Blogs

Verizon: Rockstar Customer Service

January 14, 2014

You are probably reading the title of this blog and wondering what the heck we’re doing bragging about Verizon’s customer service. You might even be wondering if Verizon paid us  to write a headline like that. Nope: the truth is, their service is just so good we felt obligated to blog about it. If you’re still feeling confused, don’t worry, I’ll explain.

Today, the customer is (rightfully) king because technology has enabled a world in which everyone can hear you complain. But just like bad karma will destroy a business not willing to go above and beyond to serve their customers, good karma can have just as profound an effect. Unfortunately, we all get in the habit of forgetting to say thank you. Over the past year MPA has received some pretty rockstar service from our cellular partners over at Verizon, so here’s our thanks to them.

At MPA we want every customer to view us as a partner to their business and not just another contractor. We figure if that’s how we engage our customers, we should also be engaging our vendors in the same way. So, we treat every vendor like a partner, too. By working as a partner with all of our contacts we are able to keep everyone on the same page to deliver the best possible service to our customers. That means our partners have some pretty ridiculously-high standards to up-hold so we can pass those same standards on to our customers.

Verizon has been exceeding those standards. Since we are also a very customer-centric company I know that delivering service like that isn’t easy. It’s especially difficult when you reach the size of organization that Verizon has.

Alright, enough preamble. Let’s get to some specifics: 

1. When we call Verizon’s Business Customer Service we are talking to a human in 60 seconds or less.
2. One of our client business partners lost internet service. Their land-line provider told them it would be two weeks to restore service. We called Verizon at 4:37 PM and the rep joked that we were cutting it a little close. He arranged a shipment out of their west-coast office and delivered an LTE Router by 10AM the next morning & our partner’s  internet was restored before lunch. We looked like rockstars because our partner-vendor came through.
3. We used too much data one month and went over our daily limit. I called Verizon to see what our options were. They explained we could upgrade or just pay the overage. I figured that would be the case. I got ready to ask the representative (whose name was Temekia Mccleese) which option would be cheaper but before I could utter the words she was already calculating the difference and recommended we upgrade the plan to save money. Towards the end of our bill-cycle we had an emergency where we needed to use a lot more data than expected. This actually put us over our recently upgraded plan. Temekia emailed us to let us know and made sure we still got the best deal. Talk about proactive customer service!
4. We were performing a preliminary evaluation of the technology required to develop a mobile application. Part of our evaluation included the technical capabilities of our data carrier. Verizon had two representatives (Ginger Clark & Jon Coons)  in our conference room to help us out with our questions by the end of the week.

Verizon is doing some very smart things that we can all learn from!

• Empower your team to be able to do more than just answer the phone: Make sure they have the power to serve your customers the way you would personally serve your customers.
• Be Proactive, Be Proactive, Be Proactive!
• Anticipate: Don’t stop at answering the customers question. Anticipate what else they might want to know and surprise them by being ready. Demonstrate you understand and care about the customer and their needs.
• Never drop an opportunity to WOW a customer – no matter how big or small you think it is.

Thanks Verizon. Here’s your pat on the back. Now get back to work! ;-)