NETTING IT OUT

This report is a case study of my experience selecting, purchasing, installing, and using a BlackBerry(R) device for mobile email and voice communication. I purchased it from Verizon Wireless, and Verizon Wireless provides communication services and customer service for it. Through an arrangement called One Bill, Verizon presents the bills for its usage.

I encountered and dealt with significant customer service issues with both Verizon Wireless and Verizon.

• Verizon Wireless charged emails by the minute, resulting in charges of more than $3,000 in three months.
• Verizon discontinued my long distance and mobile telephone service for not paying the charges that were incorrectly calculated.
• Verizon Wireless took six months to authorize and pay a credit for incorrectly calculated charges.

These issues are so blatant that their solutions, which approach best practices in customer service, become intuitively obvious. They are the lessons in customer service.

BACKGROUND TO A REAL-LIFE CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE

A True Story

This is a true story. It’s a case study of my experience selecting, purchasing, installing, and using a BlackBerry device from June 2004 through April 2005. The experience was fraught with significant problems--customer service problems. By retelling my story in this report, I will identify and describe common and major issues in delivering customer service. You’ll see that these issues are so blatant that their solutions, which approach best practices in customer service, become intuitively obvious.

I’ll tell my story chronologically. I’ll organize it by the phases of the customer lifecycle: plan, select, purchase, install, use, and renew. I’ll describe the story through key events, describing my responses actions, as well as my BlackBerry providers’ responses and actions to those events, and offering the significant customer service lessons taught by those responses and action. The key events and dates are shown in Table A.

BlackBerry Envy

We travel a lot--lots of time traveling to and from airports, and lots of time on airplanes. About two years ago, I had a road warrior revelation, a veritable epiphany. I was sitting across the aisle from Patty on a flight to a consulting engagement. I was reading the latest issue of Golf Digest, anxiously waiting for the two-bell signal that it was ok to use my “personal electronic device” and get some work done--prepping for our customer and finishing up edits on our weekly email. (We’re all consultants and analysts.) While I was idling, Patty was busy writing and answering emails on her BlackBerry even though she wasn’t actually allowed to transmit those emails once the plane was in the air. She’s been a BlackBerry user for four or five years.

It struck me that Patty and all PDA users like her get at least an hour’s extra work on the airplane for every leg of every flight they’re on, and whatever time it takes to travel from and back to the airport at their final destination. Patty’s favorite BlackBerry catch-up times are in a cab, on a plane waiting for take-off, or taxiing in, in the ladies’ room (!), and in the doctor’s office. Without such a device, I didn’t even have the opportunity to do that work. The light dawned in this Marblehead. I had to get a BlackBerry.

My Providers: Verizon and Verizon Wireless

Our IT guy suggested that I buy a BlackBerry from my current mobile telecommunications provider. Most providers offered the devices and the services to support them at similar prices. Adding a BlackBerry to your current contract would be easier than starting a new relationship with a new provider. Made sense to me.

At the time that I decided to get a BlackBerry, the telecommunications providers for my home were Verizon for local and long distance service, and Verizon Wireless for mobile on a family plan with two phones and two numbers. Our household has been with Verizon since we moved to Massachusetts when Verizon was New England Telephone. We were Verizon Wireless customers for several years. We chose it because it delivered the strongest signal where we live.

ONE BILL. As a customer of both Verizon and Verizon Wireless, I was eligible for a payment feature called “One Bill.” This no-charge feature packaged the monthly bills for Verizon and Verizon Wireless in one envelope and let me write one check (or electronic payment remittance) to one place for both sets of charges. It seemed really convenient. I had signed up long before I purchased the BlackBerry. Little did I know that One Bill would be my ticket to customer service hell.

Verizon and Verizon Wireless Are Separate Companies

Unless you know otherwise, you, like I, might think that Verizon and Verizon Wireless are the same company or, certainly, closely related companies. They share a name and they share a brand. As One Bill seemingly implies, they share billing, too. Wrong! It turns out that all they share are name, brand, and One Bill. Verizon and Verizon Wireless are separate companies--separate products, separate services, separate staffs, separate policies, and separate customer service and customer service systems.

Now, let’s get to the story...