Customer Service has a deservedly bad connotation and usually leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. Few companies know how to use customer service well and even fewer understand how to use customer service to drive new business and up-sell current business.

Qwest rules the roost, so to speak in both bad and good customer service. It so very much depends on how I contacted Qwest and more importantly, who was on the other end. Usually, however, it’s just plain bad service. They’ve recently started using Twitter and are watching for comments on that social media service that mention Qwest. They’re online about seven hours or during normal business days. Contacting them through Twitter usually yields a quick and thorough response. Contacting them on chat is the next best thing. Any other method just yields frustration.

Nina recently bought a new Macbook computer from MacMall and along with it we ordered a new all-in-one printer to replace the seven-year-old fax / copier / scanner / printer she’s been using. We placed the order over the phone because of some specific requirements on the Macbook. The printer arrived and it was the wrong printer.

I called MacMall and talked to our assigned “account representative” who quickly and efficiently went about correcting the problem. No hassle, no hoops to jump through. If customer service is required, that’s the way it needs to be done.

Moving from the digital world to the brick-and-morter world, customer service takes on a different aspect. I’ve had very good service from Best Buy. I’ve always had my receipt, though, and that probably makes a difference.

On the other hand, the mechanic shop we have work on our cars does pretty good work, but we always end up calling them to determine if the car is ready to be picked up (and when we call, it always is done). They always say that they were just going to call us, but it never seems to happen that they call us first.

Earlier this year we had an auto body shop do some work on our new(er) Avalon after I crunched the passenger side door. We took the car back three times to have them adjust the door because of excessive road noise. They were able to reduce the noise, but never got it back to where it was before the accident. I finally gave up. A couple of weeks ago I temporarily put a magnetic mount ham radio antenna on the roof of the car and strung the cable in through the passenger side door. The road noise completely stopped with the cable running through the door, and returned when I took the antenna off the car roof. Strange.

After dad died, I spent a lot of time working through issues with life insurance, medicare, and the veterans administration. All of the life insurance companies were straight forward and easy to work with. Surprisingly, the VA was also fairly easy to work with. Medicare, however, was a complete opposite. Somehow I felt like I was a criminal each time I had to talk with them. The wait times were horrendous and while on hold I was bombarded with voice-overs telling me to go to the Internet to resolve my issue. Then when I finally talked with someone, she kept interrupting me, then would go silent for minutes at a time. When I’d ask if she was still there, she’d just grunt. I guess she was putting information into the computer. I came away with a conviction that I never wanted to talk to her again.

I had to call back twice on some issues and each time talked with someone else. We eventually got to the right outcomes, but I kept adding to my mental list of people I never wanted to talk to again.

The Medicare people definitely took the award for worst customer service for the year. I don’t thing there was a “best”, but MacMall probably came the closest.

Ta ta for now!