Are you being passed around like a hot potato?
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
– Damon Richards
Service providers across the telecom and IT industries have abandoned the notion of truly taking care of their customers.
Major telecoms, wireless providers, and cable companies regularly top the list of the worst in customer service, yet while you love to hate them – they still get your business. The very nature of their compensation plan for their customer facing reps fuels the model of overpromising and under delivering. Yet we as customers still buy from them.
The sales team comes after you relentlessly to get you to sign with them and before the ink is dry, you are lobbed over to another group that doesn’t know you and has zero vested interest in your happiness or satisfaction.
“Support” often consists of poorly compensated call center reps who are not involved in the sales process, are rarely mentioned as part of the solution and are incentivized to handle more issues and clients rather than spend the time to be exceptional for one customer. You are now in the “hot potato” customer service game where the winner seems to be the one that can transfer you to another department the fastest.
Your sales rep? Gone…in search of new logos. If that sounds familiar, it’s because direct sales and support teams in telecom & IT have been doing it for decades and, frankly, we need to demand better.
Sales and support have become “order takers” not problem solvers. The problem is not them, it’s the service provider who does not compensate them to get to know you, your business and your needs.
The sales rep moves on because that is what pays them. The support rep gets you to the next department because the call center metrics look so much better if they handle 30 calls per hour versus a few calls that truly resolve issues and make customers happy.
One of the biggest problems seen over and over again is the troubling mix of “order takers” and technology upgrades.
The customer is sold enticing new technology that will produce amazing efficiencies, yet the “order taker” does not consult the customer on how to properly turn down previous services.
The result is that the customer often ends up paying more due to this oversight. Customers simply lack the time or knowledge to decipher the cryptic code of their telecom and technology bills.
Your options then consist of: “pay the bill” or call the “hot potato” support line and waste hours of your life department hopping.
How do we fix this flawed model? It’s pretty simple actually.
Award your valuable business to companies whose entire model is based on your satisfaction.
Resolve to do business with provider agnostic agent/consultants who value retaining their customers as much as they do gaining new ones. Agents will always bring more resources to the table than direct vendor reps, and, the residual model of their compensation means your satisfaction is not a wish – it’s a must.
Agents can afford to invest time in your business because it’s in their best interest and the compensation model encourages it.
Agents are interested in designing solutions for their clients based on real needs versus acquiring new logos. This model will not only save you time but will save you money, and you get solutions that you can trust.
The choice is yours – “hot potato” order takers or solutions-based agents who will invest in your business.
About Simplicity
Simplicity VoIP, based in Richmond, VA, provides hosted PBX, VoIP and business telephone solutions nationally to small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses for a comprehensive unified communications experience. Two distinct Class 5 geo-redundant VoIP platforms are offered in addition to fax-to-email, phones and equipment, and managed services. Named as Richmond’s 11th fastest growing company by Richmond BizSense, Simplicity VoIP’s key to success is its on-site service, installation and training supported 24/7/365 by a world-class client services team.
