I am sure I will not be the first one to say it, but Rogers Wireless is a tough company to deal with. I have been with Rogers since 1992. Back then I had a giant Motorola brick. It had a ten digit LED display for the phone number, a simple keyboard with large keys, and it was intrinsically safe (I guess so I could safely use it while pumping gas). This was a time when phones cost a bundle, wireless minutes cost a bundle, and Rogers was one of only two games in town. I do not remember how I chose them over the competition, but one thing I do remember was that I spent a fair bit of time on hold waiting for a customer service agent whenever I needed one.
Wind forward to 2011 and the world is a different place. My Blackberry Torch is a multi-function device with hundreds of megabytes of RAM, gigabytes of flash storage, a camera, barcode scanner (I could go on), and Rogers is a much larger company that has reduced my hold time to get a customer service agent to less than a minute. The problem is that they have settled for putting any human on the line regardless of their customer service skill and aptitude or their training and experience. Where I used to wait many minutes to get an agent that could solve my problem I now get an agent right away that will help me begin a long journey of pain and frustration.
During my latest ordeal I wanted to add my Blackberry Torch and phone number formerly from another account to my personal account. I do not want to go into all the details here, but it was three days of customer support hell. I went from agent to agent, department to department trying to get things working. I was exposed to what can only be described as extreme incompetence. I was offered things by one agent that I was told do not exist by another. I was sold a product that could not work with my equipment. Agents offered to transfer my calls to new departments and either I got the wrong department, the call was dropped (without a call back), or I reached the new department and had to start from square one with the new agent. One agent even coached me to act irate when she transferred me to the new department to ensure I got the service she thought I deserved.
All tolled, I spent no less than 5 hours talking to agents, waiting to be transferred, or waiting for the agent to ask someone (or something) how to solve my problem. Worst, this is not the first time I have had such problems. They occur to one degree or another every time I interact with Rogers. Switch phone companies you say; sounds easy enough. I spend well over $3000 per year with Rogers, so surely other companies would be interested in my business. Of course, every time you make a change to your plan you get locked into a new contract for a minimum of a year and it would cost at least $700 for me to leave with no guarantee that any of the other companies are any better; I guess I will stay for now; after all the actual product works fairly well.
Surely Rogers can do better! I know very little about the economics of wireless providers, but I must have sucked a fair bit of the margin from our relationship this year in these three days of frustration. I suspect the speed of Roger's growth, the numerous and ever changing products to remain competitive, and high agent turnover are probably all factors in the problems that I have suffered. I have worked as a lean management professional and it is clear that the ratio of waste to value added activity at Rogers is extreme and must be a negative factor to their bottom line. Revenue was up this last quarter, but income was down. Perhaps Roger's shareholders would appreciate a change as much as I would. Maybe their call centers are a minor cost in their operation and they really are not too concerned about all this, but they should not expect a positive net promoter score from this consumer. I would not wish Roger's customer service organization on my worst enemy.
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