The CRM Cynic: Bernie Ebbers Owes Me $62

Now that Bernie Ebbers has drawn a 25-year sentence, I can report that I, too, was victimized by Worldcom.

It started early in 2002 when my wife and I switched our landline service to MCI/Worldcom. We soon experienced line problems that disrupted service for two or three days out of every week.

That meant many frustrating phone calls to people who clearly didn’t like dealing with customers. All they ever said was, “We’ve opened a ticket” or “We’ve closed a ticket,” and one manager hung up on my wife when she took on the same surly tone he was using.

We assumed that the brains at this mess of a company either never heard of CRM or figured it wasn’t necessary when selling a commodity like phone service. But we changed our view when a repair person finally showed up.

He told us that everyone was afraid that they were about to lose their jobs. Indeed, several thousand Worldcom employees were laid off in the weeks that followed. And he did fix the problem.

But we promptly switched to AT&T, deciding not to pay MCI for the final month because we had gone without service for most of it.

Needless to say, they put the puny amount into collection, and soon some thug was on the phone exhorting us to pay our bill.

“Pay our bill?” I responded, forgetting the real issue. “Why don’t you pay some of yours? You’re bankrupt!”

Now I don’t know if these problems have anything to do with the accounting fraud, or with Worldcom at all. And I admit that I was shocked by the sentenced meted out to Ebbers (some cop killers don’t get that much).

But it did suggest a subject that I haven’t seen yet in the academic journals: How to maintain customer service at a troubled or bankrupt company. What kind of internal marketing does that take?

Has Reichheld noted that when a company is rotten at the core, it spreads out in every direction?

And now that they’re cutting up Ebbers’ personal assets, I want to make a claim.

I shouldn’t have paid the second to last month to MCI. We went without service for most of that period, too.

So what if we were small-time customers who probably deserved bad treatment? We want our money back.

Bernie Ebbers owes me $62.

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