The Orange & Blue Sides Come Together

Cingular's Director of Sales for the Atlanta and North Georgia region called me this morning.  Somehow he found out about my recent blog post recounting my terrible experience trying to get my BlackBerry fixed at my local Cingular store.  He agreed with me that there should be no orange and blue sides.  He said he appreciated my candor and felt the post helped inform them that they still have some hiccups to work out.  He apologized for my bad experience and said that it was very important to Cingular to provide positive customer interactions.  Well, how about that. 

I was impressed.  Usually companies either ignore bad customer service experiences or explain them away or have someone blandly recite some pre-written business pablum script to the offended.  He did none of those.  He was sincere and open.  I appreciate the apology.  I have hope for Cingular yet ...

Tag: marketing

Comments

[Olivier Blanchard]

Ah, the power of blogs. (Do you think anyone else with the same problem would have gotten a call?)

It's nice that he called you, but it sounds like they have more than a few hiccups to work out.

(Brains On Fire posted something on the subject of wireless providers needing to wake up just yesterday: http://www.brainsonfire.com/blog/post193.aspx)

:)

[Jeff Axelrod]

I'm sure the apology was nice to hear, but the real question is: Did he do anything to resolve your particular problem to your satisfaction? Or was he hoping that the sincerity of the apology itself would generate enough goodwill to keep you happy?

Considering how they try to extract our money with their words, I'd hope they would also put their money where their mouth is.

[Ted Vinzani]

I have never received good service from a cell phone company after my warranty was out. But then, I never received good service on a repair issue during the warranty period either, until I ranted progressively louder and louder until a manager appeared.

This whole blue/orange thing reminds me of the merger of the Burroughs and Sperry computer companies, circa 1986-7, to form Unisys. Their motto was "The power of 2." I started calling it 'the power of a half,' and all current Unisys clients I spoke to agreed. (IBM had its own problems at the time; believe me, I know.)

Unisys still exists, but at a much lower profile than either Sperry or Burroughs did at that time. However, I do believe they are more profitable now, so there is goodness and light in all of this – after bleeding a lake or red ink.

[Jinal Shah]

I take customer service and customer experience very seriously. The blue and orange merger is probably an example of the worst mergers of their kinds. What they term as 'tiny hiccups' caused them lose atleast one customer.

Calling is nice- maybe it's because your blog has a considerable presence in the blogosphere. I think it was a brilliant PR cover, other than that, they haven't worked on their "tiny hiccups" one bit.