I like Insight Broadband
You know it’s fashionable, and generally quite reasonable, to hate your cable company and/or broadband provider. When we lived in England, I had a choice of at least a dozen broadband providers and could select the cheapest, the one with the best service, the one with the fastest broadband or the best services or whatever. Here in the US though they’ve figured out a way to make broadband a virtual monopoly in most geographies and what’s not to hate about your local monopoly communications provider? Having said that though, we’ve lived in Lexington now for 18 months (30 years by extension if you count my parents) and my experience with Insight, the local cable broadband provider, has been consistently good.
For example, in 18 months, my broadband has been down for zero minutes, that’s right, I’ve never been disconnected from the matrix (unless you count the time that one of my neighbors got on my wireless and started sharing movies, Insight shut off my service at the request of the MPAA apparently but this got fixed politely and promptly with a call and explanation). By contrast, my parents’ phone line (not from Insight) has been out at least a half dozen times for a few hours to a few days during that same timeframe.
Last week I (finally) replaced my rented cable modem with one I have purchased. I called Insight, spoke to a CSR within minutes, he was helpful and cheerful and stayed on the phone with me until my new modem was up and working – that’s not the way monopolies are supposed to behave. I would say that generally I get pretty good reports from my customers about their interactions with Insight as well.
Fifteen years ago when I moved abroad, American business was the paragon of customer service. I often bragged to my colleagues in Europe about how much better customers were treated here. Alas, in a great capitalist race to the bottom, real courtesy and the quality of customer care seem to have fallen precipitously. I would contrast real customer care with the fake, crap customer care you receive whenever you hear that recording, “Your call is important to us so please stay on the line…”, I call bullshit on that, if my call was really important you would have hired a few more reps and answered it on the third bloody ring not put me into a 20 minute queue. (I realise I’m digressing here but don’t stop me, I’m on a roll) Here’s another example:
Crap Customer Care: “All our agents are busy right now helping other customers…”
Good Customer Care: “Hello, how can I help you?”
Crap Customer Care: “We are experiencing heavy call volumes due to the weather/the holidays/sunspots/incompetent management…”
Good Customer Care: “Hello, how can I help you?”
Crap Customer Care: “Our call options have changed so please listen to the entire announcement (as I blather on endlessly while you try to guess which choice will bring you to a real person and which one to some stupid recording)…”
Good Customer Care: “Hello, how can I direct your call?”
OK, I’m feeling a little better now. Before I got carried away I was writing about Insight and of course they have these ubiquitous automated attendents but I seem to be able to consitantly get to a person when I call them and that person seems to be consitantly helpful. What more can I ask for? Well done Insight.
