Please hold . . . The death of customer service

Chris L says:

09:33am | 21/09/10

Please don’t blame the front line staff Thatmosis. They are under enormous presure to sell a ridiculous number of various products to a limited customer base (they have to keep asking the same people who come in each week if they want a home loan yet or they have to “please explain” the oversight to their managers). I think the frontline staff work harder than the CEOs that rake in millions plus bonuses.

Shifter says:

01:31pm | 21/09/10

Agreed Chris, it’s that much of problem that some companies treat the primary purpose of your call as a chance to up-sell to you rather that assist with whatever issue you have.

A certain company that I did over the phone technical support for asked us to start up-selling products customers would normally contact the sales/accounts numbers for. Thankfully the front line staff wouldn’t have a bar of it and the ‘promotion’ fell flat.

KH says:

08:50am | 21/09/10

Oh! So I’m not the only one who was still getting bills from Telstra for a 0.1c credit, for an account I closed 6 years ago.  It finally stopped a few months back, after 9 phone calls.

incervisiaveritas says:

08:51am | 21/09/10

Ask em to send you a cheque. That will probably fix it.

kate says:

03:03pm | 21/09/10

I disagree, consumers have created the world of being ‘a number’ because they have no brand loyalty. How much would you pay for a better service? How often have you threatened to take your business elsewhere to reach your own ends? I know where I work ( a bank but I probably can’t say which one) we’re able to reward a long-term relationship, never have to sell to you if our products won’t suit your needs but we can’t respond to threats of ‘moving business elsewhere’ or seeing people consistantly rate shop. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours kind of thing. We all work in Australia, nothing is outsourced.
The catch? Well, we’re probably a bit more expensive when it comes down to it, but you want the service? You have to pay.
Sorry about that.

Michael says:

04:07pm | 21/09/10

@ Kate: you seem to be confusing branded products and commodities.

See, since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of markets, consumers are and always have looked for the lowest price on a commodity because it is fundamentally the same item from one seller to the next - a fungible good.  Hence why Coles and Woolies advertise their apples at different prices; an apple is an apple, therefore lowest price wins.

Branded products are different.  The seller is not trying to compete with a lower price.  They are trying to compete with a “better” (or just more desirable) product or a better service.

Many companies making commodities *try* to make them into branded products because they know the only winner in selling commodities is the one who sells it at the cheapest price, which by default is the manufacturer.  In service industries, the seller has to create a better service to become a branded product since they have, in fact, no distinctive product to sell - only the service.

In short, the telcos, and only the telcos, created the world of being ‘a number’ because they are fundamentally offering the same product.  They are selling commodities.  They could have offered a branded product, but they chose to cut each other’s throats by just competing on price alone.  As a result, for 99% of the industry, they can only compete on price, which means cutting costs and service as far as possible since the phone lines are all held by Telstra.  As a result, it’s now a commodity-based industry.  A phone call is a phone call is a phone call regardless of whether it’s Telstra, Optus, or iiNet that provides the phone line.

In the case of telcos and Telstra in particular, part of this selling at the lowest price factors inertia into the equation as well - how much crap you’re willing to put up with because it’ll cost you, say, $100 to switch providers.  High exit or transfer charges are, from the telco’s point of view, them improving their profits: if they don’t have to transfer you to another provider, it’s a net gain to them and therefore the same as having lower prices than their competitors.

I might add that banks, similarly, play on inertia as well.  Witness exorbitant mortgage transfer fees or early exit fees.  That’s got very little to do with the supposed inconvenience of plugging in the final payment 30 days ahead of the mortgage’s expected end date; it’s got more to do with using people’s own inertia against them and unwillingness to incur costs so more money can be pulled out of them.  After all, banks offer little more than commodities nowadays, so they have to shore up the battlements somehow.

Kordez says:

04:37pm | 21/09/10

@kate, I think your confusing consumers for shareholders.

I’m unsure as to others experience with Telcos, but I’ve always left an organisation when I’ve threatened to do so and it has never been because of the bill. 100% of the time it has been the service provided which forced the decision to leave.

Vodafone had a loyalty program running for a while, where I was showered in gifts once a year, including a loyalty discount applied to my bill each month. Once Vodafone switched off paper billing unless I wanted to pay for it, introduced that bitch Lara and moved their contact centre to somewhere in the middle east, it was time to move on. I managed to get hold of the Vodafone MD’s e-mail address and advised him that I would be leaving for those three reasons.

His response was along the lines of; “Vodafone is committed to providing you with great services and the business decision to move our billing and technical support to a foreign country was to ensure our rates remain competitive within the national mobile marketplace.” Did I care? No.. Do those waiting to speak to someone for over 45 minutes while listening to Lara rave on about how much she cares about them care? No..  If the service was available, there’d been no issue.

A company who provides great service and great pricing under the one brand is Virgin. Richard Branson, although disgustingly rich and only interested in staying that way, continues to open successful business ventures which provide great service for a great price.
A good example for comparison is Qantas to Virgin Blue. I’ve used both, and exclusively a Virgin boy now. Because I don’t mind paying a few bucks when I get on board to have a feed if I need one, as Qantas flights are often 3 times more expensive for exactly the same service including a feed. The staff tend to have a sense of humour and the cabin banter is good fun sometimes.

Tony of Poorakistan says:

08:43pm | 21/09/10

Kordez

good call on Virgin Blue (I have also swapped to them from Qantas).

They have exactly the sort of attitude one wishes one’s telco and bank had. They provide the same service (flying you from A to B) as the other airlines, and those that want to pay for extras can. But the real difference is in the service, not the product. Their staff have the same pressures, the same tasks, the same deadlines. Why then can they do it all with a smile and still find time to brighten our days as well (as opposed to Qantas, where customers are seen as an embuggerance)?

I once left a perfectly foul week of meetings in Sydney and on the way home, the purser told a particularly pathetic joke. Everyone groaned and he challenged the passengers to do better for a free drink. I won a series of drinks by telling some jokes and got home in high humour. And who could forget having all the Virgin ground crew line up to wave goodbye to the aircraft as they do every now and then? That is one company that knows what service is.

Mon says:

09:22pm | 21/09/10

I have had the exact opposite experience with the TIO. Trying to deal with them was a complete nightmare and waste of time, and was exactly the same as actually dealing with Telstra itself. I was basically shoved around from person to person, given numerous reference numbers and then told to call back the next day after I had tried AGAIN to sort out my billing issues with Telstra. When I called them back, I was again given another reference number and told to inform Telstra of this number (the same as in your case fairsfair). Telstra couldn’t have cared less, and again did nothing to help me. After again calling the TIO, I was told they would look into it and get back to me. I again had to chase this up with the TIO, and in the end, after still getting no where with the TIO, I simply ended up having to sort things out myself via lawyers.

In my experience the TIO is an absolute joke - just another bureaucratic mess.

Shifter says:

01:27pm | 21/09/10

So what happens if your internet connection breaks Shane?

Bernie N says:

10:57pm | 21/09/10

Just because the TIO is funded by Telco’s does not mean that it is going to go the consumers way.

The issue with the numbers of complaints, is that the TIO don’t count the one customer complaint once - each time it is escalated to each level from 1 - 4 - it’s counted as a separate complaint.

In addition, it doesn’t include complaints that are downgraded to enquiries and there are many of those.

In my experience, the TIO is more consumer advocacy rather than what it was set up for, which was to be an independent arbitrator.

One particular ISP is threatening to take the TIO to court for failing to follow it’s own constitution and ACMA rulings when actioning complaints, there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

Yes, customer service sucks, but it sucks in many areas - including in restaurants, shopping centres, government departments - not just in telecommunications. Let’s not throw stones here, we’re all ass-holes when we want to be - just Telco’s are getting hit with the media stick a bit harder right now because it suits the political climate.

Bethany says:

02:30pm | 21/09/10

“you get your a** kicked for so much as thinking about getting up from your desk”
much as I might sympathise, that’s your problem.
“won’t hang up until their problem is solved.”
Why should they? They didn’t cause the problem; you (the telco) did.
“so if you’re waiting in a long call queue, blame each other.”
Excuse me? We should blame each other because the service is so abysmal that we are all forced to spend hours on the phone trying to get it fixed?
“thats not to say that customer service couldn’t use a shake up”
Customer service wouldn’t need a shake-up if the telcos delivered a decent service in the first place. Bring on real competition please.

Adam Diver says:

09:21pm | 21/09/10

Don’t know who you worked for but in my experience the stress was because of the middle management. It was by far the worse job I have ever had, and the customers were not even that bad.

This is why the telcos are in deep sh*t:

I excelled at my job as customer service. I was part of an inbound call centre who was suppossed to fix the customer issue and then provide an upsell or a cross sell. I was never much of a salesman but didnt mind this selling as you could usually find better deals for the customers particularly as cost generally came down.

Now I excelled as ansewring enquiries. I could find issues quickly and rectify them it was just something iI happened to be good at. I was so good I answed twice as many calls per day then the next person in the call centre. Part of this reason for success is I did not ask a lead-in question after every enquiry (A lead in question is so you can offer something to sell).

You may assume that my sales figures were down and I was costing the company money. Well in fact my sales figures were top 5 out of 100+ because a) I dealt with there issues so quickly, and b) I offered sales where there were real benefits to customers.

So knowing these facts I got my ar*e kicked for not leading in and then had to go to a team meeting as we were reprimanded for taking to long on calls. After a few months of humiliating role plays and group sessions, managers afraid to deal with particularly angry customers, and constant nagging about my shortcomings whilst ignoring the fact that I exceeded all my KPI’s I felt it was time to leave. After spending 6 weeks training me, and my reportable success I was asked to leave immediatly after handing in my resignation, no offer to try and keep me, to try and save them from having another new recruit with minimal knowlegde nothing.

More so there is no personal accountability, you can mute yourself, put people on hold, disconnect calls, transfer to other people and the poor customer has no idea, and the operator gets into no trouble. But as soon as that operator does not lead in on a call all hell breaks loose.

This standard became obvuios with me when people I helped refused to talk to anyone else or literally cried at my help. I ended up giving my work email out to over 50 people and would call them when they emailed me to resolve an issue. Needless to say I would of lost my job if anyone found out I was providing excellent customer service (and still exceeding targets).

iansand says:

06:53pm | 21/09/10

My boss sues the buggers at the drop of a hat.  Take so far around $12k.  And they have always settled out of court.  Read your Service Guarantee.  It is legally enforceable.