Customer Service: Some Good, Others Not

I just wanted to quickly relate two recent experiences I had with customer service over the phone and the Web.

The first was horrible — I ordered flowers for Laurie for Mother’s Day.  I ordered the flowers a month prior to the holiday — they are scheduled to arrive today.  After the flowers failed to arrive on time, I called the company’s customer service line and got buried several layers in their Byzantine phone menu system.  I gave up on the phone and tried the Web.  I received an automated email reply that my query had been received, but I never heard from them again until almost two weeks later when I got the notice that the flowers had shipped.  I won’t mention the name of the company, but you would all recognize the name.  They will not be getting any more of my business anytime soon.

The second experience was delight.  I am in the process of switching from cable Internet to DSL.  The two Verizon customer service reps that I spoke to were both friendly, well-informed and they seemed sincerely interested in satisfying my request.  I was very impressed, especially since one of the main reasons I dumped Verizon DSL years ago was their poor customer service for DSL customers.