TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu> (07/22/90)
Something that some telco employees learned long ago, and some telco
employees will *never* learn is there is a direct relationship between
how you treat your customers and how loyal they remain to your
organization. Yes, there are some exceptions to this, and a few
customers who are never happy about anything, but most will remember
the good and bad parts of their relationship with you and be governed
accordingly when shopping for telecom services.
Since some of you enjoy those 'telco of the past' type stories, here
is one for you to meditate on.
April, 1968: Martin L. King was assassinated in Memphis. Everything
that week was up for grabs, so to speak, and in Chicago, riots racked
the west side of the city for several days. IBT people were on special
alert for trouble, and the guys in 'night plant' were especially alert
as they drove through the city to their tasks.
One of the fellows, Ron, generally worked the west side, and he
related to me some of the events from that week in April:
"We never had much trouble with harassment or anything. Even though we
were white, I think they knew we were not there to hassle them; we
were just doing our work. They pretty much left us alone. I know they
did harass the crews from People's Gas, because almost always the crew
was out there to dig in the parkway and shut off service somewhere.
But they never bothered us, or at least me.
"Next to one of the Chicago Housing Authority buildings was a liquor
store with a payphone. Some fool had ripped it right off the wall, and
I put it up Tuesday night, only to find out the next evening it had
been ripped down again. Now when it happened the second time, a lot of
the guys I worked with would have said 'f--k the animals!' and let the
phone stay down until the day crew could get to it later on.
"But I figured a lot of innocent people were harmed by that. There was
no other pay phone for about three blocks, and most of those people in
the projects had no private service, so it was either use the phone at
the liquor store or go without. They're entitled to service like
anyone else, so we put the phone back up on the wall Wednesday night,
but we did mount it a lot better the second time.
"It was been about midnight when we finished. The office made us use a
'buddy system' during the riots, so my partner and I were ready to
leave and he called the office to check in. The office patched through
a call to us; it was the operator at Bethany Brethren Hospital, about
half a mile from where we were then.
[Moderator's Note: Bethany Brethren was located almost in the middle
of the riot zone. During that decade it had become a hospital with a
95 percent black patient population and 50-60 percent black staff. PT]
"The poor operator was in tears, almost hysterical. A water pipe had
broken in a storage room with some phone wires. They got the water
pipe shut off, but the flood had knocked out the switchboard. And she
'just knew' there was no way anyone from Bell was going to come out
there and work on her board in the middle of a long night with the
riots going on.
"Generally the rioters left the hospitals alone and the old-people's
home on Kedzie Avenue. At the Kedzie Bell everything was secure, but
they sure torched everything else for a mile in all directions.
[Moderator's Note: 'The Kedzie Bell' was an old nickname for the CO
located at Kedzie and Monroe Sts. on the west side. PT]
"My partner and I parked in the lot at Bethany and went inside. That
poor woman would have kissed the ground we walked on, I think.
"It turned out the trouble was not that severe. We had to replace a
little bit of the cable run to the board and dry out some other stuff.
It took us maybe an hour or so. I wanted to make sure the board was
working okay, so I told the lady I'd run the board for a few minutes
while she went to get coffee for us from the cafeteria. We drank the
coffee, I ran the board and we just talked for about half an hour. I
guess about 2:00 AM we decided to leave. The office had nothing for me
and I was going home to get some sleep.
"We went out to the parking lot ... I'll be damned if they hadn't
broken into our truck and looted all of our tools and supplies. Then
they had set the truck on fire. We went back inside and called the
office; the supervisor had a couple of guys drive out to get us and
bring us back downtown."
[Moderator's Note: The west side was devasted in the rioting and
burning of every business place. Today, 22 years later the community
has not recovered, indeed, things are worse. A few things were
rebuilt, but today there are still entire blocks totally empty. No
place to work, no money in the community, nothing. People still get
sick, and hospital bills go unpaid. The hospitals in the area are in
very poor financial condition. To avoid bankruptcy and closing, they
all merged a few years later ... PT]
(Ron related this to me about 1977 or 1978) ...
"The hospital is still out there; they don't call it Bethany Brethren
any longer ... it merged with those other two or three when they were
in bankruptcy; the parent company is the Evangelical Health Care
System, and they call it the Bethany Medical Center of EHCS.
"They were going to yank out those old switchboards they had in each
hospital and get some modern stuff [Moderator's Note: By 1976
standards!], so I guess they got bids from from a few places for new
equipment. One of our (IBT's) sales guys was over there to talk to the
Board of Directors and this woman who was the Vice President - Telecom
Services at Evangelical insisted -- absolutely insisted! -- that they
go with our centrex service tying all their locations together under
one centrex system.
"Do you know she actually remembered my name from eight years before?
I couldn't believe it! This lady knew my name, when I had been out to
Bethany, that we had 'done the job right the first time', and she
thought it best to 'stick with the people who cared enough to come out
and make immediate repairs'.
"When I heard this from someone at the office, I was absolutely
floored. That's a million dollars in business per year. But it goes to
show that when you really care about your customers, and make it
obvious to them, they will stick around."
-----------------
Are customers today still that loyal? Something tells me most of them
are, if you put out a real effort to show you care about quality
telecom service, and are responsive to their needs.
PTirv@happym.wa.com (Irving Wolfe) (07/25/90)
In <10003@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >Are customers today still that loyal? Something tells me most of them >are, if you put out a real effort to show you care about quality >telecom service, and are responsive to their needs. Of course they are. That's why AT&T still has the lion's share of the nation's long distance business. We all remember being treated with courtesy and respect -- like human beings rather than "consumers" -- and we all remember phone that you could throw hard against the floor with no ill effect. We also remember phone service that stayed up when the power was down, quick and easy connections, etc., etc. Irving Wolfe Happy Man Corp. irv@happym.wa.com 206/463-9399 ext.101 SOLID VALUE, the investment letter for Benj. Graham's intelligent investors Information (not sample) free: email patty@happym.wa.com with US mail addr.
bakerj@ncar.ucar.edu (Jon Baker) (07/26/90)
In article <10003@accuvax.nwu.edu>, telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Are customers today still that loyal? Something tells me most of them > are, if you put out a real effort to show you care about quality > telecom service, and are responsive to their needs. I think so. Suffice to say I'm not enamored with boxes with little pictures of bells on them, and Mr. Higdon shuns boxes with blue ovals. It all depends on the customer's personal prior experiences.