A Fish Stinks From The Head

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I think the proverb “A Fish Always Stinks From The Head” is appropriate in this case.

Two and a half years ago we switched our business internet connection and phone service to Time Warner. We run a national call center and ecommerce site selling 3000 medical supplies (www.caregiverpartnership.com).

For two years, we experienced over 20 fully documented issues – outages and service interruptions lastly more than four days at times. We worked hard with local TW team members, but ultimately had to move to an alternative vendor. The regional TW management was embarrassed how poorly they responded to service issues. There were muliple handoffs, limited follow up, a lack of accountability by any individual – middle management or otherwise.

Then we took the time to fully document each issue including what happened, the date, whom we talked with, what was promised and what the outcome was. We mailed this 18 page letter, along with a copy of our customer service book, Negotiate Anything! Secrets to Make Companies Treat You Fairly directly to Time Warners’s CEO. It has been two months since, and we never received a response — from him or anyone. This leads us to believe that at Time Warner, the fish does stink from the head. If the CEO elects not to respond to a faithful customer that invests a great deal of time to document service issue in the hopes of improvment, why would anyone else at TW care?

TW is losing customers faster than the Cowboys are losing games (source: The Consumerist). Over 155,000 last quarter alone. Gee, I wonder why?

If you would like a Free download of Negotiate Anything! go to www.smashwords.com/books/view/24153 and use Code ZA94H at checkout. Good until 12/31/10

Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson, former global Sector President at Kimberly-Clark Corporation spent 30 years in consumer products, started up two companies, one manufacturing underground coal mining equipment (Wilson Manufacturing Company, Inc.) and in 2004, The Caregiver Partnership, a national direct to consumer retailer of home medical supplies to the more than 66 million caregivers in the U.S. He is also co-author of Negotiate Anything!, a 30-year longitudinal study of customer service in the U.S., the first of its kind.

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