I was helping my dad upgrade his mobile phone plan and phone I had the customer service experience from hell and it’s made me a more sensitive thinker.
My dad’s getting older and asked me to help him change his phone plan. He’s had the same flip phone for 100 years and over coffee every day he and his buddies catch up on the news of the world and solve all of it’s problems. Then they part and do it all over again the next day. All the other gents have been getting snazzier phones over time, they exchange pics of deer in the yard, discuss sports scores… all the important things, except my dad. He’s been the odd man out. Finally it was time for an upgrade and he asked for my help.
My dad has never had a computer, never sent an email and never been online. He doesn’t even have internet access and to say he is not tech savvy is an understatement! With his mobile service provider the only way to inquire about his service or buy a more expensive phone is to go online, and that’s where he asked for my help.
I’m not the account holder and he doesn’t know of any password he used to set this up so many years ago. No problem I thought, we’ll get this taken care of easily…. Ha!
5 hours on the phone back and forth with the snootiest, snarkiest, can’t put three words together, moronic, power-hungry, stick it to the customer, no commonsense, “I’m as high as you’re going to get here”, derelicts with nothing to say except that I’d better find that password and email address (which there never could have been since he’s never had an email address) and still nothing. Oh, I could drive to a store and maybe figure it out. The closest store to my dad is 5 hours away… awesome. So I went. That trip didn’t work out either, but they told me that maybe if I drove to the corporate office in Minneapolis, they would be able to help. Really? Yep. So I did and finally got it figured out.
5 hours on the phone. 11 hours in my car. 100+ miles driving…
Good grief.
After I was done thinking really angry thoughts about what happened I thought,
‘What’s the antidote to this madness and how can I be a part of it?’
How can we make it easier?
Think ahead for others?
Connect the dots for them?
Help them out when they have a million things on their mind already?
We probably have the answer they’re looking for AND we know the ins and outs.
How can you?
How can you help others with what they just don’t see or understand yet?
How can you make it easier for them and yourself?
How can you win more and have to work at it less?
There is an answer and you and I can be a part of it.
Thank you Verizon, you’ve made life better, just a strange way of doing it.