RiverLink seems to put customer service at the bottom of its priority list.
What do you do when you are subjected to unacceptable customer service? Well, that depends on whether you’re dealing with a competitive business or a monopolistic governmental agency. With a commercial enterprise, if the poor service comes from indifference, arrogance, or incompetence, you can choose to take your business elsewhere where your time will be better used. With a monopolistic agency, like RiverLink, we have little choice. They control the toll bridges, their monopoly requires us to engage with them, yet they are disorganized, impossibly difficult to reach, and maddeningly ham-handed.
Last September, The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board that oversees Riverlink, transferred control of the toll collections to an outfit in Texas called Electronic Transaction Consultants. The results have been … disappointing, to be generous.
Billing has been erratic, delayed and inconsistent. Calls to straighten out drivers’ billing problems have increased and when you call to rectify your problem, you are subjected to longer wait times than before ETC got involved. Your first clue that customer service is at the bottom of their list of priorities is that whenever you call their 1-800 number for help, any time of day or night, any day of the week or week of the month, the first default thing you hear is, “We are currently experiencing an unusually high call volume.” Really? Even when they are closed at night or on the weekend?
A week or so ago I was just trying to get an additional transponder. I went to their web page, as suggested, but the site was not operating properly. I tried the chat feature and 20 minutes later when someone finally came on to help me, it was soon apparent that I wasn’t her only focus. She confirmed that she was simultaneously chatting with several other customers. After 17 more minutes, and just three responses from her, I gave up. It was not helpful in the least. I then called their 1-800 number and after 44 minutes on hold someone finally came on the phone and I got my transponder, but the process should have been much easier and more customer friendly. I am retired and I know my time isn’t worth as much as it once was, but it’s worth something, right?
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Riverlink is aware they have a problem
The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board voted last month to give $2.3 million to ETC to hire new workers and another $1 million to increase pay for local employees. I applaud them for taking action to improve the system, but I have questions. Why wasn’t ETC vetted as demonstrably capable of conducting proper and efficient customer service before they were awarded the contract? How do we know the money is being given to a company that even knows how to create good customer service? More, higher paid people won’t solve the problem if they aren’t properly trained, or if the trainers themselves don’t know what good customer service looks like.
Electronic Transaction Consultants should be given an opportunity to fix this problem, but they need to do it quickly. If the job is too big for them, The Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board better start looking now for a company that can do this right.
Bill Lamb worked in television for most of his career before retiring in 2022. Most recently he was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of KTTV and KCOP, two Fox owned television stations in Los Angeles. Before that he was the President and General Manager of WDRB and WBKI in Louisville and the Vice-President of Broadcast Operations for Block Communications, Inc. overseeing nine television stations. In 2018, Bill was inducted into the Kentucky Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Lamb will write commentary regularly for The Courier Journal.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: ETC must fix its RiverLink customer service. Travelers deserve better
