It seems that as businesses grow, one of the first areas of business to get left behind is ‘service’. If you have noticed my extended absence it is for one simple reason – moving house. What does that have to do with service – don’t get me started.
We recently moved to a new home. The move went surprisingly well. I wouldn’t say we were well prepared but the removalist were good and, whilst we had budgeted for four or five hours – they had the job done in three.
That was a great start to the move. The electricity had been connected, no drama. We even had the telephone connected with little drama. However, when it came to getting our ADSL internet connection working – forget it. Talk about a run around.
Once the telephone connection was up and running, we called the internet service provider (the same company as the telephone) and requested the move. No problems, once the line was tested it would take around 12-24 hours. That was okay – we had planned for that delay.
Day two – still no internet. Rang to find out why and got the push button option merry-go-round. After following prompts and answering questions we finally arrive at the help desk. No problems they said the internet should be up and running by noon the following day.
Day three – you guessed it. Still no internet. Back to the telephone for another dance with computer generated prompts. This time I had to reboot the modem, reboot the computer, reboot them simultaneously, nothing of course worked. So we end up with yet another help desk person who takes us through the exact same routine.
Now it gets tricky. “Your computer is at fault – get a new computer” was the first response. Hello – I have three computers that I have tried, two of them brand new – not only that, everything was working fine until the move.
“Okay, it’s the modem then, it must be failing. Get a new modem.” My response, it is six months old and you supplied it. “Okay – we will escalate this to a major fault – someone will get back to you within two working days”.
A week later and still no joy – we are a total of ten days without the net, the so called ‘two days’ was a joke. I finally managed to talk my way through to someone who actually new their job. Fifteen minutes later and the problems were solved and we were back on line.
What I want to know is – WHY COULDN’T I ACCESS THIS PERSON FROM DAY ONE – sorry to shout – but why the runaround? Why all the drama and why the wait?
For Australia’s major communication company to stuff up a simple house move, and we are only talking a short distance – a long walk at most – is beyond me. More importantly, why I couldn’t access a help desk that new what they were doing is also beyond me. As I said in my heading – big business generally couldn’t care about service. Add to that a limited number of competitors and you can see why service is no longer important.
I can tell you now – I still want SERVICE – I don’t care about the smile – but I still want SERVICE.
The lack of customer service is one of my handful of pet peeves, for a couple of reasons. The first falls under your complaint – they don’t follow through and do what they say they will do. Right now, I’m involved in a three-month ordeal, trying to get $20 for a sales commission that’s been promised twice (by two different people) to be in my bank account within a week. It’s been over three weeks since the last promise, and still no $$$. Now it’s not even about the money – it’s the principle of the thing.
My second issue is when a customer service person is lazy or, worse yet, unpleasant in the execution of their job. When I experience that behavior, I think if they act like they don’t want to be in that business, they should find some other type of job. I guess that means I want the smile AND the service!
it is interesting that while everybody else is discussing the financial crisis you are taliking about it. Very well done.
Great post, once again thanks.
I feel you Les, I experienced the same difficulty when we moved to a new house. Following it up daily stressed me especially when the expected completion didn’t happen. I just swear that I will not recommend that telephone company to any of my friends hehehe….
Well if big businesses are neglecting to provide services then the free market is designed to punish them by allowing the people to choose. So choose NOT to do business with them.
I don’t know who suffered from lack of internet more – you or me. It was terrible! I couldn’t even pay our bills until the problem was fixed!
It isn’t just the phone and internet companies though, it happens in supermarket and large departmental stores too. I have found at registers, the staff are more interested in talking amongst themselves to bother serving the customers (who essentially pay their wages) etc. And what is it with supermarkets have 1 cash register open when it is peak hour for shopping and there are 20 people waiting to pay for their goods. Or the complete lack of person serviced cash registers. Those so called quick and easy self serve registers are not quick, not easy, and have you leaving the store frowning. By the time you pay for your goods, you could have been through the person serviced register 20 times.
The better the service, the stronger and happier the cliental, the better the world in general is. Greed will be the downfall of human kind.
Les, count yourself lucky. Well, lucky compared to an online friend of mine from the Philippines.
That kind of thing happened to him even without him moving residence. So he decided to stop using the service since there’s no internet connection in the first place. The company told him that there’s a one-year contract that comes with the installation of the service, a clause he was not informed of. So, he ended up paying for the whole year service while he’s not even using that company’s service! That su(ks big time.