speakeasy’s outstanding customer service
In my years on the internet, I’ve dealt with a number of mainstream ISPs…back in the dialup days, I settled on a local company who was good at supporting even things that they didn’t have to. I had a habit of janking up my local lan settings as a kid…their support staff was kind enough to walk a younger, savvy but inexperienced me through fixing whatever I had mucked up.
Since being responsible for my own utilities, I’ve dealt with almost every major telecom provider…Verizon and Comcast for internet, and I’ve had an account at almost every cell phone provider. Bottom line: the customer support at every single one of them absolutely positively sucks.
When we opened IndyHall a couple of weeks ago, I made a conscious decisions NOT to utilize Comcast or Verizon for our commercial internet install. My members’ usage was priority, and a quick, stable connection was a must…but I’ve been without service for unacceptable amounts of time in the past due to awful, awful customer support.
I started asking around, and a lot of people recommended SpeakEasy(referral code included). I called to get some clarification on their commercial line plans, and settled on the top speed commercial DSL: 6meg down, 768k up. For our office, this would be perfect, and I was told that should I need to grow into a T1 it wouldn’t require any downtime. The service rep helped me schedule our installation, and we were slated to have everything in fairly close (within about a week) of our first day in the office.
The two part installation was painless. On the first Monday in the office, someone came from the phone company to install a loop in the basement of the building. The tech showed up on time, had worked in the building before, and was very friendly and got right to work. A few days later, I called Speakeasy to confirm that his installation had been completed successfully, which I was told was correct. I also confirmed our final installation date, which at the time was for the following Tuesday.
At that point, I shot in the dark, asking the phone support “Is there any chance of moving up the final install date? It’d be really great to provide your service to our members sooner…”. Quickly, he came back, and moved up our installation to Friday instead of the following Tuesday, buying us 4 extra days of service! I was so pleased, I thanked him, and moved on.
The final installation was also great…the tech once again arrived right on time, and diligently worked through some really tough, old wiring in the building. He updated me regularly on the progress, and we tested the line together before he left.
1 week later, my phone rang, and it was Speakeasy. “Hi Alex, we’re just calling to see how your first week of service was?”.
Wow. Proactive customer support. That was new to me, in the realm of internet providers and telecom. I was honest with the guy and told him that while the speed was acceptable, it was a LITTLE slower than we had hoped, but that was mostly likely due to the old lines in our building. He agreed, and said that if we wanted that I could call back at any time and they would come back to test and, if necessary, replace the lines.
At this point I told him who we were, what we do, and how I value customer support so much. I explained to him that this was one of the most pleasant experiences I’d EVER had with customer support, let alone within the telecom industry, and that I really, really appreciated it.
So this post is an open THANK YOU to the folks at SpeakEasy for proving that customer support isn’t dead, and I highly suggest to anyone, based on my experiences, that you should consider using their services for your next business venture.
Tags: internet, commercial DSL, speakeasy, verizon, comcast, customer support
27. August 2007 at 07:58
Wow! We clearly don’t see this type of customer service very often nowadays. Setting up Internet for us at the office has been somewhat of a pain. Since we moved away from Bell (Canada), things run a lot smoother, however.
16. September 2007 at 11:35
Alex, I woke up this morning in the same Sunday mood. At home enjoying my day off, still in the office, BLAH. I’ve been working from home for a company out of NY for 2 years. I’m a broker in the electronics industry. All I can say is the editorial of you & your “shared space” workplace put a huge smile and a sigh of relief on my face. Although I’ve grown the territory to the point of needing an office, we’ve yet to find the experienced people we need (believe it or not) here in the bay area.
I’ve moved my laptop from the kitchen, to the living room, to the hallway, to the garage… just to break the everyday boredom and lonliness.. I now know it was not just me.. all though I have children who drive me insane, I more then ever need other adults around me. Thank you for sharing your story and your smile.. it carried all the way over to the West Coast, we’re you also made someone else smile and gave her a sense of relief. Thank God I’m not the only one who doesn’t but on pants til after 12. All the best!