Do you keep your customers in the loop or the dark?

There are many different ways companies deal with problems. I’ve experienced two ways this past week. Taking the train into Seattle each morning and afternoon is a very reliable mode of transportation. Few problems arise. But when they do, Sound Transit keeps everyone informed of what is going on and the estimated time the problem will be resolved. If the train is running 20 minutes behind like it was this morning (or even just 5 minutes), large electrical signs let everyone who is waiting in line know that. And when the train does show up and everyone is on board I can count on the conductor apologizing for the delay and providing a brief description of why the delay occurred. They keep their customers in the loop.

Contrast that behavior with that of Qwest DSL service. Over the past week my DSL service has gone down on three separate occasions. Each time I’ve dialed into Qwest customer service to find out if only my connection is down or if it’s a wider spread outage. Each time I made the call I was taken down an automated phone adventure to hell. They make it sound like you’ll be able to speak with a CSR but, in reality; all I received was a recording that mentioned they were aware of the outage and were working to correct it. I wonder how it would be if Qwest were more proactive in their approach to letting customers know they are aware of a problem. They obviously took the time to update their phone system when the outage occurred. What if they made a quick, even computer driven phone call to each person affected by the outage? That way customers wouldn’t worry they are the only ones with a problem and would relax knowing Qwest was working to fix the problem.