On the subject of customer loyalty - I just had a great experience with Verizon Wireless

I am not in any way affiliated with Verizon Wireless, but I have been a customer for a long time and their service I have found to be great. Wanted to share what I think is exceptional service!

Having tried and left Sprint and Nextel (when they weren't together) several years ago, I always had horrible customer service experiences with them. I was on hold for hours and got passed around to 73 different people all of whom had different and generally wrong information.

Sooo...I switched to Verizon many years ago.

I hate to admit it but I just dropped my PDA into the toilet this week. Literally. Luckily it was on the way in, not out, or it might still be there It was still kinda working but making mouselike complaints for a couple of days, and then the battery started dying after about 4 hours. I guess the mouselike noises were draining the battery?

On Wednesday, I trundled down to the little VZ store where I bought it, but we live in a small town, so we only have a dealer and not an actual real VZ store. So even though I bought my phone there, they couldn't replace it. The good thing was that they were able to test it and tell me that the eau de toillette wasn't the reason for it not working - in fact it would have died anway. So the lady gave me the number to call the VZW "Warranty Dept" and I went home in trepidation of calling. Having never, in 10 or years or so, actually had to call VZW, and remembering spending several days on hold for Sprint......I wasn't looking forward to it.

BUT - oh joy, I called the number and got a very nice guy who answered on the second ring,  listened to my whole story and politely explained that he was only the "voice services guy" and b/c I have a PDA, he would have to transfer me to the data services guy. I'm thinking "oh my, here we go again", but lo and behold, Chris, the data services guy is almost instantly connected, and he and "George" I think that was the other guy's name have already chatted, or something,  so Chris knows  the deal. I didn't have to re-explain anything, Chris aplogizes that we are just too late to get my new PDA shipped out tonight but he will get it Fedexed tomorrow.

So new PDA shows up today, the other one hadn't quite yet died but was making small sad bleating noises at this point, like an undernourished sheep. The PDA came with a nice little brochure about how to convert my address book, email etc, and set up my new phone. Except it didn't work. So I called the number on the brochure and another lovely lady answered in, oooh, about one ring and spent the next hour and a half walking me though a zillion downloads that I would never have figured out myself because I wanted to synch this and that from Microsoft, HP and all this other stuff. I had never been able to make my last PDA work quite right because of all these compatibility issues, but never even thought to call Verizon. I assumed they would know squat about my laptop, ISP, Microsoft etc.

The lady also went on to help me set up all these different things on my PDA in a very nice way. Never upsold me anything, just wanted to make sure I got all the benefits from my service. As we were waiting to download things we also had several long philosophical discussions about children and dogs.

I have to say that this experience will make me a diehard VZW customer. Even though things didn't work like the brochure they sent, the pleasure of learning new tricks and tips, and having new skills at the end of it was worth the hour on the phone.

And I'm praising an ex- monopoly cellphone company? Who me? Go figure!

Anyway wanted to share.

I am a verizon customer too and am very pleased with not only their customer service, but they have great coverage too.

Now, if you want to talk about a story showing how not to retain customers, I will put you on the phone with Direct TV. We have had such horrible issues with their customer service and extra charges on our bill, we not only switched and cancelled all of our services with them, we actually got the address of their 'special complaints' department that only accepts snail mail complaints and have written a letter of our dissatisfaction to them as well.

General customer service tips:

Don't say you are going to take random charges off of the bill only to leave them on for the next month so your account becomes past due

Don't silo your customer service info so that every person you talk to has no idea about what is going on with your account

Don't set up all of these restrictions in fine print that make it incredibly difficult to cancel or switch services without incurring heavy fees

Oh please don't get me going on DirecTV -  we are in the boonies an connot get cable. My husband could bore you for hours and hours about the time he's spent on hold and then getting disinformation from them.

Why don't large companies actually try to train their people on their services? I think Verizon is the only large company I know of  that does this. But, on the other hand, Verizon is the only major company that provides any services here ( other than DirecTV and the other dreaded satellite companies).

Even our business electric, gas, internet, trash etc are quite small local companies, because we aren't worth it to anyone else - unless they have a universal service mandate, which I think only applies to residences not businesses. The small local companies are great. Which is why I was so suprised about Verizon.

I try to use other local small businesses as much as possible, because we can create a relationship and there's nothing easier than adding a new service or resolving a problem in the checkout line at the supermarket or bank. But I was truly surprised by Verizon!

Loyalty never seemed to mean too much to Sprint. My family had Sprint phones for a few years and tried to ignore the occasional customer service runaround when we had issues.

When our first round of phones were giving up the will to live, Sprint reps happily pointed out many full-featured, full-price phones we were welcomed to purchase. No help with upgrades or even rebates. We weren't just being picky, three years means for a lot of wear and tear on a cell phone, and 2 out of the 3 we had no longer picked up the network or made calls. No help.

I collected everyone's SIM card from their devices and dropped the phones in the trash can right there in the store. We moved to T-Mobile and things have been great.

I think customer loyalty is something that is built off of great relationships. 

My company, Big Cloud Media, is small so we can take the time to really focus on our customers and therefore, gain their loyalty.  In contrast, a lot of companies don't really take that time or have the time to devote to the customer experience as they should and it is great to hear that a mega company like verizon wireless is still able to offer the same great customer service that exemplifies and creates customer loyalty. 

Loyalty based on price waivers but loyalty based on service and customer satisfaction lasts for a long time.  I am glad to hear that your experience with VZW was an excellent one.  It is always great news when a mega-coporation's customer service is well recieved.  If they can do it, so can we.

Thank you for your post, Sian Simon.

Regards

I have been a customer of AT&T (formerly SBC Communications) for the last 8 years and I recently made the swtich to their new Uverse television service.  In the past I was not very impressed working with their customer service.  I had problems getting billing issues resolved and had problems resolving technical issues with my DSL service.  I would have to call back several times until the issue was 100% taken care of.  I have to say they have significantly improved their customer service since the last time I had issues.  I had two billing issues recently and both times I was quickly directed to the right place and the issue was resolved on the first try without any argument.  I am glad such a large company like AT&T has put a focus on their customer service and has imporved so much from the past.  To me their is no excuse for poor customer service.  If all businesses put a focus on customer service, life would be much easier sometimes

Kelly,

Per my post above, we had a nightmarish experience with Direct TV and eventually switched to AT&T U-verse. I have loved it ever since. The features you get are so much better, the customer service is great, and we got a lot more for our money. And now, with one DVR, you can watching any of your recorded shows on any TV in your house regardless of whether it is on the DVR receiver or not. That and the online access to program recordings are two of the main things that sold me.

It has just been a great experience overall with AT&T so I totally agree with you.

Your post goes to show how good customer service goes a long way and how much that minor service can impact a company in terms of free advertising.

I Know that verizon is very famous for prompt after sales services, perjhaps this is the secret of their success. What might be an intolerable experience for one customer may well exceed all expectations of another. Then there’s competition. What if there isn’t any? Before deregulation how concerned were the large utility companies with customer satisfaction or British Telecom come to that.