Customer service is not being sold crap

A couple weekends ago I registered and launched a domain for a client through GoDaddy. I’ve gone through this process several times before, usually without a hitch. Sometimes getting site hosting setup and jumping through other hoops takes nearly 24 hours, so after buying and setting up the domain, I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and tested the URL.

Nothing.

Great, I thought, maybe it’s still not finished being setup. I jumped over to GoDaddy, logged in and — bam — yes, they said I was ready to go. I dumped a test index.html through the GoDaddy interface. You guessed it … still nothing loaded on my computer.

For the next couple hours, I dumped countless caches, histories, restarted my computer, restarted my router, tried the site on my laptop and still no Web site would load.

To make a long story short, the Time Warner DNS servers were not recognizing my new site. This problem was peculiar to me, because all the friends and family I had check for the site are not on Time Warner. It loaded perfectly fine for them.

Solving this problem took a lot of research and guessing. It wasn’t until I changed my computer’s settings to OpenDNS that the site popped up. Web searches about this problem were inconclusive. Many forums suggested something very wrong was happening but had no solutions. I write about this experience to create some sort of record of my findings for others who encounter this problem.

Customer service dumb

I also write about this because Time Warner needs to be punished for its awful customer service system.

Let’s tell a tale of two customer services. First, GoDaddy, the Web hosting provider, and then, Time Warner, my home Internet service provider. I had to contact both to confirm and remedy my findings told above.

GoDaddy experience

• Call in, hit number for particular area of concern
• Talk to agent who asks for name on account and pin number from registration
• Discuss problem in common English

Time Warner experience

• Call in, hit several numbers to get to particular department and area of service. Be forced to go through automated diagnosis of “Internet problems.” Hit “0″ because I know it’s not my cable modem to get to specific agent.
• Talk to service rep, explain situation, get asked for phone number, name, address and account number, after entering much of that previously in automated menu. Re-explain situation to agent. Dissuade agent from having me plug and unplug modem. “That’s not the problem,” I say. “I know what it is, and I need to talk to someone who can explain what’s going on.”
• Reluctantly agent transfers me to tier 2 support, but before doing it, tries to sell me home phone service. Wait on hold. Have to retell my phone number, address, name, account number, etc. Re-explain situation. Level 2 person tries to diagnose. “No, no,” I say, “I don’t need to plug and unplug my modem.” I restate my problem at least three times. I think each time the agent thinks I want to get my new site listed on the crappy Roadrunner default search page that pops up because Time Warner’s DNS servers don’t recognize my site. Tier 2 agent doesn’t seem to understand DNS servers. Tier 2 girl says she’ll transfer me two Tier 3. Gives me reference number for my problem. Also tries to sell me home phone service.
• Instead of being transferred, I am pushed back to the main menu that I got 30 minutes earlier. I hold back anger and try to not throw my phone into the wall. Return to first level agent. Repeat my account information. Explain my situation.
• Tier 2 person takes my call, again, I explain my situation and give a reference number that I was given earlier. Tier 2 person finally figures out what this means and transfers me to Tier 3.
• Finally, Tier 3 person is on the phone. He explains what’s going on after I tell him I know it’s Time Warner’s crappy DNS servers. He tells me to wait just another day or two and the site should pop up. It’s not actually Time Warner but the crap legacy servers that the company inheritied after it bought Adelphia. Somehow, a year and a half after buying Adelphia, Time Warner hasn’t gotten around to upgrading them. *phew* My problem is taken care of an hour and fifteen minutes later.

To be fair to Time Warner, it is a large organization with many complexities and customers with varying degrees of understanding. But the brain trust at Time Warner is already on my *expletitive deleted* list for not following through with several appointments I’ve made with them in the past and a couple of service changes that they didn’t actually record. If there’s a school for dumb customer service personnel, it’s run by T-W.

What particularly made my Time Warner experience so frustrating was the robot-like nature of its call center people. It’s one thing to be professional; it’s another not to break off script to understand my individual problem. Whereas with Godaddy I reached a considerate person who listened to my problem and discussed it with me, the Time Warner gang pretty much stuck to the “please hold a moment” routine throughout. (Speaking of that phrase, what is it that they are constantly holding for?)

Even worse, and despite being quite audibly annoyed, the Time Warner people tried to sell me home phone service at least twice in my 1.25 hour encounter.

I know Time Warner must meet certain performance goals for its stockholders and must pressure its support personnel to pimp services. But how does training your agents to try to sell a customer with a problem a service make sense? What is their system unnecessarily complex, confusing and inconsistent? Speaking of my old customer service experiences, I couldn’t imagine trying to sell a T-shirt after helping a ticked off customer at Old Navy or pimping popcorn to a disgruntled theatergoer.

Apparently some cities have taken notice and are suing Time Warner. I don’t know if a lawsuit will accomplish it, but it’s hard to root for Time Warner’s success.