I'm transferring you to the person in charge of the Giant Laser

Ok, I tell this story with full perspective that there are millions of people in Iraq and Gaza who have no electricity, no functional water system, and are living in terrible conditions. My woes are truly minor.

I recently signed up for bundled phone service with my Internet DSL provider - the new great thing. Now, this was not without trepidation. The process of installing our DSL three years ago was excruciating. It took five weeks, and I spent 31 hours on the phone with technical support, not including the time I spent on my own configuring stuff. I received two broken modems before receiving one that worked. It went on and on. (I should add that I am a technologically savvy individual. The problem was not user error.)

So when faced with the clearly cheaper Internet phone service, I thought to myself, surely I have experienced my lifetime share of bad luck with Planetlink, and this switchover will go smoothly. Ha. We are now on our second day with no phone service at all. (Although thankfully the DSL works, or my business would be at a standstill. And worse yet, I couldn't blog about the experience.)

My sister happens to be the world's most prolific and talented complaint-letter-writer of all time. She has a dedicated customer service liason assigned to her from the Chicago Transit Authority, as well as a personal relationship with Michael Dell's Executive Assistant for Escalated Incidents. Sadly, she is in India and unavailable help me with my cause. So I'm on my own.

Now, ex-employees have brought to light that in many phone support operations, most of the people you talk to are under great pressure to resolve calls quickly but have limited information or ability to solve a problem. When you ask to be escalated to somebody with more information or authority, all they can do is transfer you the guy in the next cubicle, who pretends to be a supervisor, or a senior technician, or whatever the customer wants to hear.

I am NOT claiming that this is Planetlink's practice. I have no idea how they run their phone support. I will simply note that I have now talked with 10 of their phone support technicians, one of whom made the following statement:

"Ma'am, I'm going to transfer you to the person who is beaming your phone signal from the PlanetLink tower."

Clearly, by that point he had concluded that I was a COMPLETE IDIOT.

This was the moment I realized that I needed a new approach. When the hold music stops and I hear "Hi thanks for calling Planetlink my name is Stephen may I have your account number?" I now respond with: "Hi Stephen. I'm Flora. Before you even look up my account, let me ask you - what is your job? Uh-huh, I see. And, I'm in Seattle - can you tell me where you are?"

Stephen the Generic Phone Support Guy in the Philippines promptly transferred me to a guy named Thomas in Oklahoma. Who actually had some more information, and a more direct phone number for me to call back the next time. Thomas still has no ability to actually make my phone work. It was progress, nonetheless.