Every good ISP needs a call center. Technical support is required with every form of internet provision. Unfortunately, CDE does not offer such support on weekends. When I called the customer service line, the nervous young lady on the other end kindly explained that she didn’t know what the problem was, but she used her walkie talkie and politely offered to set up an appointment for the following Monday.

Since there isn’t a proper technical support channel, and the customer service representative available is untrained and therefore unable to walk me through basic troubleshooting steps, it makes CDE very unappealing to a customer willing to trade ease-of-use for power. By power, I mean the insanely fast connection I’m getting.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-troubleshoot service… you might want to think twice about CDE. Also take care to consider that “lightband” is a form of fiber-optic. Meaning it “should” be the most reliable and easy-to-use connection available. Unfortunately unscheduled maintenance, uninformed customers, unprepared staff, and untrained support representatives are proving detrimental to the good of the company, and may prove a deterrent for future CDE customers.

Come on guys, you can do better.

Here’s a few things you can fix:

• Get a call center set up
• Train a weekend crew on basic connection troubleshooting
• Set up group-training sessions with staff
  • Confidence
  • Leadership
  • Initiative
• Notify customers of upcoming maintenance (Channel Guide Notifications)

Just a suggestion.

I got another call from that super guy at Suddenlink with all of the useful information. He enlightened me on some of the finer points of what’s going on. As far as the CMTS (Cable Modem Termination Service) they have it, it just isn’t installed yet. They’re still waiting on some of the pieces of that puzzle to come together. On the flip-side of that, they did a little restructuring of their current facilities, and managed to provide some of us with a much more stable connection. Thanks Suddenlink!

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it should be to get noticed by some of the “higher-ups” that make things like this happen. Fortunately there are people who care about their customers. However, it is ultimately up to customers to take their stand on quality deficiencies regarding services they’re paying for. If you pay for it, you should get it. Sometimes, you’ve got to fight for it though.

In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be necessary. This isn’t that world, yet.

According to a correspondent from Suddenlink, they’ve been reading my blog, and what I have to say about the whole mess. Honestly, I was flattered to know that they actually took the time to do that.

There are some things Suddenlink is doing right, and saving its customers tons of money by doing:

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that my Internet and Cable combined only costs around $100.00 / month. I could probably scale it down to $80.00 /month if I wanted, but I like my current plan. Phone service (landline) in my area runs about $60.00 / month (long distance not included).

Combining these services? Golden. That’s another 30 bucks, plus “TV Caller-ID?” Wow.

There’s still a few thing’s that are sort-of vague when it comes to the Suddenlink website though. For one, it’s fairly easy to configure a javascript to display “Open” or “Closed” text or image according to the local time (Taking for-granted you specify the intended time-zone) in-reference to the sales/billing department. When you call the 877 number for service questions, the only thing available after business hours is Tech Support. Save us the frustration, let us know you’re closed!

There’s a few things about the Suddenlink website itself that I hate. One is this My Suddenlink setup. This looks like Excite.com’s attempt that harshly failed. This isn’t what we want! We can get that type of thing from at least a dozen other very popular websites. Scrap that project Suddenlink! Instead, open a Social Media center. Allow the Suddenlink users to build the community on their own. Why? Let’s consider:

• Facebook < User driven

• Twitter < User driven

• Myspace < User Driven

• Linked In < User/ Business Driven

• DevianArt < User Driven.

Simple version? You can’t give us something we can already get from a zillion other sites. We want open-book, easy-to-use user-driven communities where OUR voice is the one that counts. If you REALLY want to provide a personal portal for Suddenlink users, then that’s what you should do, from a customer’s point of view.

Now, I won’t shoot you down for having the online billing account setup… that’s priceless. But, it’s lacking some relevant information that tech support personnel and customers both need when fixing issues. As mentioned in earlier posts on this blog:

1. List of modems + modem related issues
2. Age of current modem
3. Uptime statistics
4. AVG Down/Up bandwidth (Sort by 9am-5pm)x(5pm-9am)x(weekends)
5. Running count of support calls+ recurring issues
6. List of support calls+notes+ticket# (Ticket numbers allow tech support and customers to easily return to the issue to review steps that fixed it before, or ensure those steps were already applied so other steps can be taken to restore the connection.

I’m going to talk about that for a second. Does it seem silly to have an online list of connection-related issues? Yes! The customer can go to a friend’s home, internet cafe, or library, print out the steps that fixed the the problem before, and fix it themselves, and save (potentially) hours of frustration waiting in line for tech support via phone, and troubleshooting (without guidance) their modem and/or router.

Also, since many (MANY) of us have the high-speed internet + cable TV bundle, wouldn’t it be really easy to drop a box in the Channel Guide for Internet Status? For Instance:

If you look at your own channel guide, it becomes pretty obvious what I’m talking about. This would save people minutes, potentially, hours of frustration, tech support calls, and maybe even a few bucks for Suddenlink.

Clear as day, Internet down for (insert zip code) and for brevity put “in some areas” so people know that it’s not just them, and that they should wait till the “light” turns green before trying other solutions. Honestly, I can’t believe that it’s not being done already!

A green/red/yellow LED image would suffice for “internet status” with a short explanation following.

Easy to do? No? Well we’ll settle for something close!

There’s much more that Suddenlink, like every other company, can improve on. I’m sure that Suddenlink’s power-wielding members will do everything they can to continue improving their service, like they have been doing constantly, since they took over Cebridge’s old network.

I will be moving to Fort Campbell soon, but I intend on writing a final review of my experiences with Suddenlink staff. If you have any questions about Suddenlink you can ask http://twitter.com/suddenlinkhelp

-David

He was so nice, he even went so far as to offer to drop the price, back to January, to 1mb, and let me actually keep my 8mb speed. I heart that guy for that, but I turned down the generous gesture. Instead, I made sure he understood I want Suddenlink to appreciate the fact that I’ve been a customer for over 3 years, had persistant problems, dozens of phone calls with techs, several modem replacements, and only now, have they finally made first contact and given me a real answer to the apparent bandwidth crisis in my area.
I gave the guy some tips about how to improve our service and support, starting with some form of social networking. For one, allowing a customer to be able to see video step-by-step guides on how to troubleshoot their issues. This would save money producing online documentation, and would allow people to SEE what they’re doing, versus doing the guesswork on what to plug where. Even with visual guides, the less technologically gifted may still require guidance. Not everyone is as nerdy as… well… me. (Fortunately)

I indicated that a real database system such as MySQL in combination with some server side scripting empowered by AJAX would be very beneficial, allowing customers to file complaints on the website, get interaction directly from Suddenlink Tech support, complete a personnel survey on techs that visit their homes to solve their problems, and see a list of previous problems, their solutions, and the statistics of their current connection/modem. Not only would that benfit the user/customer, but later problems would be easily sorted if a support tech is able to see previous problems, and the point at where the degrade or drop off of service began. Not to mention a list of IP addresses, and flow of traffic. ALL of that is possible using AJAX combined with PHP and MySQL, obviously because many of us do the same thing using awStats and other similar statistic services… combined with a GetSatisfaction form of service built right into the site.

Come on, Suddenlink is a pretty large company, surely they can afford a few thousand to throw at a good CMS suite, at the very least. Integrate a video center where people can look at videos and resolve issues they’re having. It wouldn’t work if you had little or no service, but if you’re troubleshooting multiple devices, getting issues with your router, or trying to troubleshoot bandwidth dropoffs, as well as setting up new connections, it could really pay off. Not to mention an integrated documation and tech support center.
I’m rambling… the point is, I explained most of that with minor detail to a sincere employee (hopefully) at Suddenlink, who reports to Peter Abel. I’m not sure as to either of their status in the company Chain of Command… but surely they’ve got to have some rank on the corporate threshold. I got the guy’s personal cell phone number!

If you have issues with Suddenlink, voice them here. I’ll provide as much feedback as I can, and generate some energy with my current contacts.

-David