How often do you find a large company like Verizon talks you out of buying their product?

This company convinced us that their product was not as effective as their competitor’s. And that getting hooked up to their service would be a logistical nightmare. They also scared us about the prospect of after sales support.

We wanted to get cable and hunted around for the best deals. Verizon and Comcast are the options we have in our area. Verizon offered a great bundle – internet, phone and TV for $80. So while I was in Europe teaching leadership communication, my wife calls Verizon.

They set up our phone line, gave us a date when the broadband connection would be switched on and then arranged a time for the engineer to come out to set up the TV. As I’m in Europe, my wife makes sure she is at home for the set time but she gets restless.

Unlike me, the Halls Family Official Sloth in Residence, my wife likes to run. And she didn’t want to just wait around for the engineer if he was going to be a couple of hours. If she had a general idea of when he was coming, she may be able to fit a run in.

I’m sorry but I have no idea

So she called Verizon and asked if they could indicate when the engineer would show up. Well, of course, they didn’t know because it was being done by a contractor.

(Nothing against contractors – I used contractors. But I have a lot against being unable to contact a contractor who is working with you.)

Anyway, we tracked down the contractor ourselves and guess what – they couldn’t contact the sub-contractor who was supposed to come to our condo. Apparently this sub contractor does not communicate by phone.

I guess he uses a paging device to let head office know when a job is done. Maybe it’s like the gadget taxi cabs have in their cars or the UPS guys use for signed delivery.

All the customer service people were friendly

The friendly chap – and they were all friendly – checked his computer and lo and behold found that the sub-contractor had actually checked out our condo. He had filed a note saying TV wouldn’t be possible.

Whoa! Why didn’t we know the contractor had been? After all, my wife was sitting on the other side of our front door waiting and she didn’t see anyone or even hear a knock on the door.

The friendly chap told her there was no way to contact to sub contractor to find out the real story. And the Verizon customer service folks tell us the same story.

Customer service folks did everything right

If you’ve made it this far down the page, you’re probably asking the question, how did they talk us out of their service? The customer service people seemed to be friendly and helpful.

Well, here’s the interesting thing. Verizon were perfectly nice about everything. Their customer service folks did everything that I suggest to communicators who have to solve a customer problem. They listened. They took note. They were even transparent and honest about the limitations they faced in helping us.

But apart from the warm and fuzzy bit, they couldn’t do a thing to resolve the situation. And most of the interaction was a waste of my wife’s time. We’re talking about 3 hours chasing people on the phone.

This three hours of phone conversations is also a waste of Verizon’s time. Because they had a willing customer and didn’t need to convince us or anything. They could have spent this time convincing potential customers of their products and services.

Don’t paint a jalopy and expect to sell it as a sports car

While their customer service was good, their internal communication was awful. It was a failure. It’s all very well making sure your customer service communication skills are up to scratch.

But if there’s a blockage somewhere else in the system, that makes any promise or effort by customer service misleading, it ruins the customer relationship.

Making an effort to achieve good customer service without making sure all the communication works is like spray-painting a jalopy, polishing it up nice and good, then telling someone it’s a sports car in mint condition. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work.

You don't need to talk to talk someone out of your product or service
When we talk about communication, we often talk about the conversations we have, the brochures and reports we write and the emails we send. That forms part of the message. But this is based on then old industrial mindset toward communication which believed the message could be controlled.

The message is not what someone says over the phone. It’s more often what the company does or does not do. And as the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words.

The company’s inability to contact their contractor and find out why he filed a work report but didn’t knock on our front door, tells me that if they need to contact a contractor when I need help, they will fail.

The fact that the customer service people honestly admitted they were not able to directly contact contractors tells me their internal communication processes fail.

Actions tell the story very well
All of these things tell a powerful story that Verizon doesn’t cope too well with anything very complicated. Interesting, isn’t it? You see they may think the message comes powerfully from the mouth of their good communicators in customer service. But it is more powerful through the failed actions of its follow through.

There are three problems here.

1. The story we’re hearing is they can’t do the job very efficiently.

2. They haven’t got their internal communications working at all effectively. This is very poor.

3. Whether or not they realize it, they believe that good customer service can polish up poor service.

Can’t just do communication at the front door

A lot of companies get gung ho about customer service and train their people to be great communicators. This is a perfect first step but unless the communication continues once you walk in, no customer will ever feel welcome. Good communication has to be followed up by a serious review of internal communication channels both at a formal and informal level.

Our verdict?
So what are we doing? I’ve emailed my wife from Croatia to suggest that if she’s happy, we should just go on a fast from television. DVDs work fine for us and we have the Internet for news and YouTube for sensational 'tele' moments.

Verizon wasted their customer call center’s time on us. They frustrated us which means we’ll no doubt share our story with friends considering cable. And they lost potential revenue. Sure it doesn’t sound like a loss at first, but think about it.

Verizon loses in more ways than one
Eighty bucks a month is $960 over the year – almost a thousand dollars. Money they could have made if their internal communications worked. Money we may now spend on a trip to Europe. Four or five subscribers pay someone’s salary – can they really afford to be so complacent?

Communication can turn your company’s reputation around but it has run through all your company so what the salesroom tells the customer, is what the company delivers. Make sure your actions tell a better story. And make sure your communication culture is company wide.