Recently, I got an alarming text from my cell-phone provider letting me know that I was about to go over my limit on either data, text, or minutes. It wasn’t clear which of these was about cost me an overage charge, and they muddied the waters by including my current usage of all three...none of which were remotely close to the thresholds.

I quickly logged on to double-check, and verified that I was well below my plan’s allowance, so I called their customer support. They looked up my information and calmly informed me that I was indeed “safe.” However, they could not figure out why I had received the text in the first place. I told them I had recently changed my plan and added more minutes, which they could see in their system. This did not change their answer, though; they simply did not know why I received the text.

Because I had a some time to spare, I decided to pursue the issue. I stayed on the line with them to try and figure out why I had received the text. While they weren’t as willing as I was to spend the rest of the day brainstorming possible causes, what did emerge was that they were locked into a very small subset of their company’s systems and were unable to fathom how I could have possible gotten a text when everything appeared normal. Evidently, their training had covered reassuring the customer (which I was) and making a note in the system (which they did), but as far as figuring out what had really happened, this was beyond their ability.

I realize that at this point, my question was (sort of) answered, and I had reassurance from them that I would not incur any additional cost. However, the customer service manager in me wanted to solve the issue.  While I politely, albeit somewhat reluctantly, allowed them to end our conversation so that they could go on to the next customer, the nagging questions continued in my mind:

• Am I the only customer who has received this text?
  
• Do they escalate these types of "anomalies" to anyone (for example, does development want to know)?
  
• Would I ever hear anything back from them regarding the root cause?
  
• Do they have a knowledge base that is populated with new issues, no matter how small?
  

To be sure, this is probably small potatoes compared to the billing errors, plan changes, and other "incidents" they handle day after day. However, these are the types of small issues that I am sure a company would want to know about before they become something much larger.

As we all focus on our own areas of support, it would behoove us all to ensure that we have processes in place to capture, address, and communicate anomalies and one-offs, if for no better reason than to reassure support managers who contact our service desks.