My thoughts are going to Cisco tonight. While I like their products – for what I had the chance to work with. I must say that Cisco has always be the worst customer support service I have experienced in my life. I worked in call centers, I called many, many support lines and I surfed through thousands and thousands of website but Cisco’s website is the worst in its genre.
Each time I called, it took forever before getting to the right representative, that’s after finding the right number to call. Even if Cisco sent me surveys to know my overall Cisco Support experience and I did answer them: Cisco support service and website must improve. I feel like they are not learning or listening over the years.
I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and I have a CCNA certification in hand. I remember when I was studying the CCNA, I found Cisco’s website to be a real pain and that was the “student” portion only. Now, I need to access the support site to get IOS updates for my equipments and it is still a pain.
Now, you get the point. I don’t like their service but you still think, well they are all like that. AT&T, Bell, Time Warner are no exception, DMV is something too? Well, I will show you that my experience is worst by 10x!
First, I received an email with the following subject “Service Agreement Renewal Overdue” Oops! I knew it was coming but I didn’t know the exact date. Anyway, how hard is it to let a customer know 30 days prior expiration? Also, it was my first year of Cisco customer support so you can imagine that I did not know that the renewal process was going to be much more painful just by not renewing online. My first guess was to look for a sales rep. at Cisco. My company is not running on gold so I have to check the renewal price and get approval from my boss first. But there was no phone number in the email. So I went online and looked for about an hour. Got impatient and finally contacted Cisco by email asking for the phone number.
I got an answer: “This is an acknowledgement of the request you made to Cisco Customer Service. Your request has been issued the case number XXXXXXX. Please be informed that we have sent your request to the appropriate team and they will send you additional updates as your case is processed.”
Then I got another email: “Your question has been received. You should expect a response from us within 48 to 96 hours.”
Then I got another email: “Kindly be informed that we have logged a case with the pre-sales team for providing you the required information. Response Time: 48 to 96 hours”
Then I got another email: “Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.”
Finally!!!!! I asked the question on Dec. 12, I got the final answer on the 20th. But that was just the beginning!
In my first email, I asked for a phone number for Canada and the one also for the US because the last time I called the Canadian line, I was transferred to London, UK when I pressed the English option and for the French option I was redirected in France. Unfortunately, the support center in France is not 24h/24 so it was always asking me to call during normal business hours even if it was 2PM EST. I knew there was something when I heard the lady’s voice. At that time I was just laughing at the situation. Though, I don’t care being redirected to another country, I do care when I am on the phone 15 minutes with a customer representative in London and the line cuts off. It was my first customer service experience with Cisco, I am at the third one and it is always the same thing over and over.
Back to my original story, I finally got the phone number and here is how I got it.
“For questions related to service contracts you will need to open a case at [URL]
or you can send an e-mail to
[email@cisco.com]
or you can call 1-800-123-4567 (US and Canada); 44-123-456-7890 (Europe).” I changed the info and numbers just for the sake of Gods.
Once again, my guess was to talk to someone, not by going online because their website is just as bad as their customer service. So, I can’t get it wrong, it says (US & Canada)!! So, I called the number and I got a sales rep in less than 5 minutes. Wow!! The lady gave me a price per router and gave me a reference number. Now that was quick and easy! I thought so, BUT. There is always a BUT with Cisco! I got the price approved by my boss and I called back to get the new support contract. The new rep. is telling me that, I am a customer and not a partner. For that reason, I need to go through a reseller and Cisco cannot renew it. I asked where I could find a reseller. She sent me on Cisco website, and while she was explaining it to me, I was actually doing it. There is a locator tool on Cisco website. You know the kind of tool that any worldwide companies have to facilitate the location of reseller, well “facilitate” is a big word. I filled the form and pressed the “Search” button and I got “500 – Internal server error”. I started laughing again! The lady tried on her side and it was the same thing, so I am not dumb. She mentioned though that she was not in Canada so it was probably the reason why she was not able to access the tool. It’s a theory!
I said to the lady, that my Cisco experience was always a nightmare so I was used to it and I hung up by saying that I knew maybe 1 or 2 reseller in Montreal. I finally contacted the company who sold me the equipment in the first place but they were not able to renew the contract because they can’t re-sell. So, they pointed me to another company and lucky me, I have a sales representative there. (I did not know they were selling Cisco equipment, funny!) I got my renewal price and quote in less than an hour directly into my inbox.
I am looking forward to activate this new support contract! I keep you posted!!!! Maybe I will posted my first two experiences with Cisco because they were kind of funny.
I would like to mention that I kept my hard feelings while on the phone and I prefer to laugh than start screaming or yelling at the rep. While it is frustrating, it is not the fault of the representative. That’s why I am taking the time to answer every survey that Cisco sends me because I hope that one will be read and taken seriously.