I recently had a similar experience with Comcast. After years with the same old DVR, I wanted a specific kind of new HD cable box. But the initial Comcast response — 4 people on the phone, another at a physical Comcast office, over almost an entire day of trying — was to keep telling me: You get what we give you, and that’s all I can do. I just kept calmly repeating that this was not an outcome that would make Me The Customer happy; and if you don’t have the authority to help me, I understand, but then you need to put me in touch with someone who does.

I was polite, but firm, and I finally got transferred to a person who took *personal* responsibility for it, which is the key, as you discovered. And that person sent out a tech who took *personal* responsibility, when the first desired cable box turned out to be a brick, to arrange to return with a working model at a specific day and time. Which he did.

Now I’m happy! But most customers won’t work that hard. They expect the company to do that. And if not, they won’t be that company’s customers anymore. I stressed this to the Comcast people I dealt with, but you never know if they will send the message up the chain of command. Or, more important, if the company even has a mechanism or an attitude to allow this.

It’s astonishing to me that companies invest billions in technology, and comparatively nothing to establish/refine employee systems and training to make sure it all serves the most important person in the business — the customer.