You don’t have to act like one. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) really threw me for a loop yesterday. I don’t know whether it comes from low expectations after years of conditioning by other companies (say the Internet and telephone line provider), but their excellent service just shocked me. When I called PG&E, I didn’t get banished to voice mail hell where I had to migrate through a confusing menu of options. I didn’t even get placed on hold for a long period of time without knowing how far down the queue I was. What PG&E did was tell me how long my expected wait was and then offered to call me back when a customer service representative was free to take my call.
Yes, that’s the part where my jaw drops. I jumped at that opportunity. I kept the phone by my side and about 5 minutes later, I got a call back. Maybe another 45 seconds on hold and they connected me to a live person.
This was the second time I had to call PG&E during the past year and both times I had excellent service. Maybe this isn’t an accident and someone in that organization is really focused on keeping their customers happy even though they are a monopoly and I cannot obtain gas or electric service from an alternate provider.
So, why aren’t all companies like this?
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1 Something About Phone Companies // Jun 25, 2008 at 12:25 am
[...] Seth Godin complained about Verizon’s customer service in his blog. The funny thing is that I can relate even though I have never used Verizon in my entire life. Just substitute the name of your local phone company; i.e., SBC, AT&T or whatever it’s called these days. I’m not sure why the telecom industry insists on delivering a subpar customer experience, but it happens regularly. The easy route would be to attribute it to their monopoly status, but not all monopolies act badly. [...]
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