-
How Yolanda P. Wilson Saved AT&T
April 23, 2019
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Customer Service is everything. There was a time when retail pushed the notion that the customer is always right, even when sometimes, clearly, the customer just didn't get enough hugs from daddy in their childhood, and on this day, well you have to put on a smiling face because of what he failed to do for his kid years ago. But, really, all that these companies were doing is simply letting the customer know that they are heard
-
Customer Service is everything. There was a time when retail pushed the notion that the customer is always right, even when sometimes, clearly, the customer just didn't get enough hugs from daddy in their childhood, and on this day, well you have to put on a smiling face because of what he failed to do for his kid years ago.
But, really, all that these companies were doing is simply letting the customer know that they are heard.
Ultimately, that's all we really want, in any relationship, consumer-based or personal.
When 93-3 FLZ The Power Pig was in existence in the early 90's, we hired a guy who had never worked anywhere longer than 6 months; Bubba the Love Sponge. Marc Chase who was OM at the time had appointed me as the person who would handle all and any complaint calls.
It turned out there were many, especially during the first Christmas season when Bubba lined up as many 6 - 9 year-olds on the Telos phone system as it could handle, just so he could tell them all live on the air that there was no Santa Claus, that it was their mom and dads.
But the Easter Bunny, Though...
I must be honest, it was stellar radio and I laughed out loud at the time, although, the next day, if I had an agenda, it was completely wiped out because Dawn Triplett, who answered our phones kept sending me call after call of people who wanted Bubba to have a short lived time in Tampa. And I understood that very day why Bubba always got canned anywhere he went. It wasn't because he wasn't worth the complaints. It was because, until Marc Chase hired him, nobody had the wherewithal to think two steps ahead of the audience.
In most cities before Tampa, Bubba ultimately got canned because management simply got sick of having to field complaints, as like it did for me, it could have been a waste of many days.
But I learned something very quickly on those calls, and that was that defending Bubba wasn't the goal, but simply listening to the person on the other end of the call; that was what the goal was, and 98% of the time when I did that, the person by the end of being heard and knowing they were heard would be so less angry than they were at the beginning that they would get to their own resolution and thank me for what?? For listening.
I didn't have any real issues with AT&T. In LA, I had U-Verse when it first came out and it served my wife and I well, so when we moved to Nashville, I was ready to put the router in a strategic location, call AT&T and get started, except that when I got to Nashville, they didn't have U-Verse yet in the neighborhood we had moved to, so AT&T came in and installed DSL, like I was Benjamin Button, living my life in reverse.
The First Hits Always Free
But then they sent me an offer to upgrade my internet and this is where the train got wildly off track. Instead of using the same account, showing an upgrade, the installer started a whole new account, which now meant I was paying for two internets, but I wouldn't know any of this until the bills would arrive. I paid the first one, ignored the second one, because I knew it was paid, but then eight days after the bill was due, the internet stops working.
That was the day we figured out we had two bills. That got fixed, kind of, and I paid the new bill. A week later, I got reimbursed for the first bill that I had paid. So, all should have been fine in AT&T land, except that two months later a collection agency was calling to get the money that AT&T had reimbursed to me, which was a mere $58 and some change.
You know who had incredible customer service? DIRECTV. But then AT&T bought them and all of a sudden that 'anything to satisfy the customer' mentality had disappeared and was replaced with a person on the other side of the phone who didn't have much concern with my personal experience, but just their goal to get my money at all cost.
That's about the time Danny Trejo, known for his role as Machete and for playing Marsha Brady in the Snickers commercial, was on TV talking about SlingTV so I chose to be picky about my TV and dropped DIRECTV.
Credit Karma's Gonna Get You
Fast forward three years, and my wife and I are buying a house in NC and what shows up on our credit report, a $58 AT&T discrepancy. So, I get back on with AT&T, and they claim they can't find the records to the old bill, that the account is closed, and they don't keep those records. I ask for a manager and I'm assured that a manager wouldn't be able to help me, but I knew better so I get to a manager and he proceeds to repeat the exact things the underling was telling me seconds ago.
I have had it and now I'm telling anyone who will listen that AT&T is the devil, including their employees when I call and despite failing to correct this error in three years, after more than ten attempts, something told me to call again. This is when everything changed.
I tell the same story I had been telling for years including the part about the devil, but today was different, because the person on the other side of the phone was using qualities I hadn't run into in years with this company; compassion and logic. She listened, and then, within minutes she located that account that past managers had told me they didn't have access to. She saw the discrepancy of the two internets, located the collection agency that had been on my tail, and in one fell swoop, she corrected things on their side, that would finally end this 'twilight zone' experience I had endured. I even received a follow up email detailing what she had done for me.
I admit that I could have used a couple of extra hugs from my father in my childhood, but in this case, I was the customer, and in this case I was right. It just took someone with a special skill to get to that truth; the skill of listening.
That person was Yolanda P. Wilson, and for the Wagmans at least, Yolanda single handedly saved AT&T.
Because of her, and her alone, we have returned to both DIRECTV and AT&T Internet.
-
-