Customer shmustomer
December 1st, 2008 by Jon Clements
And so, it’s nearly over. Barring the handover of some details that will set me free to forge a new life with a new partner, a relationship stretching back nearly 10 years draws to a close. Yes, I’m leaving my mobile phone provider.
But it hasn’t been easy: not because of some peculiar affection for a company which enables people to track me down at any time of night or day. No, it’s literally been the most difficult contractural arrangement to extricate myself from, ever.
Up to now, the service given by this household name has been quite acceptable (they let me make and receive phone calls - hard to mess up if you’re a mobile phone operator). I paid my bills on time by direct debit, so it’s the very least you’d expect. But dare to close your account and be prepared for the full force of corporate inertia to be unleashed.
The minutiae of the case is too painful to recount, but when Tory leader David Cameron referred last week to the Government as “Stalinist”, it suggests that he clearly hasn’t tried to swap his mobile phone number between networks.
After two months of endless phone conversations with an array of chirpy call centre staff promising to phone back with answers, trips to one of the company’s high street branches which bears the same name but might as well be a cheese shop for all the help it’s been, the pain should soon be over.
But anyone who lives within a radius of at least five miles will have heard me talking about this company in a way that would make Gordon Ramsay blush. It’s an old adage about the unhappy customer telling hundreds of people, but the level of customer service displayed sometimes by companies hints that they really don’t care. For all the investment they throw at advertising, PR and clever sponsorship deals, they are undoing it all at the point of delivery.
Astonishing to note, but there is actually a British Standard Code of Practice for Customer Service, which is clearly being used to prop open doors or support coffee mugs across the nation. Elsewhere there is some pretty comprehensive advice to be had for free on the subject.
With the cost of winning new customers far outstripping that to retain existing ones, it’s curious that nobody yet at the mobile phone company has asked me why I wish to leave or what they could do to make me stay. Maybe they were about to dump me, but just got fed up of being put on hold.
Tags: , advertising, British Standard Code of Practice for Customer Service, call centres, Customer service, mobile phone companies, PR, sponsorship, unhappy customers
December 16th, 2008 at 8:42 am
[…] Bridgett Gayle, picked up on some of the sentiments expressed in our customer service blog post, http://pr-media-blog.co.uk/customer-shmustomer/. This is her […]
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Could not agree with you more, especially with the credit crunch looming in the background, customers are becoming more price sensitive and good customer service will become a key factor in customer retention, helping companies to maintain higher margins.
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 am
verygoodservice:
I think you’re right, but I wonder how many companies are investing in ways of improving customer service as opposed to simply cutting their cost base?
I hope to be writing a new post soon about a company making concerted efforts to change the way it handles its customer relationships.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Many companies are transferring more of their trading/servicing on the internet where we do a lot of the work ourselves. In many respect the clients become first line customer service executives. So the investment is required in technology.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
[…] not before time. Last December, I wrote about a personal customer service trial I was going through with a mobile phone company, whose name was spared in the hope the sorry mess […]
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
In many respect the clients become first line customer service executives. So the investment is required in all the technology.
Regards
marry
June 17th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
In many respect the clients become first line customer service executives. So the investment is required in all the technology.
July 7th, 2009 at 8:23 am
“Good” Customer Service is often spoken about but very often goes unpracticed by you and your employees - the future of your business and your employees’ employment security are dependent upon good Customer Service. The Factor which matter is Customer Satisfaction !