M3 Sweatt

Christopher Oster writes in MSN Money about the “companies topped a list of more than 400 nominated by MSN Money readers,” and ranked the worst performers in the poll in their own “Top Ten” list. 

“Last month, we asked readers to tell us about their worst customer service experiences, and more than 3,000 responded within 24 hours of our request. Now, with the help of pollster Zogby International, we are introducing MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of the companies whose service is most often rated “poor” by consumers.

“The results are in, and one company ranks below all the rest: Sprint Nextel, one of the country’s largest wireless-phone carriers.
great customer service is not hard.

“At right is the Bottom 10, ranked by the percentage of people who said a company’s customer service was “poor.”

Some included in the list are not surprising (this is my personal view, having shopped at several of the retailers mentioned), but I was surprised at a couple of the “dishonorable mentions” in the article (listed here). In my opinion and experience, Wells Fargo and Dell rank consistently high.

I have had excellent in-person customer service at Wells Fargo: the latest experience was when my son opened up his first savings account, and without first knowing if I even had an account at the branch, the staff (thanks, Efi) treated him like a high-roller flying into Vegas for a six-figure weekend. Better, when he came back to make a deposit of a whopping few bucks in birthday haul, they remembered his name and once again rolled out the red carpet (and cookies).

As for Dell, we have Dell computers at home and I have a desktop in my office, among others, and have written here and here about some of my (generally positive) experiences with Dell’s customer support (all, so far, via chat and email). Related to the experiences we have at home, AFAIK Dell had no idea of my affiliation with MS when I pinged them, and they’ve always been professional and courteous. There was one experience where we ‘stumped the band’ with an esoteric software application problem, that was eventually solved with a bump up to second level support… and they called me back on their dime when they had the answer, rather than keep me on hold.