Giving Good Call

In the past week, I've had some unexpected success with calling the customer service departments of a few large companies. In contrast to earlier times, like during my customer service caveman era when I spoke with an Apple technical assistant in Bangalore who kept putting me on hold to ask his cubicle-mate questions, these are much brighter days indeed! During this same shadowed era, a call to Washington Mutual to request ATM cards was greeted with a request on their part for us to visit our local WAMU branch office to order these cards ourselves -- as they couldn't place ATM card orders over the phone.

First, a call to AT&T to inquire about an extra month's charge. It turned out that they were right and I was wrong. Who knew? I did not. But then the customer service representative said, "Let's see how we can save you money each month" and she actually did: about $40.00 per month with another phone plan. [Why they couldn't have just called me first about this deal, I don't know.]

Second, a call to T-Mobile, my new bad mobile service provider (Sprint was the old bad one). Customer service reps at T-Mobile are nearly always cheerful (even giddy) and cut to the quick. They tracked down an order, made sure the service was good by asking if it was good, and promptly won my well-worn threads of mobile loyalty.

Third, a call to Chase (a.k.a. JP Morgan Chase) to start a new bank account. For some reason, the genius programmers there did not test their Java applets on Safari or Firefox (on Macintosh), so my online application got lost in the digital shuffle. But in calling them, they quickly picked up, put me through to a kindly man named Michael who took down my most personal Federal information and told me that the account would be ready to set up and sign in a few days time.

Are these three examples of good reverse patronage a sign of our times in some way? Do they represent a fearful workforce forced to be smiling at all times at work lest they frown at home forever alone? Do these examples spell the return of jobs to the United States where "friendly Americans" can again cater to our friendly American needs?

More interestingly, perhaps, I wonder if other countries are as equally fond of finding good customer service and, more darkly, I wonder if Americans' fondness for good customer service is connected with our slave-holding past.

Posted by Andrew at November 18, 2004 9:42 PM