Thursday, November 19, 2009

I'm Holding. . .

Yesterday I played a little game of "Who's On First" with Washington Gas, a local utility company. We will be in a hotel starting Friday night, and I needed the gas turned off, but since we have gas heat, I wanted it turned off Saturday when we hand over the keys.

But, of course, it cannot be done on a weekend, and so my choices were Friday, with the person coming out between 7 am and 5 pm or Monday sometime between 7 am and 5 pm. I still needed heat on Friday but could not let the friendly Washington Gas guy into a house and into the backyard (where the meter and controls are) that I no longer own on Monday.

What I needed, and what I eventually got, was a smaller window on Friday afternoon, somewhere between 12-5. But boy, it took a lot to get there, and I was really frustrated by the end of the conversation.

My saving grace was that I heard, while on hold for the upteenth time, that at the end of the call I could provide feedback through a quick survey. After ten exhausting minutes of explaining to the man why I really needed Friday afternoon and not Friday morning and definitely not Monday, I was ready for that survey.

He ended our call with his standard "Thank you for calling. Please let us know if we can help you in the future" speech and then muttered softly a little blurb about a survey.

Sensing 'crazy lady who wants heat for her family' was still on the line, he asked if I wanted anything else.

"Oh, no," I replied. "I'm just holding for the survey."

I know that they do not mean much and are probably not given much attention, but telling that guy that I was holding for the survey was the best part of my day.

2 comments:

LeeAnn said...

What! Do something nice for the customer!?!? Are you insane! That would be thinking outside the box!

Unknown said...

Customer service is a concept some people or companies do not understand!