One familiar refrain amongst all Canadian Internet users when talking about service levels is “There’s nothing we can do”. We’re resigned to bad connections, routing devices that appear untested, over-priced services, and systems that are truly hellish. Big companies operate as if they were monopolies. In fact, you don’t have to go far to find horror stories. If you even look at the history of my blog, you’ll see that I write much more about negative topics than positive ones. The challenge, I find, is surfacing the good stories, so they can also compete for attention just as much. This is a story about Teksavvy.

Internet in my home is provided by Teksavvy and for the most part, it works well. Setting up the connection can be a challenge for those who are not “Tech Savvy” (that’s why I often advise those going that way to consult me). Once it’s all working, things are usually fine, until they aren’t. One such case happened last week rather unusually. I would wake up the morning of July 28th to find my Cisco DPC3848 router/modem not working and not functioning.

This situation was something I hadn’t seen before. While on, the modem’s ethernet ports would simply stay a solid amber colour, and no other ports would light up. No matter how many ways I restarted this modem, the same thing happened every time: four solid amber lights. What is supposed to occur is a series of lights (starting with power) as the modem boots up. The boot process here isn’t terribly long, but this never changed. The modem looked like the image below 1

My guess was that this was a power issue inside the modem. It might have been a power surge that fried the board in this device. My UPS had been moved to the basement (due to renovation a month prior) and this was just getting raw power from outside. I suppose it was the right time for a lightning storm the previous evening.

That morning, I contacted Teksavvy via a Twitter direct message and sent details on the modem and an image. Making this move first (with a visual) really helps them understand what’s occurring, especially when something like this lends itself to seeing it. They responded quickly and let me know someone would contact me. Not long after that, a nice lady 2 called and we went through some of the basics and when it became clear this modem was dead, she started the process of a replacement.

The important thing to understand is that this was Thursday morning, July 28th. The coming Monday was a Civic holiday. This was the day before a long weekend. My warranty was (thankfully) still good for a few weeks. The wonderfully helpful woman took my information and expedited the shipping of a new modem right away so I would have it as soon as possible. The modem would arrive, pre-configured the next day just before the holiday.

This incredible service was possible because Teksavvy is “doing it right”. Here’s what sets them apart:

1. They accept images and visual correspondence
2. They respect and use Twitter as a viable communications tool
3. The person calling to troubleshoot knew when to stop pre-scripted steps  when new information was presented (saving time)
4. Recognizing the holiday was coming, the support person took steps to expedite the process (it may not have worked, but they tried)

These are all the pieces that make good customer service great. Because Teksavvy went above and beyond, they deserve the attention.