Do not get between the Customer and the company

Imagine your grandma, talking to an ACN customer service rep, talking about mac address, ip address, ports, ip provisions, ethernet, cat5 cable and so on.

Do you think they would be able to resolve an issue? If yes, then you are one of the lucky ones who has a grandma who is either very updated with technology for her age or she is a young techie who just happen to be a grandma

I recently had a customer who specifically requested that I be the one to handle her account since she does not have direct access to her email, and since ACN communicates with customers mostly through email, this inaccessibility is a disadvantage.

Her ATA adapter device worked fine for the first few months, but somewhere along the way something malfunctioned. The device would not power up so she simply could not make calls. It was either the device itself or the power supply that went dead.

Our first call to ACN Customer service was to report the service outage and for ACN Customer Care to make the first diagnosis. Simply put, the device did not power up. After this assessment, Customer Care rep, elevated the case, we were given a case number and was told to expect a call about it.

This was a 3 way call that we made, the customer, ACN Customer Care Rep and myself were all on the line discussing the issue at hand. Customer specifically said “I give Earl full authorization on the account”, and I gave my contact number and email for any response on the case.

The next day, I received a call from ACN stating that since it was a power issue there was no other resolution than to have an replacement shipped and besides, the customer is still under warranty. I was told that a replacement was to be sent out in 5 to 10 business days.

The customer, being the bread winner of the family, could not be on standby to sign for the expected package, so she decided to have the package shipped to another location, to a family friend.

It was all good news until……….

After a couple of weeks have passed without a word from customer or from ACN about the case, I called ACN back. Understandably, I had to give the phone number for the account, the name which the account was under and the address. Even after verifying all these, I was denied access to the account stating that I was not the owner. I even gave the Customer Care representative the Case number to which I was referring to. Logically, if I had the case number, that means I have dealt with the account otherwise how could have I verified all the information and have the case number as well?!

Customer Care rep. could not care less, and said he was simply doing his job. Well he is quite right, he is just doing his job, but that same script and mentality caused the death of “Customer Service in the U.S.”

Clearly, the previous Customer Care representative did not take note of the customer’s words “I give Earl full authorization on the account”.

So I had to make a 3 way call again, bothering the customer at work, just to get another authorization (which she already gave the first time around)

Turns out, the replacement which was shipped to another location was denied. There was a miss communication. The person at the location was not expecting the package and was not notified about it, hence she rejected it.

This news was days after the shipment was denied. I tried calling Fedex and stop the package to have it shipped back, but since days have gone by, the shipment is to arrive at ACN warehouse the next day and there was no option of stopping it.

ACN Customer Care informed us that when a replacement shipment was denied and gets back to the warehouse, once it is scanned in the system, that means the account is automatically canceled. CANCELED!!! not to mention the early termination fee charge to the customer.

The customer did not have access to her email, so she did not have the tracking number nor the knowledge that the replacement package was denied. Even though I gave my own email and phone number, I was not notified of the information as well.

Giving proper credit, this was all procedure on ACN’s part. The miss-communication on our part was a grave mistake.

ACN showed its compassion for the customer by waiving the “Early termination fee” recognizing that it was a mistake that caused all these.

Unless you would like to extend a personal touch in customer service and a helping hand to your customer, do not even try to get involved between the customer and ACN.

Notes:

– always have the customer care representative read back what he or she wrote on the notes. word by word and get his or her name and ID number.

– if an alternate location is needed for shipment, ship the package to yourself, your office, or a P.O. box, bottom line, where someone is guaranteed to receive the package.

– verify all communications

– if customer authorized you on the account, take all the customers info.; email, address, name, password etc.