The Most Difficult part of My Job......

Hello again readers!

So I have finally calmed down from one of the longest phone calls I have ever made with ATT. Maybe it was the awesome shredded beef chimichanga & rice that I had that is keeping me calm, or it’s the Mountain Dew. Yes I know 3 straight days of cheating my diet, so what sue me! But I wanted to go in depth of my frustrations of ATT far beyond what I tweet, and Facebook to people who always wondered (If anybody). This could be long so you have been warned.

As some of you know I work for a company that provides 150 care facilities for people with disabilities all over the state of Wisconsin, and 12 regional offices. Approximately 100 facilities and the 12 offices are supported by 3 members in our IT department. When I first came on board 12 of the group homes, and 3 offices were on cable Internet through Charter. Now when I first came in Charter was considered a pain in the anti-posterior to work with. The rest of the group homes and offices were using DSL services from ATT, and in the Western part of the state we used, Century Tel.

One day I had to call ATT for a simple Internet outage at one of our offices. I dealt with Joe from Atlanta (He sounded more like Achmed from India). Honest to God I would have preferred someone bashing me upside the head with one of those rubber hammer things with the whistle on the end of it. I told the tech what I did, and he proceeded to having me do the same stuff over again at least 3 times. What did I do to deserve this punishment? For the love of God just help me already! Then he reset the password and told me I had to go online to create a new password. HELLO JOE! Internet no worky! After about an hour =of arguing and juvenile treatment I was able to get a tech out to our office for the next day. Really a company your size can’t stop here today, its only 9am. I see 100s of your trucks on the road everyday and 1 is not in a large populated city for the day?

This was one of the easier days I have had with them. Usually they tend to make multiple mistakes on one request/order, and can’t resolve a simple Internet Issue, without 3-4 visits, or 5 - 6 phone calls to support, in which they transfer you to multiple departments all over their network. One minute you talk to Joe, then its Myra in maintenance, than its Betty in billing, then its back to Joe, then its Frank over in the wireless phone department, and then he sends you to over to 3 other people who don’t know what you want anymore, and they are all probably sitting next to Joe laughing at you hoping you hang-up and leave them alone! All this to reset one freakin password, or get an answer to about a bill. But wait it’s my computer, you know the one I bought 3days ago from the store thats not letting me connect. But it worked 2days ago. Apparently there’s a compatibility issue with it and their connection or something. Just accept the fact our Internet doesn’t work for you, there’s no where else to go for Internet, and just keep paying us for poor service, and unreliable Internet and well all be happy.

So Long Ma Bell!

One day I called Charter for an issue we had at another one of our locations. I talked to a wonderful caring lady named Diana. She was very polite, asked me aside from my Internet issue how my day was going, how the weather is up in WisCONsin (She had a southern accent). I was in shock as after talking with her for 10minutes, she found a problem with the connection and said they would send someone out within the next 4hrs. I had to ask if that was it, as we didn’t have to argue or anything. I wasn’t used to this wonderful customer service. It was almost like getting a lap dance from a stripper and the music stops and they leave (Or so I have been told that’s how it works :S). 2.5hrs later I get a phone call from the group home and am told the work is done and everything is working. I am still in complete shock and felt this giant burden fall off my shoulders.

With this one great act of customer service resulted in the disconnect of ATT and Century Tel all across the CCLS network (That and the slow Internet speeds). We now have over 83 locations on Charter Cable, and Time Warner Cable's Internet, phone and television services with some great bundle prices (Its not just a 3month low price its good for 2 years), reliable and fast Internet connections, 35% reduction in helpdesk calls, and miles, hours and dollars saved in travel expenses. On top of that if there’s a problem with the connection during business hours, it is fixed within 4hrs of placing the call. I can’t be anymore happier with the service I receive from these providers!

Every time I call ATT I cringe in pain now, and my blood pressure boils. I hear Stan the automated voice saying welcome to Att and all I wanna do is scream in horror. Then I know its going to be a day of hell when I talked to Jane from Florida (which is probably Juana from India), and the conversation will feel like hours of being hooked up to a car battery, and I have to clear my schedule for the whole week to fix their mess.

For this I say thank you Charter and Time Warner and please whatever you do, don’t change your customer service for Business Class service! You make life so much easier!

My rant is done and believe it or not I feel much calmer now :)