I had a problem with my phone today.
It seems to me that many people I know who use Verizon have problems with their phones. That might be my bias, because every time I have had a problem with Verizon it has been painful trying to resolve it, so I don’t like them as a company.
Their loss – I have other choices, which I have now decided to exercise. I have cancelled my account, but the forwarding message was not working properly.
So I called the company and told them I had a problem with my phone. The response – from not one, but two of the front-line people with whom I spoke – was that there was no problem. Interesting response.
So I kept going, talking to first one department, then another, until we finally decided that perhaps it is something in the mass of technology on my end that could be causing the problem.
Now, maybe their forwarding message technology is so simple that they could categorically know that there was no problem on their end, and they felt there was nothing they could or wanted to do to help me with the problem on my end, including diagnosing it and helping me understand why there could be no problem on their end.
However, one thing I have learned from many years of working in the IT industry is just how deeply buried and illusive some technical problems can be, and how hard it can be to find the solutions alone, particularly to problems with complex technology. (come to think of it, human beings are quite similar in that regard. But that’s another story…).
And, all I knew when I started was that my phone, which is provided by Verizon, had a problem. As their customer, I wanted help figuring out what that problem was. I’m a former customer because getting such help has proved so irritating repeatedly.
All this led me to contemplate how much persistence it can take to solve complex problems.
It also occurred to me to think about how hard it can be to find people willing and able to stay with a problem long enough to resolve it.
So I’m curious. In your business and with your customers, how often do you walk away from complex problems that aren’t resolved, or expect clients or staff to find solutions on their own? Do you let others tell you your problems do not exist, despite clear indications that in fact they do?
And how’s this working for you?