I recently read a post by Scott Monty called “Are You Really Satisfying Your Customers?” Very interesting points and examples but one of them caught my eye since we definitely did not share the same opinion.

He wrote “Comcast is the shining example of customer service on Twitter, led primarily through the efforts of the head of their digital team, Frank Eliason (aka @comcastcares on Twitter).” And I cannot say that he is wrong about this or not, perhaps they do help a lot of their customers though Twitter. However what I do know is that this opinion I had after numerous issues with their call-in customer service.

When I moved into my new apartment in Arlington it took about four weeks of trouble, non-working hardware and hours on the phone etc. before my roommates and I finally had a working cable and internet connection. Perhaps I should just have tweeted and then it would have worked? But how could I? I had no internet. Comcast provides internet connections and more so how does the twitter account help me when I don’t have internet. (Or a smartphone)

What I realized from Scotts comment and my experience is that it does not matter how great the customer care is trough twitter if it does not work on the phone as well. Sure the endorsements from the success will spread, but the complaints about the problems will sound higher.

Thus don’t forget to improve the old ways of providing customer care etc, just because you find new ways that is better for you. Before customers know about the new ways, they will still use the old.

As I mentioned before I felt fooled by Boingo Wireless service, when I logged on to what was shown to be a “free.wifi.hotspot” and later was charge for the usage. I therefore both blogged about it and wrote to their customer service and wrote a blog post about it. I later found out that the responses you get from the two are very different: Here is the email I got from customer service:

“Annelie

Thanks for contacting Boingo Wireless.

You saw that the wifi was free.

The Boingo software client would have WARNED you of premium charges.

You selected a plan that specifically states you will incur premium charges.

The Charges are valid.

If you need further assistance please call customer support.”

I was very disappointed about their bad customer service, because aren’t the satisfaction of a customer most important? Perhaps they should have been a little more understanding, and then I might have tried their service again. However, only a few hours later I got this comment on my previous blog post

“We came across your blog and noticed you had a bad Boingo experience. We’d like to respond, if you don’t mind, to shed some light on what happened.

This location (with the SSID: Freewifihotspot) is part of the Anacapa nework and offers customers the choice between a free sponsored Wi-Fi session or paid access for their roaming partners. Since the Boingo software automatically detects networks that list Boingo as a roaming partner, it prompted you to connect to Wi-Fi within the paid access option. We agree that the customer experience isn’t optimal. We want you to be a happy Boingo customer, so we hope that a courtesy refund and free connect credit on your account will convince you to try our service again! Please send me an email so that we can adjust your account.

We appreciate your feedback and again, apologize for the unfortunate experience you encountered.

Sincerely,

Lauren Sanyal
Marketing Associate”

Not only did they apologize for the inconvenience; they also said that they were aware of the problem and agreed that the costumer experience was not optimal. Now, this is how I think that you should treat a customer, and because they did; there is a big possibility that I will use their service again.

Of course I wrote back to Ms. Sanyal and told her that I had not been as well understood from the normal customer service and said that I wanted the refund that she offered me.  Then she responded:

“Dear Ms. Näs,

Thank you for your reply! As someone who is passionate about quality customer service, I am sorry to hear that you had an unfortunate experience with Customer Care. We appreciate the opportunity to turn your experience around, and I sincerely hope you will give us another try. We have refunded you $39.90 (for the two $19.95 charges you received at The Foodmaker-Linthout) and have added a connect credit to your account. So, the next time you connect in a Boingo hotspot, your Wi-Fi session will be on us!

I appreciate your open feedback on your Boingo experience, and please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

Lauren”

I hope that my post here will shine a light on the unfortunate experience I had with customer care and that other customers should be aware of it. I don’t know is the experience I had was a mistake and that it is not Boingo Wireless policy to respond like that.

I want other people to be aware of the problem I had with the service until Boingo Wireless has fixed it, and about the different treatment I got. But I applaud that someone at Boingo Wireless is passionate about quality customer service. Thanks!