Remember that little rant I posted a while back called "Customer Service" is Officially an Oxymoron?  That conversation, to me, is the epitome of what is wrong with customer service these days.  It’s made our list of most popular posts, and it still gets comments from time to time.  Like yesterday.  Now normally I wouldn’t point out a single comment on one of our threads, but this one is interesting.  It’s special.  It’s the voice of the giant.

Anonymous, a customer service employee for Cingular, decided to voice his/her opinion:

I put my name as Anonymous because I work in customer service for one
of the aboved mentioned companies. First I want it known that I do all
I can for my customer when they call in. I can only do as much as the
company will let me. I call them back the following month to make sure
they are happy with what I have done for them.
As for Sprint (I
don’t work for them) My son got a plan from them. His first month was
almost $300.00. Calling I found out the idiots didn’t put him on mobile
to mobile or nights and week ends. They wouldn’t credit him and still
didn’t put him on the correct plan. The following month. Almost
$600.00. I cancled his service, had to pay an Early Termination Fee,
and he was charged $300.00 for his phone because he didn’t keep his
service. I then talked him into trying…….you guessed it Cingular, its
been great ever since. That’s the company I’m a customer service at,
and as I said before, I do everything in my power to make the customer
happy. I just moved a customer over today, I’ll be calling him next
month to see how his new plan is and how I can help better it if he
isn’t happy. I love my job and care very much for the customers that
call me.

I think it’s great to hear from someone on the inside.  I really do.  But I have a problem with this.  See, Anonymous didn’t really say anything other than "this never would have happened to one of my customers".  But that’s the point.  I am (or was) one of your customers.  I was a Cingular customer.  And it did happen. 

I won’t spend the time going off on another rant here because I covered that pretty well with my response.  But here’s part of what I said that I think makes my point entirely:

I’m pissed at Cingular.  Still.  Because it was an easily solvable
situation that would have created a strong brand advocate, and instead
they chose the easy route of "customers are replaceable".  Instead,
they’ve turned me into an enemy of their brand.

So seven months later, nothing has changed.  Maybe Cingular should send out a link to BMA to all of their "customer service" reps. 

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