Retail Operations Make For Good HBS Case.

Wow what an enlightening experience today.  After 45 minutes on a chat session with "customer support" it was impossible to add me to my 84 year old Mother's account.  Thus mutually we decided it was better for us to go to the nearest Cox retail store to get me added to her account to help manage her services.  We visited the Cox store in one of the 10 wealthiest zip codes in all of the USA.  The store experience makes for a good case for Harvard Business School on what NOT to do when servicing customers.  The young lady there "added me" to my mother's account.  But she asked for NO ID, and in fact typed in the wrong account number.  Then I tried to log into the account to see if I could access it IN the store.  This was an existential experience - no free wifi in the store.  Obviously it didn't work.  I queried the young lady for more help but she was aloof. She said she knew NOTHING about accounts - it was a "tech issue", and she told me that she didn't know anything because she herself was not a Cox customer (I now know why!).  In the end (now that I have access to her online account), it is impossible to remove INDIVIDUAL services from Cox.  I guess I have to still call in, wait, wait, wait, .... and then MAYBE a real live person will allow me to stop using ALL of the COX TV services and move to streaming only from another 3rd party provider.  It's too bad that regional, or even national senior management don't make mystery shopper visits to such retail locations to see how BAD the staff performs.  I predict the future:  5G becomes widely available and is robust .... many many Cox customers abandon the company, and move to 100% streaming services from their cell phones subscribed to other phone company.