How my Blackberry has changed my Real Estate Business – part 1

How my Blackberry has changed my Real Estate Business – part 1

This past Wednesday, my cell phone service stopped. I tried to call a client and after 4 rings got one of those fast busy signals. My first thought was there was something wrong with my client’s phone. I went so far as to email him telling him he had phone issues. Oh, was I wrong. Soon thereafter my land line starts to ring. I can tell by the caller ID it is my husband and I prepare to give him a hard time for not calling my cell (we have one of those free calls to those on the same service plans) and he informs me my phone is not working and the message says my number is not in service. This causes me to immediately panic. How many clients are going to freak when they get a message my phone is no longer in service? How can I function without my cell phone? How will I go on breathing without life support???

After a quick search, I locate a phone number for customer service and use the land line to contact them. At this point, I could easily spend the next 15 paragraphs telling you about my 2 hours on the phone with customer service resulting in them telling me my Blackberry was faulty and directing me to the nearest store for a new SIM chip. Needless to say, I am basically pulling my hair out. I am convinced I will need to enter a 12-step program if I don’t get my cell phone fix soon.

I trot down to the local store and am shocked to see it is packed. At least 15 people, all with the same panicked facial expression I am currently sporting. Oddly, most of them are just standing around, frozen in place, staring at their phones. It is as if Tom Cruise just ran through town announcing the arrival of the aliens.

I find my way to a customer service person and explain my issues with my faulty Blackberry. You can tell she is holding back a laugh. She takes a step back from her protective counter, thus creating more distance between us, and slowly says “Ma’am, when you were on the phone with customer service, didn’t they tell you one of our cell phone towers was down and nobody has service?” It is at this moment the room starts to spin and I wonder if I am about to lose consciousness.

“So there is nothing wrong with my Blackberry?”
“Nope”

In the interest of maintaining a PG-13 site, I will leave out the next hour of my day and just let you imagine what was going through my head. Eventually I returned to my office and composed email to everyone I thought might call me letting them know I was without my life support system. Using my land line, I was still able to do business and function but I just felt so lost.

Why am I sharing this? Well I guess if I wanted to defame my cell provider, I could name them here for the entire world to see, but we all have bad days and it just happened to be a bad day for them. Everyone makes mistakes and has circumstances beyond their control. I’m quite satisfied with my service and usually go for months at a time without having to contact my provider. Could they educate their customer service people to check to see if service is out in a specific area before troubleshooting the phone? Absolutely. In fact, I emailed the company, not to complain, but to suggest that this step was possibly missed during my phone call. The support person who handled my call was new. She will probably handle the next call differently.

I’m sharing this because it really hit me how dependant I am on technology and just how much of my business is cultivated because of that technology. We will get into that in part 2.