Thursday, December 30, 2010

Customer Database Fail

Today, I got a call from a Verizon High Speed Internet salesperson. Apparently, the representative was calling to "get me back as customer". Now, this is interesting on several fronts:

  • The guy was calling to sell me DSL as a High-speed Internet solution. I've had DSL in the past (in fact, I was Bell Atlantic's first DSL customer, back in 1996/1997), but most of the time I had DSL, it was through carriers other than Verizon (first, it was CAIS, then it was SpeakEasy). So, there wasn't really a basis for "getting me back"
  • I am currently a Verizon FiOS customer and have been for nearly a year now. So, I'm already a Verizon customer, so, no need to "get me back" as one.
  • Before I had FiOS, I was a Cox HSI customer for several years. Why this is relevant is that the Verizon rep had called me on my GV number. I've really only been using the GV number since fall of 2009. So, the number they had for me to try to "get me back" isn't the number I had when last I had DSL (and, as previously mentioned, when I had DSL, I was never a VZ customer - the closest I came to it was when I was a Bell Atlantic employee and was helping beta test their offering [Bell Atlantic later became Verizon])
So, it was a complete "out there" call. Nothing about my history nor the number they contacted at was relevant to a prior business relationship. Clearly, they'd gotten my updated contact info from somewhere. Thus, you'd assume that with such updated info, they could have figured out that I was also already a customer of their internet services.

No comments:

Post a Comment