QUALITY OF SERVICE, QUALITY OF CHOICE

How many times does a person have to put up with the incompetence of their local service provider prior to dropping them for another?

Strike 1: It took a month to get phone service installed because SBC Ameritech confused my apartment with the upstairs neighbor.

Strike 2: A neighbor down the block had a phone line set up. The technician crossed some wires in the outside box, causing the neighbor and myself to use the same line for phone service. The result? More than a week’s wait before the company fixed the situation, forcing the neighbor and myself to take turns using the same phone line.

Strike 3: A torrential rainstorm this past summer knocked out my phone service for five days. The phone company had no idea I was out of service until I called them to inform them of the situation, even though my landlord made an initial call telling them the whole building was down.

Hello, WorldCom? Meet your new customer.

SBC was rated the worst in residential installation dissatisfaction, residential repair dissatisfaction, and residential out of service repair intervals in a recent report issued by the FCC, which rated the nine major incumbent local operating companies.

What SBC and the majority of local service providers have forgotten is that customer service means everything. A business with fantastic customer service makes people come back. It’s the single most important thing. One can have a great product, but egregious treatment of customers will have people looking elsewhere. Telecom is no exception.

The Telecom Act of 1996 brought competition to markets, providing dissatisfied customers an opportunity to use someone besides the incumbent that took advantage of the fact that there was no one else to turn to.

Even if my alternative local phone provider ends up striking out, at least there are other players in the market to turn to if and when the time comes.