[Asterisk-biz] Is quality customer service worth paying extra for?

[Paul]

Now for part 2. I will agree that there are customer service problems 
with lots of providers. In the post about vonage I suppose I could have 
mentioned my other experiences with them(like I have been trying since 
October to get my $60 rebate and they can't even find a fax number to 
send a copy of the original paperwork to them).

But now we will discuss AT&T Callvantage. I signed up with them 
beginning of December. As soon as I got the ata I added a virtual number 
so clients and partners in another state could call me without toll. 
Everything seemed okay. In fact, I must say that the call quality is far 
better than four other ata-based accounts I have here. One feature I 
really liked is that you can place ooubound calls while checking 
voicemail from any phone and the caller ID sent is your AT&T number.

Within a few weeks they offered a new Callvantage Plus feature. The idea 
is that instead of a virtual number you actually create a second user 
with their own number. So I looked it over. It meant paying $7.49/month 
instead of $4.99 for a virtual number. It meant that the new user would 
have separate web login, click2dial phonebook, voicemail, locate-me and 
more. So I clicked on the signup. The next screen gave me the choice of 
adding a number or converting the virtual number I already had. Seemed 
perfect so far. So I clicked on through and converted the Simple 
Reach(virtual) number to a Callvantage Plus number. This was done on Dec 
17th, 2004.

What happened was the automated systems failed to create a web login for 
the new user. To this day, trying to login as the second user produces 
an "account not found" message. If people call the virtual number when I 
am here, it still rings on my primary line okay. But if I am not here, 
it does not have any locate-me configuration like the primary number. It 
goes to voicemail where they get the default greetings for a new 
mailbox. If they leave voicemail I have no stutter dialtone, no MWI and 
no email notification like I do for the primary number. I also have no 
PIN to check voicemail by calling the virtual number.

All these things I need(like a PIN) require the web account for the 
second user to be enabled. It took about 3 weeks of phone and web form 
requests before I finally got through to somebody who understands how 
serious a problem this is. That resulted in assurances that the problem 
would be sent to an "escalation specialist". When I pointed out how much 
time I had spent getting this far, he said that in addition to my first 
month being free, he would add another 2 free months. He explained that 
the web account would have to be built manually and he would have to 
send the case over to the software team because of that. I figured that 
as long as the service was free, I could wait and see if they would 
figure out a way to fix it. I told them that if they could simply change 
the number back to a $4.99/month virtual number, I would accept that. 
They said that either way would require the services of the software team.

Today I was checking the credit card online and saw that they had hit it 
twice(Feb 7 and Feb 28) for about $32.50 so I called them again and 
asked what was being done about my problem. It took the person about 20 
minutes to find the case and then she transferred me to an escalation 
specialist again. He said that he would try and find out why the problem 
wasn't yet resolved.

So there, I have illustrated that 2 major voip providers have some very 
screwd up customer service. I'm not making excuses for the smaller 
providers, just encouraging them to see a window of opportunity here.

Paul wrote:

> I have a customer who uses vonage because they are the only provider 
> that has numbers local to his hq office. So we were going to take his 
> vonage account and change the numbers. The idea being that the adaptor 
> is actually located in another town where the manufacturing happens. I 
> was able to reset the linksys ata/router and get it working no 
> problem(his winddows guru had it totally screwed up). I was able to 
> change the line 1 number via the website okay. But then I got to the 
> fax number and it looks like the only way to do that is call them.
>
> I have been trying to call and no matter what menu options I select, 
> the final destination is a busy signal. I used the contact form on the 
> website about 8 hours ago to put in the request and have not received 
> an acknowledgement of the request. I have had a busy day but in spite 
> of that have attempted to call them 15 times with identical results 
> each time.
>
> My reason for posting this is that we often get complaints on this 
> list about customer service problems with providers who are probably 
> have less than 1% of the subscribers vonage has. We all need to 
> realize that customer service is important. Providing the best 
> customer service, even if that means higher prices, will not get you 
> the market share that vonage has. I would be thrilled to have only 1% 
> of the market share as long as I had very high customer satisfaction 
> rating.