When customer service is put in solitary confinement.

By David Scott, Managing Member at Avid Communications, talking about customer service fails.

We’ve found a new application for our recently launched Call Recording service.

David Hollingsworth was on the phone the other day trying to troubleshoot a problem with one of our very worst vendors. Their customer service has been poor forever, but now they’ve taken it to a new low.

David is a tenacious person. He has a high tolerance for working on the phone with a vendor, patiently describing the issue and trying many things in order to ultimately resolve the problem.

But TJ Sauder and I sit close enough to listen in when he’s on such a call. And we’ve learned with this particular vendor that it’s best to pop some popcorn, sit back and be treated to a master at work. Because we know, eventually, this vendor’s front-line customer service will lie to David. They really aren’t equipped to fix much of anything, and so they will make stuff up just to get off the call. And these support calls can stretch to several hours. (As I said, David is tenacious.) And when they do, the fireworks begin.

So why not use Call Recording to preserve the interaction for whenever we need some entertainment?

Seriously, we’re amazed at how this company, a large, multinational firm, has thrown in the towel on providing customer service. They have recently walled off their front-line customer service from everything and everyone else in the company. The service reps cannot transfer to a technical resource, as they once did back in the good ol’ days (which were only “good” relative to today). They cannot involve their supervisors in a call. The reps are untrained and inept. They can do nothing but open a service ticket, which we’ve found never ever results in follow up or resolution of the issue.

At this company, it must be very lonely to be in customer service.

Increasingly, when we choose a vendor, we test customer service in advance. If they’re an impotent group of arrow-catchers, and not truly a conduit to trouble resolution, that company is disqualified from consideration. For while the comedy can be of some value, we really can’t afford to have David (or any of us) tied up for hours trying to get a service provider to fix their service.

We don’t accept poor service from our vendors, and we don’t tolerate providing poor service to our customers. If you’re a current customer, put us to the test. Call our support line and talk to a human being living and working in the United States that’s been trained to help you.