Cell Phone - The Rest of the Story

The sign of a good business person is the manner in which they clean up the oops of their business life.

This is a continuation of my cell phone story from Thursday.

I purchased the phone from Bill Dohrmann, the owner of CellPro Wireless. His company is a BNI member and I like to support BNI as much as I can.

I chatted with Bill on Friday to share my disappointment with both trying to set up the phone and also the features of the phone.

I have to give Bill credit. He let me talk. He listened, even when I didn't fit into his day.

He asked what I wanted him to do for me and then proposed a solution.

In the end he suggested I bring the phone back to replace it with one that would suit me better. Since Bill had to be at an out of town conference this weekend, he told me to meet with his employee, Joe Walker.

Joe is a pro. He really knows the business. He agrees that Sprint's customer service is for SH*T. (I hope this doesn't get him in trouble.) He asked questions that helped him to help me.

My intention before I arrived at the store was to upgrade to the next higher model of Blackberry, mistakenly thinking it had a camera. It does not.

In the end, believe it or not, I kept the original new phone, which I had every intention of giving back. Joe told me the reasons why it was best for me, although he proposed a second model (not a Blackberry) that had a camera, but not the direct email system that Blackberry uses.

With all that in mind, I was still going to upgrade to next higher Blackberry model and pay extra money. But Joe explained that while it physically looked different (a little more streamlined) it was basically the same phone. Joe could have gotten a few more dollars, but he knew the value of serving the customer. (Sprint, you should hire Joe to do customer service training for you.)

Joe got the right plan in place for me, as I sat there. What I had tried to do for 2 hours and 10 minutes the other night, did not include email service, even though I kept asking about it many times during that marathon session. The only thing he was not able to do was to actually set up my email, because I couldn't remember my password without looking it up.

So as I said, the mark of a good business person, is the way they handle challenges that occur with customers.

Bill, you are smart to have Joe on your side, because I felt like he was on my side this morning, too.