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The DMV vs Verizon

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18 pointsdavewiner14 comments

This is of course strictly anec-data, but my experience has been similar in dealing with both the DMV and telcos. Broadly speaking, you have pockets of excellence everywhere, as well as pockets of apathy. But, as Winer says, the idea that "private businesses will provide a better customer experience because there's competition" doesn't really hold up when you have so many distorting factors (de-facto monopolies, outsourced customer service, warped retention incentives, etc).

Same here. In my experience, if you're dealing with de facto monopolies: cable, telco, healthcare, or banking it's actually a far worse experience. You are placed in some ring of hell of outsourced lowest cost customer service, nonsensical automated phone menus, and customer hostile corporate policies.

In my area, the employees of the DMV or post office employees have generally provided more friendly and positive customer service experiences.

The profit motive will never increase the quality of service, and anybody who doesn't include the profit motive and profit margins in assessing the relative merits of privatizing bureaucracy is an idiot.

DMVs across several states have improved drastically over the last 15 years.

I remember when the DMVs were utter chaos - prior to automated ticketing. It used to be a mob scene. One of the reasons why it has improved so much was that people were furious every time they had to go to the DMV. It used to be the prime example of everything that is wrong with government. There were frequent jokes and water-cooler griping about it.

One state, I forget which, started the automated ticketing and improved the work flow. The other states eventually followed suit because it was an easy way to score points with the public. I can say the last several times have been relatively pleasant experiences.

Regarding Telcos, they are still highly regulated, highly unionized operations and in many areas they are quasi-monopolies as mentioned by kgrin. My suspicion is that this contributes to many issues when dealing with telcos...

similar anecdote by Kevin Drum: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/08/dealing-corporate-...

His conclusion: 'The government might sometimes provide poor customer service just because they lack the motivation to do better, but corporate America routinely provides crappy customer service as part of a deliberate and minutely planned strategy.'

My experience is that the DMV is fine and reasonably efficient... as long as something out of the ordinary doesn't happen. Then they're hamstrung by convoluted sequencing, seemingly arbitrary rules, and zero initiative on anyone's part to make things easy or pleasant.

The last time I needed to do something at the DMV that I couldn't do by mail, I made an appointment and showed up on time. Their computers were down. They couldn't do anything. Could they at least look over my forms and see if there was anything I forgot so when I came back it would be faster? No. Could they give me an estimate of how long the problem might last? No. Could they tell me how long it lasted the last time there was an outage? No. Is there a website or a phone number I could call to find the status? No. Could they give me the phone number for this location so I could call tomorrow before I drove all the way there? No. Could they move my appointment because it was their fault I couldn't process my business. No (I had to either make another appointment two weeks out, which would have missed a deadline, or I got to come back and wait in line for an hour).

Not a great experience. If a business was that lacking in customer service, I'd go find one of their competitors to give my money to.

So, serious question - how often do people actually switch their cellphone carrier or ISP due to poor customer service? From what I can tell, they're all pretty much universally reviled (especially Comcast, Verizon, AT&T), but manage to retain customers due to [actual monopoly over cable, unsurpassed coverage, device exclusivity, lock-in contracts, etc]

The hassle of switching from megacorp-A is not worth the trouble because the customer service doesn't actually improve with megacorp-B.

In India, since the new Mobile Number Portability rules have been introduced, making it very simple to switch your carrier, more than 10 million people are switching their operators every month. The system must be made easy enough so that the operators realize the value of customer service. http://www.medianama.com/2011/08/223-mobile-number-portabili...

I dropped an CLEC DSL a few years ago because I was spending 2 days every six months babysitting their repair jobs. Considered Comcast, but just signing up was an immense hassle - phone reps couldn't find the offers I had in my mail, or on the web, offers weren't what they seemed - and so I went with a local wireless ISP that, AFAIK, is a two person operation. They are more expensive than cable internet, but I've never had to babysit an outage in two years, and they're always responsive when there is a problem. Recently considered giving Comcast a try, but have an almost physical aversion to it.

Except... Every business I've encountered has the exact same problems. Unless you're dealing with someone who has absolute authority and no one to answer to, you're going to have problems when anything unusual happens.

With very small businesses you can get lucky and deal directly with an owner who hopefully behaves like a human being, but anything bigger, and you're going to have problems, and the further away from the top whoever you're dealing with is, the more problematic.

Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, it doesn't matter if it's government or business.

One trick that works for me, from time to time, when dealing with a CSR in person or over the phone, and running into roadblocks - ask them, human to human, what I should do. It obviously doesn't free them from their bureaucratic chains, but it sometimes frees them to give me insight into how to navigate the bureaucracy they know so much better than I do.

I've had good experiences dealing with the DMV, Oregon Dept of Records, and the IRS in the last few years. That doesn't mean that the government is the model of efficient customer service. My father's dealings with the INS on behalf of a friend were Kafkaesque. More recently, a Politico writer followed up on President Obama's advice to a farmer to contact the USDA. Here's how it went:

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0811/call_uncle_sam_...

You are forced to pay for the DMV. Verizon has to EARN their money. Customer retention isn't a concern for civil servants.

Please stop comparing apples to oranges.

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