What do customers want when things go wrong?There was an interview with Robert Dunn, MD of UPC Broadband, owners of Chorus NTL in the Sunday Times last week. NTL is synonymous in Ireland with lousy service and Mr. Dunn is trying to do something about it. He has sensibly decided to delay the rebranding of the company with the UPC name until he is more confident of the service quality so that the new name will not be linked with the old service. The company is investing nearly €600 million in upgrading the network over five years. The focus of the interview was on the upgrading and how that will eventually lead to better service. I’m not sure that this is the right way to approach it. When you hear people complain about NTL it’s not actually the network they usually complain about, it’s the difficulty they have in trying to speak with someone. Everyone gets annoyed when something doesn’t work but most people are pretty forgiving if they can speak to someone who listens to them, acts on it and maybe even says ‘Sorry’. I’ve had the experience of waiting on hold for over an hour for NTL customer service on a Saturday morning – so long that it turned into Saturday afternoon and the customer service department was closed (though I see they now stay open until 7pm which is an improvement). I was irritated by the lack of TV service when I called but I was furious about the lack of customer service by the time I hung up. The upgrade is going to take time. I imagine there is little that can be done to speed that up. But it is possible to hire more customer service staff so that customers can talk to someone more easily. It is possible to review the processes used to respond to problems to see if they can be improved. These things can be done quickly. If I was in Robert Dunn’s shoes I think I’d let the engineers get on with the upgrade and try to improve the customers’ perception of the service where I could with immediate effect. Maybe he is, and if so apologies to Mr. Dunn, but it didn’t get a mention in the Sunday Times article.
1 Comment1. wagorica | 2009-04-09 10:26 AM hm. good one :) Add a CommentYour comment will appear once it has been approved. |