When it Comes to Charter's Customer Service, Experiencing it is a Nightmare

After years of high priced cable service, Charter Communications is the last place I would want to get any of my services from. However, because I now do quite a bit of work online, dial up Internet was no longer cutting it and unfortunately, as far as broadband is concerned, they are currently the only game in town.

In terms of the product Charter offers, I have no complaints. I have to admit their Pipeline service is faster than I thought it would be and quite easy to use. But, when it comes to providing customer service, they get an unconditional F in my book.

My first and hopefully only experience with Charter's technical support came earlier this week. I had just installed their services on my computer and tried to create an e-mail account only to discover the username and password I was given did not work. This wasn't a surprise since the tech that set the computer up for me told me it might be an issue. What was a surprise was just how fruitless of an endeavor it was to call their help line. Based on the service I received, I was able to come up with three rules of what good customer service means.

Rule 1 - Make your customer service easy to access. None of the physical documentation I was given regarding their service gave me any sort of contact number so I was force to search their Web site for it. After a while, I was able to find the number but, like most advertisements, it was spelled out, 1-800-GET-CHARTER. While I admit that's easy to remember when you hear it on the radio or something, it isn't very convenient for a customer to have to figure out which numbers the letters correspond to.

Rule 2 - Customer service can't happen if the parties don't understand each other. At first, I got an automated system that kept trying to solve my problem even though it didn't give me an option that fit my problem. The closest option it gave me was "unable to access my e-mail" which I chose. And, predictably, it led me to the very same Web site I started at and told me to enter in my login and password. After numerous attempts to tell it that was the problem, the computer, not understanding me, finally gave in and connected me to a live person.