Hurricane Irene

I was just outside of Washington, D. C. during Hurricane Irene and, after the storm passed, internet connections were out for most of Sunday.  My sister-in-law called to check on when they might have it fixed and this is a synopsis of the message she got.       “The wait might be a while as we are experiencing heavy calls because of the hurricane” – sounds good so far.  The next statement said if you did not want to wait, you could go to their Facebook page for updates; it then said “thank you for calling – goodbye” and the connection went dead.

Now this is not a tale to tell you about the great time I had at my brothers or how his kids and I really surprised him for his 60^th birthday, but rather a wake-up call for all of us to check our voice mail /auto attendant systems and see what they say during off hours or emergencies to see if they make sense.

I realize a lot of people have smart phones – so maybe checking Facebook might work for them, but there are just as many who don’t and this company has just cut off service to a part of their clientele.  The best part was that you weren’t going to be on hold for very long, because the system was set to give a message and then disconnect you.   Maybe that was not supposed to be the case, but no one evidently thought to check the system and see if it was doing what they wanted.  If this was what the company wanted their system to do – then shame on them.

Take a minute and check out your communication and customer service systems and see if they are doing what you want them to do.   Be the customer every so often.