I have had Sonic for about five days now. The first three were great. I am in Los Angeles and apparently there is an AT&T outage in my area. I get it, these things happen, bad luck. However, Sonic is unable to tell me if I'm actually affected by the outage, or if it's particular to my line. They are also unable to tell me anything from AT&T regarding how long it will be out, which means that they unable to get that info, or unwilling to. So they schedule a tech for a time that I cannot meet them without telling me. Then they reschedule him to come sooner (great, to their credit), but the window is between 2 and 6 p.m., and nobody shows up. I called at 5:40 and the rep basically said, "yep, nobody is coming today." It is absolutely infuriating.
I worked in sales, including acting as a reseller for some products, for a long time. What does taking responsibility look like? Here are some ideas:
- Have someone follow up with the tech to make sure they are actually coming, and inform the customer if they are not. Unless this is the first time this has ever happened (of course it's not) then they know it's a problem, and they have refused to address it. This is labor intensive, yes, but... sorry, this is the business you have chosen. If you don't put the resources towards it, that's not the customer's problem.
- Offer to discount, pro-rate, or comp services as compensation. I could have done many things with my day other than wait for someone who wasn't coming. The rep should have offered some kind of compensation or at least promised to pro-rate monthly fees based on outage time.
- Have someone at AT&T who can get answers for them. I realize this costs resources, too, but again that's the business they have chosen. I get that AT&T may have lousy customer service. Fine. It's not enough for reps to be in solidarity with customers about this. They are adding zero value if they cannot do something about it. Why on earth would I not just switch to AT&T directly?
Sonic seems to be hoping that customers will feel their pain re AT&T. That's not the way it works.
I worked in sales, including acting as a reseller for some products, for a long time. What does taking responsibility look like? Here are some ideas:
- Have someone follow up with the tech to make sure they are actually coming, and inform the customer if they are not. Unless this is the first time this has ever happened (of course it's not) then they know it's a problem, and they have refused to address it. This is labor intensive, yes, but... sorry, this is the business you have chosen. If you don't put the resources towards it, that's not the customer's problem.
- Offer to discount, pro-rate, or comp services as compensation. I could have done many things with my day other than wait for someone who wasn't coming. The rep should have offered some kind of compensation or at least promised to pro-rate monthly fees based on outage time.
- Have someone at AT&T who can get answers for them. I realize this costs resources, too, but again that's the business they have chosen. I get that AT&T may have lousy customer service. Fine. It's not enough for reps to be in solidarity with customers about this. They are adding zero value if they cannot do something about it. Why on earth would I not just switch to AT&T directly?
Sonic seems to be hoping that customers will feel their pain re AT&T. That's not the way it works.