Got a problem with your carrier? Who ya gonna call that will do more than just listen?

This is perhaps the biggest burning and unanswered question when it comes to residential broadband services.

Who hasn’t called a provider’s “customer care” center and spoken to agents that couldn’t really care less, and can’t do more than add comments to your account file?

Service providers are great when it comes to using the “A” word : “Apology.” Probably because it doesn’t cost anything. The problem is that apologies don’t mean much or do anything substantive about the issue(s) at hand.

So, who do you turn to with a carrier complaint? A recent report showed that only a small number of complaints received by the FCC get acted on and resolved. Your state PUC? You can take a number. Same with an office for consumer affairs. What about the good ol’ Better Business Bureau? Great name, less fulfilling.

The Internet has given us a much-needed forum to be heard by – and hear from – others. Carriers in the crosshairs typically have someone join in on discussions. Good idea on their part if they’re interested in customer concerns.

But whether or not these sites are effective remains to be seen. Is any action taken? Maybe if the number of participants is high enough and the issue important enough.

Carriers that give customer service more than lip service need to act quickly before the call center becomes the latest incarnation of the suggestion box in the company cafeteria.

Why a top priority? Because negative word of mouth about a carrier and/or its service and support spreads faster than wildfire. Faster than airborne viruses in sci-fi flicks.

Or worse, in this era of user-generated content and heavily traveled social networking sites, a bad customer experience can result in a customer-generated slam video on YouTube.

Carriers could find the cure by empowering agents with information, tools and input options they need to do more than answer calls in queue and apologize. Maybe giving them outbound calling capability and or e-mail so they can, imagine this, provide follow up after calls, complaints, service outages, repairs, etc, etc.

They could also take a page from equipment vendors and create the enterprise equivalent of user groups. If a complaint comes into a call center and nothing is done, did it really happen?

Ask customers directly what they dislike the most and why. What should be changed/enhanced/cut and how. Customers love to feel that candor counts and that they’re more than a monthly bill.

As frustrated as you get, you can’t blame a call center agent that isn’t armed with info, tools and options for addressing your complaint in a way that makes you feel as if you were heard, and it meant something, anything …

Seriously, you have to wonder when you hear while waiting for an agent that your call is being recorded/monitored for customer service purposes if there’s anywhere big enough to hold all the tapes.

Having management and executives actually listen to some customer complaint call recording would likely be a great start.

If you have better ideas, let me know so I can share them. Otherwise, have a nice day!