To Whom It May Concern,
My name is Yana Hubiarnatarava. I became one of your customers recently on November 30th 2011 and I have never used any of your services in the past including the phone service. On September 30th last year my fiancé and I purchased an apartment in Fairfax and we found out that our regular TV and internet provider, Comcast, does not service that area. We decided to go with Verizon rather than Cox after receiving several advertisement letters from your company. It took us about two months to get our new place ready and on November 30th I signed a two years agreement with Verizon.
Unfortunately, right from the start I began to experience poor customer service. Inability to get my questions answered over the phone and/or online in timely manner was extremely frustrating. The frustration reached its peak on December 27th when my fiancé opened one of the TV installation boxes left for us by Verizon technician and realized that one of the cables, HDMI cable in particular, was missing. This cable was included in the other two boxes that we received. On the evening either on the 28th or 29th of December my fiancé and I taking turns made 5 phone calls to Verizon trying to order HDMI cable. We spend about 2 and a half hours listening to a somewhat lovely classical music since the wait time on each call was between 30 to 45 min. The first 4 phone calls were simply dropped but we still wanted to get an answer and at that point it just became a matter of principal and neither one of us expected to get the cable. After a couple of transfers and short waiting time on our 5th call we were told with an apology that Verizon does not ship HDMI cables and we will need to get one on our own. The person on the line confirmed that we were supposed to get a cable in our box since we ordered an HD service and he apologized that we did not. He was extremely polite which I really appreciated and needed at that time. However, I believe that this is not a way to treat your paying customers.
I think that word of mouth is a very important and strong marketing tool that all companies should try to use, especially since it is free. However, I believe that your company has failed to consider this and instead of trying to retain the customers you are just simply glad that you actually got one for another two years. This is very unfortunate and I will not even remotely try to recommend your service to any of my friends. I have learned that 80% of company’s revenue comes from only 20% of its customers. Thus, your priority should not only be getting new customers but also doing everything possible to retain the old customers. Please take this letter as a constructive criticism and feedback as all I am trying to do is to help you by pointing out your issues so they can be fixed. For example, if your company is experiencing such a great number of phone calls during all hours of the day I think you should schedule at least twice as many employees for the call centers. This will increase the number of calls processed and based on my own experience it will increase the satisfaction level. Also, I would make sure that all of your staff is knowledgeable about different departments and what each one of them is responsible for. It is unfortunate that you have to go through 5 people, repeat your story over and over again and yet unable to get a clear response. Some type of cheat sheet with frequently asked questions, short answers to those questions and a list of departments that take care of these issues would be great to put in each call station. I hope that this letter will help you to optimize your customer service and make it more efficient for your customers.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Yana Hubiarnatarava
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