Please call 1-888 - which I did. I’m sorry sir, but I don’t know why they sent you to me, we only handle blah blah blah - but I’m sure tech services can help you. Please call 1-877. I’m sorry sir, we don’t do that, but I can transfer you to the super-secret number that I can’t even give out over the phone.
In his defense, Super Secret #1 helped me remove the port block. The fact is, though, that I’ve spent (in the past) literally DAYS Like this trying to sort out Alltel issues with very little luck. They are big, they are geared toward individual users. They don’t care about much except getting you locked into contracts you can’t easily break - they don’t care when the phone they are selling is no longer being made because it sucks - they sell them anyway, and their answer to THAT was to send us more of the same non-functioning phones as replacements.
Alltel, you had your chance. Your score? FAIL. Mine is a growing company with unlimited potential, and none of that will be wasted on a company that can’t figure out their customers should be more important than funny commercials. I bet Chad uses an AT&T Iphone anyway.
DNW
