Customer service is dead… long live customer service

I used to work for a company called Information International Inc  (III or Triple-I) in the print industry. Customer service was king. The people at Triple-I would bend over backwards to help clients. Many of the customers were newspapers and if you know anything about newspapers you will know that yesterdays newspapers is worth nothing. A newspaper must come off the printing press at a certain time or else it is no good to anyone and loads of money will have been lost. Part of the printing process means that suppliers must deliver customer service…. they must help their client get the news out.  Sounds simple ?

I then worked for Tandem computers, again customer service was king. If you know anything about mission critical computers you will know that the computers must not stop. Again a big part of this is the customer service people and their attitude. Sounds simple ?

Then via compaq and Dec I ended up at Sun Micro. Again, customer service was a big thing….
Sounds simple?

Well customer service is a team game, it takes energy, effort and dedication. It takes time to build up customer service….. and when you do …. you get a reputation for it.

Now let me contrast this with recent experiences. I seem to have a habit of sniffing out people who just do not want to or believe that customer service is too expensive and that only price matters.

Ryan air believe that their customer service is their low prices. You pay nothing and therefore you should accept nothing. If you get stuck, tough and if you want something extra well then be prepared to pay for it.  I have flown with many airlines and I just can not believe how bad they are. They seem to make a point of it. To me it seems that they want you to know that you will be treated badly and therefore as you expect this….. then you will not complain as it is pointless. I have seen Ryan air in action…. and I am not impressed.

Earlier on in this Blog I posted my experiences with BT… shameful.

And now for my next…..  I recently tried to buy some software from Dabs4work.  Oh brother, they made it so hard. You can only email them or use their chat system. These are fine if you only have simple issues…..  Hey hold on a second…. I tried to order some software…. that  should be simple? Right ? No!!!

To cut a long story short I failed in my attempt to buy the software I wanted, first due to an address problem and due to the fact that they would only answer emails after about 10 working hours…. Work it out… if you need to send a couple of communications it could take 3/4 working days….  In the end the issue was resolved…. but the Item was out of stock!!!  So I then tried to buy the same software unbundled…. and guess what? I ran into the same address issue !!!!  This could have been so easy to sort out…. but the chat people would not help…. so I decided to write to the customer service manager…..  still no response!

End Result   AMAZON £1600   - £0  Dabs4work

Yes I put the business with Amazon. Thank you Amazon.

Dabs4work have irritated me so much that I tell everyone how bad they are. And with this Blog posting…. even more people will find out.

In my early days we were always told that one unhappy customer will tell 7 others. That is the magic formula. If you upset enough people then you will end up killing your own business.

So let us examine the title of this weblog:

Customer service is dead… long live customer service

More and more companies are going for the cheapest, low cost route. Ryan air and Dabs are perfect examples of this. Maybe they looked at Ebay and have “understood” the model to be cheapest is best. But the detail they have missed is the rating system. The actual Ebay model is Cheap but with good service – in theory at least.

It will be a sad world if we can only deal with companies via email… at some point the idea of “service” will have to comeback. I for one will pay a bit extra and I will avoid the likes of BT, Dabs and Ryan Air.

BT get it going

 BT Broadband ordered mid Jan 2007 and actually got it working on 23rd March 2007. From 1st Feb, to the go live date until 23rd Feb it was of no use. Just like a chocolate teapot.

Here is some advice to those that are also suffering… actually go through the process of cancellation and you will actually find that BT will try very hard to keep you. I was put thru to their Proactive care Team and as luck would have it…. they managed to sort it.

BT amaze me!  Cancellation leads you to Proactive care ?

Hmmm, maybe I dont know the meaning of “proactive” ?
This is what Dictionary.com says:

• serving to prepare for, intervene in, or control an expected occurrence or situation, esp. a negative or difficult one; anticipatory: proactive measures against crime.
• Acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty; anticipatory: proactive steps to prevent terrorism.

So there you have it. I always thought that proactive was something you did to prevent mess…. which to me seems like a good idea. BUT BT have gone for the first idea….. sort it all out once the S..t has hit the fan.

So this is the lesson, if you have a problem…. BT are going to take months to do something about it. So threaten cancellation and then and only then will BT work to solve your problems.

Now here are the selling points for the BT proactive service

• you get an engineer who will give you his/her name
• you can actually call them when YOU want
• managemenent actually listen to them
• the guys on the phone actually care

Cor blimey, this is stating to sound like rocket science…… there are hints of good customer service here!!

You might be thinking that I am a convert to the BT business model? 
Errrrmmm  no
We have just moved into a serviced office where there are 9 other businesses. I have spoken to about 4 or 5 of these other companies and  three of them have explained their woes to me. One of them was without service for 6 months!!

Not good, looks like my 2 months of hell was actually ok on the scale of bad. So it would seem that many many companies have had their issues with BT.

Who is running BT these days? Is it the brother of a certain Irish airline?

The Future of the UK is in the hands of BT – god help us all

On the BBC website I read that many in Korea and Japan have access to Broadband with amazing speeds. Upto 50 Mbps. Amazing considering that I now have a Zippy Zero Mbps.You would not believe the hell I have had from BT just to get Business Broadband. To cut a long story short… BT has been splattered into Wholesale, Openreach and I think BT or is it BT Business or do I talk talk to BT Business Broadband?  Dunno. They have been cut up into many different bits.

From a process point of view I can only talk to their level one people and when ever I phone them up they make me do all the first level diagnostics….. This has been going on for a month, yes for a month. Forget escalations, they avoid that. Forget using the complaints dept as they will close the complaint because it is a technical problem….

If they promise a call back, it might happen 1 in 5 times…. and oh they will keep closing your ticket!!  Why? Well their tests show that there is no problem!  No problem?  My broadband does not work. You know this, I phone you every day to chase the problem…. “yes sorry sir it wont happen again. I have created a new incident and I will put in capital letters DO NOT CLOSE.”  Guess what? They closed the case!!

Can’t complain because they will close the complaint as it is a technical problem. The 1st level wont escalate….. and they close the tickets after a period of inactivity!  Who is inactive? I keep phoning you everyday… so why close the case? I did manage to escalate once to a manager and he did call me back a few times…. after that I guess he must have got bored and moved onto something else….

I had an engineer turn up on site. He did not want to be there, he did the absolute minimum and then b….red off. Yes, line is fine, noise levels are ok. So what happens next?  Case closed!!

How is this possible ?

• they have sent me two routers
• hey have been to the exchnage umpteen times
• the broadband has never worked and they keep closing the case

Eventually they sent an engineer back to the exchange… who knew nothing of the case… which meant that I had to explain to him my whole lifestory for the month….. As Luck would have it this chap was interested in doing his job and found that the line was ok one way and not for two way traffic.  (I bet they get DUPLEX in Japan)

So my broadband has been “ceased” – Very funny – it was never alive. And now will be provisioned again. Time to wait 10 days ….

I did a lot of googling to see if I could troubleshoot this myself. Unfortunately, I could find nothing and since BT do not seem to have a knowledgebase…

Symptoms: 
BT Two line router 2700. Internet light is always red. The diagnostics show four “UPs”. So the router would get as far as the PPP stuff but would never try to login to the remote access servers.

BT – wake up.
Here is a plan of action for  you.

1. Ownership. Stop passing stuff about. Someone needs to have a global view of what is going on.
2. Time based escalation. If the problem is old then the client is starting to fume and get very angry with you. You must escalate the ticket to people who can fix stuff
3. If you agree to a call back. Call back – simple
4. Yes you have broken yourself into lots of little BTs… but that is no excuse as YOUR engineers have said that it was not much better before.
5. The customer comes first.
6. Go and buy a knowledge base
7. Only close a ticket if a customer has agreed to it

This is not funny – you are turning us into a 5th world country.

So why did I go to BT?  Am I stupid ?

Well this was the logic. Many of my clients use BT and often enough I have to sort out their email problems. So I thought, might as well go with BT as they cant be THAT BAD…  Also I have heard that 3rd party providers can get into a pissing contest where BT and the 3rd party blame each other………   Well I have news for you.

When the 1st BT engineer turned up with his negative cloud and poor attitude.. after he had done his job, he said to me: “Well it looks like you will have to call your provider.”  Er WHAT ?  You are my provider!  Look at the router it says BT – all of this came from BT.

His answer. “We cant show you any preference we must show all providers the same level of service.”

So what does that mean?  Same level of service?  You mean everyone gets B…. all when stuff does not work?

So thats it then? No advantage to using BT?  They said it, not me.

Well folks you might be laughing, but this is a sad story for the nation. We as a country need the best possible broadband, BUT we are at the mercy of BT.

In Japan they have a system for dealing with shame. They call it Hara-kiri.