Telco Customer Service – Oxymoron

With all the great case studies and conferences on Customer Experience you would think that most of the major consumer facing companies have got it together.  But it seems that the telco industry, fails time and time again.

I blogged recently in an article titled  #CXFail You couldn’t make this up about a friend how posted this on Facebook

It’s a sad reflection of business nowadays is that my major accomplishment today was getting to speak to someone at VirginMedia that was able to use a telephone and find out the problem with our order. He also managed to retain my number and call me back.

Mind this took 3 calls yesterday speaking to 5 people and 2 calls today, one of which was 45 minutes long, speaking to a total of 6 people.

There are real human beings out there that have brain cells but to find them you have to be extremely persistent and keep holding on through the dire hold music.

And I thought that this was as bad it could get.  Until I read this blog. A customer, so pissed off with Vodafone, he wrote and blogged his letter to the CEO.  The full letter is here, and it makes pretty painful reading. But in summary:

I told the rep that simply doing the same thing over and over  would not solve the problem and that it was not fair that a customer should have to deal with this for 3 hours repeating the same process over and over again. He told me that we were going to do it for a 15th time….. I am so tired of Vodafone and I still after 4 hours of continually trying on the phone, cannot access my account.

Solving these cannot be that difficult. It is, at is heart, a process issue and then providing the right apps and tools to enable the support staff to deliver the processes.

But maybe the UK is not ready for Customer Service, as Jack Whitehall – a Brit comedian – explains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsyouRyUWXo