Customer Service

We are switching our tv over to cogeco from satellite this week - since our internet & phone are with cogeco already we can save some money by bundling all of our services with one provider.

Anyway I called Shaw this morning to cancel our service & was greeted with the always friendly " all of our agents are currently servicing other clients but your call is important to us so please stay on the line and we will get to you as soon as possible".

But then another friendly voice offered me the opportunity to leave my phone number & Shaw will call me when an agent is available & they promise I will not lose my place in line.

So now I'm waiting for a call back - better than being on hold I guess but is it really good customer service ??

Shaw is saying "we know we have a large volume of calls coming into our call centre but rather than hire more agents to service you quickly we purchased software so you won't have to wait on hold but you are still going to wait".

How important is my call to them ??

On Friday we were in the LCBO to pick up some wine. Once we made our choice we made our way to the check out line. Only one till was open with at least 6 people waiting to check out so the teller pushed a buzzer which rang rather loudly through the store, letting othe clerks on duty know they were needed at the front.

A clerk sitting at a desk near the front yelled over " I heard you & I'll be there as I finish this"  then she went back to doing whatever she was doing totally ignoring all the customers waiting in line.

After a few minutes still more people joined the line and the lone clerk buzzed his buzzer again causing the sitting agent to respond "I told you I'd be there when I finished this !!"

She continued to finish whatever she was doing all the time ignoring us but verbally berating the other clerk.

When she finally finished her very important task, she walked over to a till and announced "I'm open here",  But everyone in line kind of looked around at each other. Each of us thinking "no, it's OK you can go through her line". None of us wanted any of the abuse she had given the other clerk.

Finally she announced " its OK - I don't bite" & a few hardy souls crept carefully over to her till.

Yet another shining example of customer service :)