| Jeremy.Deats@gmail.com 2006-09-12, 7:33 am |
| >From the article....
"Q: What causes churn [unhappy customers]?
A: There's a variety of things. It could be just a better rate plan
that someone else is offering. It could be that someone else is
offering a phone that they think is really cool that you don't have. It
could be customers who felt like they had a billing problem, and they
decided they wanted to churn off.
A lot of it is network perception as well. Our research has pretty much
shown us that the quality of the network is probably at the top of the
list, at least the perception of the quality of the network.
You ask your friends and family, 'Hey, I'm thinking about going from
Verizon to Cingular, what do you think?' ... If they say network is the
biggest thing, we want them to think about us...."
It seems to me Cingular's biggest failure is customer service. They
strive to provide a strong network, and here they seem to boast about
that bring their #1 priority. I believe it's their only priority. They
don't want to provide support for the devices they sell (and treat like
their equipment), they don't even have a clue about how to get their
rate plans correct for data service. They have an array of support
departments that do not communicate with each other. They have clerks
in their retail stores who are confused, provide false information and
are often over ignorant about the companies products and services.
Which indicates a lack of proper training and poor management from the
top down.
Cingular wants to do the same thing that all cell providers do, they
want to "bait and hook" new customers with new phones to get them under
contract, then as long as their network is strong they feel they are
doing their job... Screw post-sales customer care, you got a problem
with one of "their" phones, good luck getting explaination. Sure,
they've locked the phone on their network, they've gone in and made it
so you can't load anything they haven't approved.... but forget about
getting support on a device. Learn to read the manual.... Often even
Cingular branded product manuals provide misleading or false
information and customer service doesn't have any information (see
sections in Cingular 8125 and 2125 User Guides on "how to use the
device as a modem").
A a user, frustration peaks when you need a specific feature on your
handset and you have nowhere to turn because it's Cingular branded and
Cingular is failing to provide any level of support for that device,
it's in that moment you realize the true beast that is Cingular (and
the cellular industry in this country in general).
- They hook you into a contract
- They take your money for service
- They set you up with a device they are unable to support, even when
it has their name of it and is their brand.
- They are confused by their own service plans (speaking of data plans
specificly) and are unsure which devices qualify for which plans.
In my experience Cingular isn't unlike the rest.... but their customer
service is by far the worst I have experience with any industry. No
organization, they just plan suck.
SMS wrote:
> "http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/hEHIQU5VIUTQ40/Cingular-Makes-Customer-Service-Push.xhtml"
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