The Perils of Bad Customer Service

To my fellow entrepreneurs, CEO's, marketing and Cx leaders, I'm sharing this as a cautionary tale of 'how not to' provide outstanding service. But I'd guess most of you already know & feel this.

An adversarial customer service experience is one of the surest-proof ways to destroy your brand along with any possibility of ever winning back a lost customer in the future. Take it to the bank and build accordingly.

Here's the set-up. I've been a Cox Communications broadband customer since I moved to AZ. 11.5 years and easily over $20K spent with them over that period. They don't offer fiber in my neighborhood, and have increased rates by almost 65% in the last 5 years for the same speeds/service level for HFC. So did some digging and turns out not only is there a fiber provider in my neighborhood, my house is already prewired for it.

3X the speed and it costs 60% less than what I'm paying now. No brainer.

Install was today. Seamless, 45 minutes and the tech was smart, polite and my dogs liked him. Bonus.

Spend 5 minutes searching cox.com for how to cancel. Finally find it, and click 'chat with us'. Here's how it should have gone, in 5 minutes or less:

Cox: It's great to connect with you today Andrew. How can I help you?
Me: Thank you. I'd like to cancel my service. I've switched to a different ISP.
Cox: I'm terribly sorry to hear that. I see you've been a loyal customer for over 11 years. Anything I can do to change your mind?
Me: No, the service has had spotty reliability, I'm looking for higher speeds and you don't offer fiber in my area.
Cox: Understood. Let me process your request.
.....
Cox: OK, the cancellation is complete [insert confirmation info]. Would be OK for us to reach out to you once we do have fiber in your area to see if we can win you back?
Me: Absolutely. Thanks for your help.
Cox: My pleasure. Thank you again for being a loyal customer for so long.

Brilliant. You can't offer me what I want at the moment, but the positive exit experience leaves the door open for you to win me back when you can.

Seems so obvious. But, what followed instead was an excruciating 57 minutes of argumentative offer hounding (clearly with google translate in the middle based on grammar & response times) that p*ssed me off and felt more like I was negotiating with a street hawker in Marrakesh to buy a fake Rolex vs. dealing with a multi-billion dollar communications company.

In a world of Cox Communications, be Chick-fil-A