Setanta have gone West and there seems to be little sadness about the fact – aside from some residual sympathy for the people blamelessly losing their jobs. Why are Setanta so unloved? Partly it’s down to their diabolical reputation in terms of customer service.
Like many companies of late their business model has included our old friend ‘outsourcing’. Instead of hiring a in-house team of customer service people, they sold it out to the highest bidder, and probably hamstrung them with a bonus system that actively rewarded poor customer service. There’s a big disconnect between the needs of some customers (“paying £34 a month to watch Aston Villa vs. Fulham no longer makes sense now I’ve lost my fucking job”) and the needs of Setanta (“we need another 14 million subscribers to break even”) Naturally, Setanta being run by fuckheads, they’ll have bonused the customer service provider on the basis of customer retention. So when you phone up to do pretty much anything other than sign up, you’ll have been subject to ignorance, obfuscation, fast-talking, abstruse sales-patter, coercion and outright refusal.
I sympathise. I am a customer of TalkTalk, who I took on board in the hope of sorting out my home internet connection. The previous occupants of our house were obsessed with phone sockets apparently. Even now, I still open a rarely-used cupboard and stumble across yet another phone socket obscured by a pair of rolled-up tights and a copy of Heat on an almost weekly basis. Consequently, my phone line is distant, crackly and apparently incapable of handling an effective broadband connection.
Now. Almost all phone engineering in the land is handled by BT – who still monopolise the lines up to the wall of the house. So if you have a problem with your phone, only BT can look at it if it’s outside. If it’s *inside* the house, you have to try and find a phone engineer, do it yourself, or pay a hefty premium for BT to come. It’s something like 80 notes for them to even come and look if you’re not a customer of BT themselves. Companies providing telephony services like TalkTalk basically rely on the phones being tickety-boo and thus don’t actually employ any engineers. This means that if there is a problem with a line, they have to call in BT like anyone else. And like any regular schmo, that costs them money and fundamentally they’re not going to pay for it.
So, their callcentre staff must have, somewhere on their big list of Goals and Values “do not send an engineer to a customer’s house”. For the thick end of two years now, I have had phone calls where that practically reduce me to tears. They always run like this:
Me: Hi. My internet connection doesn’t work and…
Dickhead in Lahore: Is your computer switched on?
Me: Listen. I know you must deal with loads of people for whom that’s a problem, but believe me I know how to work a computer, OK? Trust me: everything’s plugged in.
DiL: [pause] OK
Me: Now. The phone lines in my house aren’t very good and I would like an engineer to come out and look at them. I will pay whatever it costs – I’m good for the money and I really want it doing. Please can I book an engineer.
DiL: Can you see a green light on the modem, Sir?
Me: Hello? Is the line clear? Can I book an engineer please. I’ve got a credit card…
DiL: Yes, Sir but can you see a green light on the modem?
Me: [weeping] It isn’t the bloody modem. I need an engineer. Please. Think of the children…
DiL: Is the modem attached to your PC, sir?
Me: I phoned last week. And the week before. We’ve been through this on lots of previous occasions. I want to give you some money, here and now, for an engineer. Please – charge me anything you like.
DiL: Do you have the modem cable, Sir?
Me: [howls of anguish]
DiL: Sir….?
Bzzzzzzzzzz.
It got even worse when I tried to cancel my contract with them. So bad, in fact, that somehow I’ve found myself signed up to them for another 18 months.
Your customer services team are – or should be – the customer’s advocate within your company. If you incentivise them along lines that aren’t commensurate with that viewpoint then what you’ll get is a shedload of disatisfied customers. They’ve managed to hang on to me purely because I lack the obduracy necessary to carry on fighting them, but I feel nothing but venom and spite towards them and can barely pick up a pint in a pub without igniting into splenetic rage about them as soon as someone mentions phones. So they might have kept my £150s worth of business this year, but I’d lay a pound to a penny that half a dozen more of my friends wouldn’t even consider them as a result of my experiences.
That this needs pointing out in 2009 is, frankly, baffling.
I feel your pain. I’ve been there with Talk Talk & Axis…Still great to see more and more people ranting, maybe one day this fuckwits will start listening|?