Knoxify

Jan­u­ary 2010 will mark the fourth anniver­sary of own­er­ship for my car. It will also mark my intro­duc­tion to Lee and Jena of Sun Matic Con­trol who I’ve been doing busi­ness with for about the same time frame.

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We’ve had a long run­ning series here at Knox­ify called ‘Cus­tomer Cen­tered’ where we focus on spot­light­ing those who make doing busi­ness a plea­sure. As I drove into work this morn­ing I thought about this series and wondered:

Who has the best cus­tomer ser­vice in Knoxville? Does one par­tic­u­lar instance stand out in your mind as going above and beyond?

Photo by: RW Pho­to­Bug

Hello, my name is Michael, and I drink copi­ous amounts of fine teas…

I’m not sure if many of you out there can relate, but I never set out to become a loose-leaf tea addict. In fact, just two years ago hot tea really wasn’t my thing. How­ever, after fix­ing tea for my wife one morn­ing, I was tempted to forgo my usual two cups of joe in exchange for a cup of hot Eng­lish Breakfast. That indis­cre­tion started me down a path that began with tea bags and now con­tin­ues with noth­ing less than the best loose-leaves avail­able on the Knoxville market.

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“Out of 60 com­pa­nies, only 4 had a worse rep­u­ta­tion than Com­cast…” -Wired

The quote above from the Feb. 09 issue of Wired Mag­a­zine prob­a­bly drew an array of nod­ding Knoxvil­lian heads as the cable giant tries to pol­ish its local cus­tomer ser­vice image. Recent Knoxville out­ages haven’t helped the situation.

Since heavy winds and rain hit Knoxville last week, my neigh­bor­hood felt the power out­ages, downed lines, and the hard effects of heavy branches. Our lines are not buried which means we have expe­ri­enced loose cable wires and with the amount of chil­dren in the neigh­bor­hood, we all have been con­tact­ing Com­cast via phone.

It turns out that they have been and still are slammed given the recent weather prob­lems. Yes­ter­day, Sun­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary, I turned to Twit­ter for my Com­cast issues.

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As I’m sure our in-house real estate agent will agree, the hous­ing mar­ket isn’t what it used to be. Times are tough and stress lev­els are run­ning higher than normal.

But for some crazy rea­son that didn’t stop my wife and I from jump­ing right in, look­ing for the per­fect house to suit our first-time-buyer needs. Being the home buy­ing new­bies we were, we turned to Suzy Trotta, shoot­ing hun­dreds of ques­tions her way in hopes of find­ing some answers. Not only did Suzy have the answers, she helped us find the house we’d been dream­ing of. Only one prob­lem: we needed a mortgage.

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“There’s pineap­ple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pep­per shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and pota­toes, shrimp burger, shrimp sand­wich. That– that’s about it.”

When it comes to cus­tomer ser­vice, I’m par­tic­u­larly picky when it comes to the din­ing expe­ri­ence. I expect a warm wel­come, my drink order to be taken within 30 sec­onds of my butt hit­ting the booth and food that makes me want to blast a tweet to all 140 of my fol­low­ers.

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Yes­ter­day evening I left Tomato Head des­tined for my comfy couch at home. To my sur­prise, exit­ing the Mar­ket Square park­ing garage after 7:00PM would cost me $1.00.

Atten­tion poten­tial thieves: I don’t carry cash.

I politely told the garage atten­dant that I did not have $1.00 to which she replied, “we accept cash and check only.”

I des­per­ately unfolded my wal­let to reveal that I was indeed broke.

With a faint voice she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it” and opened the gate for me to exit.

Good cus­tomer ser­vice is hard to find but some­how, it found me. Thank you Ms. Mar­ket Square Garage Attendant.

Pho­tog­ra­phy by pattie74 99

Cus­tomer Cen­tered is a new series of posts that show­case Knoxville busi­nesses that actu­ally care about their cus­tomers. If you have a story to share send it our way.