Cus--mer Service News at --ingular
Getting through to Cingular.
FORTUNE Monday, December 2, 2002
By Paul Kaihla
fortune.com
There's nothing quite so irritating as losing a cellphone signal midsentence. Which is why we decided to take up the matter with Kathy Dowling, vice president of customer service at Cingular Wireless in Atlanta. The interview took place on a Cingular phone as the writer was driving along I-280 in Silicon Valley. What follows are excerpts of the half-hour chat, in which Dowling talks about GSM, mystery shoppers, and some other stuff we couldn't quite catch.
Q: Well, I wanted to ask: I know you're not a technologist per se, but how do you explain to customers the difference between GSM and other formats? ...
A: From a customer perspective?
Q: Yeah.
[No response.]
Q: Did you-- Are you there? I'm not hearing anything. [Call dropped. Paul redials.]
A: Hello?
Q: Hi. I don't know what happened. I'm really sorry about that.
A: That's okay. What part did we lose you at?
Q: I didn't hear any of your answer. I just asked you--
A: I thought you were an awfully good listener....
Q: Where does Cingular rank in terms of coverage among the major carriers?
A: [Drop-out] second-largest [drop-out] our customer base. I can double-check and find out on coverage. I don't-- I honest [drop-out] but [indecipherable] from our customer perspective, you know, with our new national [drop-out] [indecipherable] we have [drop-out] example, very high [drop-out] partners [indecipherable] our nation [garbled] side [garbled]....
Q: What systems have you-- [Call dropped. Paul redials.] ... Do you have measures of customer satisfaction?
A: We do have measures that we used in the fourth quarter, and we also have measures [echo] from what we call the "mystery shopping." And mystery shopping is our own people--porting us internal, but we do have research firms that we--ploy to come out and [drop-out]. The ultimate judge is you, the mer---- You know, we can think we're doing a great job of meet-- customers' [indecipherable]. We've gotten [indecipherable], and they've been really, really good for us [garbled], that tells us the customer does want that one [drop-out] resolution. You know, coverage is important [drop-out] them, of course, flexible-rate plans and [echo] [drop-out] [Call dropped. Paul redials.]
Q: Hello, Kathy?
A: Hello, Paul.
Q: I'm sorry. I'm not doing this. I'm--I'm not touching anything. I'm just--
A: What I'm hoping is that obviously we'll take your phone and make sure that the network is working properly for you.
Q: Yeah. Yeah, that would be probably good to check out.
From the Dec. 9, 2002 Issue |
