Do You “Go The Extra Mile” For Others?

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As far as I’m concerned, one of the best attributes of a person who provides great customer service is their willingness to “go the extra mile” for someone.

Monday 2 November 2009 8:00 pm

(soapbox time …  )

Whatever happened to someone using their initiative?

Geez, I’m annoyed! (to say the least).

Today is Monday, and since last Thursday, I have had major trouble with my internet connection.

It keeps dropping in and out which is making things very frustrating for me. I have contacted the service provider and explained the problem, and the first lady I spoke with took me through some common troubleshooting steps to try and resolve the problem.

Unfortunately, the problem was not resolved, and she referred my call to another department for them to contact me. The lady was unable to give me a day, date or time that I would be contacted (which I do understand), however, she gave me the impression that I would be contacted in the next day or so … I’ve been waiting for someone to call me since then!

Growing more and more impatient at not having a connection, I contacted my service provider again on Friday to be told (by someone else) that a technician would be coming to my house on Tuesday and that they would be ringing me on Monday to organise a time that would be suitable for me. Yeah, right!

I queried this man as to whether this really would happen and he assured me that someone would definitely be coming to my house to fix the problem. To be totally honest, I didn’t believe that for a moment.

I know that sounds harsh, however, late last year I was without an internet connection for nearly 7 weeks, and it took countless phone calls every day to the service provider, speaking to countless different people, who literally all told me something different from one another (I still have the copious amount of notes that I made at the time to back this up), and then only after I contacted the Ombudsman’s Office, did the service provider very reluctantly send someone to my house!

That, plus the fact that Tuesday is Melbourne Cup Day here in Victoria, Australia and it’s a public holiday for most people

As I’m sure you can see, I have very good reason to not believe this man that someone would come to my house at this point in time.

So, from Thursday when I made that first phone call through to early Saturday night, I was without the internet at all. Early on Saturday night after resetting my modem for the umpteenth time, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the connection remained for longer than a few minutes!

It stayed this way for the next few hours and I thought that the problem had been fixed.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case at all, and since late afternoon on Sunday, I’ve had very intermittent service again.

This afternoon (Monday), I rang the service provider because I hadn’t heard from anyone (not that I really expected to though) and you’ll never guess what they told me …

Someone had rung on Saturday morning, only it happened that they’d rung the wrong number (this was noted on their file).

@#!!!**?%$#@!!!! (this was my head exploding with utter disgust, frustration and disbelief at the situation).

Why on earth didn’t that person bother to find the CORRECT number and ring that?! After all, they have access to my contact details … !! (my internet and phone accounts are combined).

And to think that I nearly rang them on Saturday night (thinking the problem was fixed) to tell them not to worry about contacting me because I felt that it was the right thing to do by them! How ironic …

So here I sit …

• totally frustrated that I cannot be on a webinar tonight that I would like to be on;
• utterly appalled that the person who rang didn’t make the effort to find the right number;
• annoyed in general that there are so many people out there who really don’t take the initiative to provide excellent customer service when it’s not that hard to do;
• waiting for someone to ring me on the correct number (which I’ve provided to two people since the “head exploding” phone call earlier); and
• … without any internet connection

Maybe I’m part of a dying breed of people who simply love to help others and DO go the extra mile to do so.

Maybe I’m being unrealistic and this person may have had better things to do with their time (I know I did! ).

Maybe, like or lump it, I’ve become addicted to the internet and just “can’t live without it”.

… possibly all of the above – hehe.

I am doing my best to not be frustrated about the situation. Afterall, it’s out of my control, so it’s a big waste of my energy being upset about it.

I’m venting my frustration by blogging about it, although you are only able to read this because the problem has been resolved (hopefully permanently, possibly only temporarily)

Have you had a similar experience to this regarding people ringing you back (or not, as the case may be)?

I am interested in hearing your thoughts about what you would have done in this situation if you were the one making the phone call to me. Would you have:

A: Decided that the attempt to contact me, despite ringing the wrong number, was good enough, or;

B: Used some initiative and reasoned that I would not have left a wrong number (I’m wanting help so obviously I would have provided the correct contact telephone number) and made the effort to find that telephone number and rung it.

I am interested in finding out what you think about this situation, so please leave me your reply below.

Plus, if you enjoyed this post, please consider tweeting it and telling others about it.

UPDATE -  Monday 2 November 2009 11:00 pm:

A freaky thing happened not long after I finished typing out this blog post …

I was sitting here typing another post for my blog, hoping like mad that my connection would be back in time to attend a webinar that I wanted to be on. I had clicked on the appropriate link to take me to the webinar quite a while earlier, but it wasn’t able to do anything (obviously!).

After considerable time, I thought I’d have a quick look to see whether my connection was back yet or not, and funnily enough, only a few minutes before the webinar started, my connection was back and I was able to be on it for the entire time! (without any disruption to my connection either!).

Was it a coincidence, or not? I really don’t know the answer to that, however, what I do know is that the timing of my connection returning was positively freaky!

I won’t ring my service provider and cancel their call just yet though. I’m very curious to see whether anyone actually does ring me!

UPDATE – Monday 16 November 2009 5.00 pm:

Not surprisingly, I have not been contacted by my service provider regarding this particular issue.

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