Anyone that’s read my blogging for any length of time has probably come across my posts about Cingular, the enormous wireless division of SBC, now renamed AT&T. Although they got kudos from me for the efforts during the hurricanes this past fall, on the whole I‚Äôve felt that this carrier in particular has been dysfunctional in the extreme and my posts have reflected a combination of disdain and frustration depending upon what it was I was trying to accomplish.

As a result of my past experiences, any time I have to call the carrier I do so fully expecting to come away from the experience in a worse mood. It has been the rule more than the exception at any rate. However, I am also a guy that likes to give credit where it’s due and to encourage further improvement by acknowledging when things are done well. For a nice change Cingular, or should I say a particluar Cingular employee named Storm made my evening better than I expected when he went the extra mile to help me sort of the WAP and MMS settings for a new Nokia N70 that I got recently.

Ordinarily this would be just a run or the mill tech question, but what made Storm’s efforts special is that this phone hasn’t even been released in the US yet and as such the settings weren’t just at his fingertips or on one of his preset screens. At first he didn’t seem to keen on dealing with me, but I think when he went to check the phone and realized that this would be a tough one for an unaided customer to sort out he decided to put forth some real effort and he managed to find the settings and send them off to me after about 10 minutes of extra work. For this I am grateful and hope his supervisors and co-workers note that it is this kind of work that makes the difference in the mind of the customer and goes a long way towards changing one’s impression of a business. Nice Job Storm. Thank You.