Rogers Communications Staff
Turn Frustration Around

Brampton - I've read many horror stories about Rogers Communications – Internet, TV, Phone – and I've always been a loyal customer, defending them to all who complained. But now, I have my own Rogers story. The twist with my story is that the attitude of the people I dealt with, both on the phone and in person, turned an intolerable experience into an acceptable one.

About a month ago, I received a letter from the Vice President, Consumer Services, Rogers Cable Communications Inc. It seems that Rogers will no longer be offering traditional phone line service. Instead, they're converting all their current phone customers to their new Home Phone service, which is carried through their own digital cable network, rather than phone lines. After July 31, they will no longer offer phone service to me on my current network.

Their letter, however, offered me some perks to make the transition easy for me to accept - $120 in credits to my Rogers Home Phone bill plus free digital TV service for one year. Well, ok, I'm thinking this is a pretty acceptable trade off. My part was simply to allow them access to my home during one service call to make the transition.

Except the one service call and the 'easy' transition turned into 10 days of glitches and frustration for me. Out of 10 consecutive days, I had their technicians here on 5 separate days. And those days were, of course, days when I was required to stay home for the technician's call. Rogers has now narrowed down their service calls to a window of 3 hours, which is a big help, but those 5 days for me centered around the service calls. Pretty inconvenient.

The original call, which was supposed to get the whole conversion finished, ended with the technician being able to convert only 2 of my 3 phones. When I tried to use my phone about an hour after he left, all my phones were dead. I spent about half an hour on my cell phone with Rogers trying to fix my connection and this is where my story begins to sound like good customer service.

The call centre rep I spoke with on the phone went to extreme measures to ensure I had at least one phone working until she could send another tech the following day. Her concern was genuine – she wanted to do all that she could to make a bad situation tolerable for me.

The following days were full of home visits by Rogers's technicians who did their best to correctly install this new phone service for me. Every tech who came to my home was apologetic, courteous and concerned for my inconvenience. And my days were also filled with my own innumerable calls to Rogers' call centre to tell them what still needed fixing and to voice my frustration at this whole experience which had turned from an inconvenience into a thorn in my side.

Every rep I spoke with at the call centre was caring, apologetic and as helpful as she or he could possibly be. When they had to put me on hold, they thanked me for my patience. And they ended each of my calls with their wishes that these problems would be solved as soon as possible. Every technician who came to my home was also courteous and concerned.

My point here is that the attitude of Rogers customer contact employees made this whole venture into a tolerable one for me. They all had a positive, caring, concerned attitude and they all thanked me over and over again for my patience and understanding.

It was their attitude alone that stopped me from discontinuing my service with Rogers because of the installation fiasco. Their attitude kept me as a loyal customer. And we can all use that same attitude to ensure all our customers remain loyal and even turn into advocates for us. The way I have here for Rogers Communications.

Like all great customer service, it's that simple.