The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Live and Learn
Friday - September 15, 2006 11:46 AM in
Peter's entry from yesterday covers what happened to my laptop, so I'll only mention that because we don't keep sensitive information on these machines, I was able to recover a fair amount of what I need from our secure servers. But given all of the customizations over time and shortcuts we build into our machines, it will take me weeks to fully recover. And there was quite a bit of sales support material that is simply gone. To add to the "Don't check anything of value" admonition; here's an abbreviated sequence of six hours of events I went through yesterday trying to get resolution.
- Late night calls to both Sun Country (the air carrier) and the TSA and it was impossible to reach a human, or for that matter find any automated service option to help with lost/stolen issues. I did finally find a Sun Country baggage claim line where I was able to leave a message.
- Starting at 8 AM yesterday, three "You called the wrong number re-directs" from Sun Country personnel had me back on the same TSA automated service that I'd been unable to navigate through the night before. Tired of listening to long and boring recordings of general TSA rules and regulations that included the dreaded admonition to access them through their web site (made just a touch more difficult since the computer I'd use to do so is what was stolen), I began banging the zero button on the phone to try and find a human. The system hung up on me.
- I called TSA back twice more, hitting zero at different places and finally a real person came on, giving me a number to call the Seattle TSA office.
- That number turned out to be the general line for the Seattle airport, and since it was now about 6:30 AM on the West coast, I got the automated night answering line that led me to an automated directory, and of course there was no entry for the Seattle airport TSA office. But there was an alpha directory for baggage claims of the various airlines.
- I entered the command for the "S" listings as directed, and the machine still started giving names and phone numbers starting with "A" for American and so on down. It took a long time to get to the "S" listings only to find none for Sun Country. After a redial to start over, when I got to "D" for Delta, I went with that number since they handle ticketing for Sun Country at that airport.
- That number was not answered locally, but by a clueless lady in India. I explained the situation. Her canned response is that I needed to contact the destination carrier which at the Minneapolis airport was Sun Country and not Delta. I had a hard time getting her to understand I'd done that and was following their instructions (and still hopeful if I could only get to someone in baggage claim for Delta in Seattle to look for the machine). She finally conceded that she'd have to talk to her supervisor. After a time on hold where she came back on twice to apologize for the time it was taking, she came back on again and said: The supervisor understands and gave me this number for you to call.
- I did. It was Sun Country's reservations line! Delta's Indian call center had ignored my explanation and gotten rid of me by doing what their instructions said versus what I needed. Thanks a bunch Delta.
- The Sun Country rep. gave me the same general number for the Seattle airport, and I repeated step 7. But this time I got a real person in Delta Baggage. They gave me another number to call for assistance, and the phone was answered once again by Delta's call center in India!
- Realizing I was in an endless loop of "Its not my job" calls; I went with another tack and called Seattle police. Peter informed me that the airport was under the control of the Seattle Tacoma Port Authority, so I was smart enough to ask for the police number for that department. I got a recording that their office wasn't open till 8:30 Pacific time (10:30 here)
- At 8:30 I called back. No, the Airport has it's own police force and I was given still another number.
- The airport police receptionist took my info and a few hours later Officer Santiago called. He took my report, the 2534th of 2006 most of which he said were for thefts of electronics from luggage, calling the problem an "epidemic" and suggesting the theft was more likely to be due to the minimum wage contract employees the airlines hired and to whom the TSA handed the luggage back for delivery to the planes.
- Officer Santiago also pointed me to an obscure location on the TSA web site where I could download a report and claim form. The form promises an investigation provided every box was filled in exactly as required (three pages plus attachments of documentation), and that if the TSA investigator agrees with the claim, we'll be compensated.
One wonders if it all wasn't orchestrated in order for people to give up. But then one realizes that such a conspiracy would require a level of customer care competence among the air carriers and the TSA for which no evidence exists.
Posted by Rick Rappe'
Posted at 11:46 AM by | | | |