Naturally, I was pretty rapidly onto the Virgin Helpdesk on Friday morning who I have to say were appalling. The usual scenario, “thanks for the complaint and an engineer will call you back in 2 hours”. Needless to say by 4.00pm and 4 phone calls later I was still waiting for the engineer to call. At this point I pretty much lost my temper and managed to get an escalation – following which I reached a Customer Service rep on their helpdesk. For probably about the 5th time that day I outlined the problem, he took all the details and said he’ll needed to speak with some people, but would call me back before 5.00pm. (me being cynical was expecting the same lack of call), but to his credit the phone rang at 2 minutes to 5.00pm and although he couldn’t fix the problem there and then he promised to set up a temporary line, re-route the broadband and have something in place by the end of Monday. This has been done to the letter and I’ve been constantly updated regarding progress.

Onto BT, the original issues stems back to being visited one of their sales reps in October. They gave a good pitch and I said I would consider their proposition overnight. In the cold light of the day the numbers didn’t quite stack up so I phoned and said that I didn’t want to proceed. All sorted in my mind. Following which I then received a “Welcome to your new service letter” which I then called to re-confirm the cancellation, followed by my “First Bill” which I then called to find out what was happening. Eventually, under no instruction from myself or Virgin they cancelled the line altogether.

I also called the BT Helpdesk on Friday morning, despite the fault being 100% BT they were blatantly not interested to the point of being rude. So I sent I written complaint, which as of today (Wednesday) hasn’t been acknowledged. Astonished at such poor service, I e-mailed BT CEO, Ian Livingston on Monday morning and much to my amazement he responded. Very apologetic and putting one of his high level response teams onto the problem to sort it. Following which, they have been all over me like a rash to get things fixed… to the point why I’m thinking perhaps they could also give my car a quick wash as well if they’ve got any spare time!

However, I believe myself to be very customer centric, and have reflected during the last few days on the experience:

• In large organisations such as BT and Virgin I totally understand the need to have systems and processes, but does this mean staff should always hide behind them?
• Resolution only came from Virgin when one individual “owned” the problem and really understood that I was the paying customer and the impact it was having on the business. How can this become more widespread in these organisations?
• Saddest of all, is that in no-one in BT bothered until to the top man shouted and everyone jumped. Clearly, not possible every day in an organisation of such scale.
• How can we get away from having to speak with someone different every time in these organisations? The blood just boils when you’re explaining the same problem for a 4th or 5th time to a different person.

Having lectured on the art of Customer Centricity and worked in companies to pull terrible systems apart (I have to say usually designed by the back-office who have never seen a customer) I have some ideas, but would welcome any comments…

I’ll finish with a couple of thoughts.

A few years back I went into a company and was talking to one of the sales people and asked him how he thought the “Customer Service” process worked… he said he “didn’t know”, but pulled out a map of the London Underground and said “pretty much like this I think”. I couldn’t keep this thought far from my mind when dealing with BT and Virgin over the last few days.

Finally, I’m about to enter the dialogue with both companies regarding compensation so will let you know…