The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Polite, Courteous, Efficient...and Wrong
Thursday - November 15, 2007 03:34 PM in
Inspired by a report last year of a Verizon Wireless customer who was quoted a roaming rate over the phone which was 100x the actual price, an (apparently obsessive-compulsive) writer called Verizon Wireless 56 times over the course of two days (posing as a prospective customer) and asked two specific pricing questions (via Broadband Reports).
Only one customer service representative quoted the correct price for both questions.
Over half of the agents answered neither question correctly, and half of the wrong answers underquoted the actual price by a factor of 100 or more.
The message is clear: if you call Verizon Wireless and ask how much they charge for anything other than the most basic services, you're almost guaranteed to get the wrong answer. Furthermore, there's an excellent chance the answer you get will be grossly inaccurate.
I suspect that Verizon is not unique in this respect, and I doubt it's intentional on Verizon's part. All the major mobile phone companies have insanely complicated pricing schemes, with multiple plan levels, different types of fees and surcharges at each level, roaming rates which depend on time, geography, and usage, etc. Since the vast majority of customers never ask about these details, they probably figure they can get away with skimping on agent training when it comes to anything beyond the monthly rate and number of minutes included.
It's not clear what consumers can do about this. Some of these pricing details (at least in Verizon's case) are available online, albeit buried inside a huge block of IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONDITIONS which only a bored lawyer could love. Other details I couldn't easily find on Verizon's website. It seems that the only recourse a typical consumer would have is to record the agent quoting the price, and if the agent underquoted make a stink (or possibly a lawsuit) using the call recording as proof that you were misquoted.
In the end, there's really no excuse for a company to be consistently quoting customers the wrong price. Period.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Over half of the agents answered neither question correctly, and half of the wrong answers underquoted the actual price by a factor of 100 or more.
The message is clear: if you call Verizon Wireless and ask how much they charge for anything other than the most basic services, you're almost guaranteed to get the wrong answer. Furthermore, there's an excellent chance the answer you get will be grossly inaccurate.
I suspect that Verizon is not unique in this respect, and I doubt it's intentional on Verizon's part. All the major mobile phone companies have insanely complicated pricing schemes, with multiple plan levels, different types of fees and surcharges at each level, roaming rates which depend on time, geography, and usage, etc. Since the vast majority of customers never ask about these details, they probably figure they can get away with skimping on agent training when it comes to anything beyond the monthly rate and number of minutes included.
It's not clear what consumers can do about this. Some of these pricing details (at least in Verizon's case) are available online, albeit buried inside a huge block of IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONDITIONS which only a bored lawyer could love. Other details I couldn't easily find on Verizon's website. It seems that the only recourse a typical consumer would have is to record the agent quoting the price, and if the agent underquoted make a stink (or possibly a lawsuit) using the call recording as proof that you were misquoted.
In the end, there's really no excuse for a company to be consistently quoting customers the wrong price. Period.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 03:34 PM by | | | |