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News, tips, and trends to help you reach that next level of customer service.
I posted a story earlier this week about some frustrating experiences I had with Cox Communications. One of my main points is I had received poor service and two Cox employees had missed the opportunity to fully rectify the situation. With this in mind, I was a little surprised to see that Cox was apparently trying to reach out to me through my blog by making the following comment on my post:
Updated on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 12:59PM by
Jeff Toister
Cox Communications has a tagline, “Your friend in the digital age.” Yeah, some friend. If Cox is a "friend" then they are that stoner buddy who wants to move in with me, sleep on my couch, and eat all my Cheetos instead of looking for a job.
Companies that don't invest in hiring, training, and supervising capable employees often pay a big price on the back end. Consider this update on the battle royal between Cox and Brinks. (Read previous post here.)
What happened?
A third technician (first one was from Cox, second one was from Brinks) came to the house to restore my home phone service. Nate was a Cox sub-contractor, so in a sense he represented a third company. He took a quick look at my system and told me the biggest problem was the system wasn't set up correctly. Nate was very professional and wouldn't accuse the other two technicians of not knowing how to do their jobs. All he said was, "I'm here now and I can fix this." Everything was up and running after about 30 minutes. Thanks, Nate!
The Cost of Incompetence
Let's look at the cost Cox Communications paid for not sending a competent employee to the house the first time:
According to Nate's diagnosis, the problem would not have happened had the system been installed correctly the first time. This problem effectively cost Cox 4.5 hours of wasted time. Multiply this by the many customers who have certainly faced similar problems and Cox has a huge opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and simultaneously reduce service costs.
There was a power outage at my home on Tuesday that knocked out my internet and cable-based phone service. I was able to restore my internet connection, but the phones remained dead. This little incident has led to a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred war between Cox Communications and Brinks Home Security to avoid responsibility. So far, nobody's won.
