You know what it is like when you return home after a holiday. You can pretty much guarantee something is not working. So it was with some trepidation that we got home last Saturday. However, the house had not been robbed, the car started first time and the antiquarian central heating system had survived.
The only small fly in the ointment was the lack of a working phone line. Apparently someone had opened a manhole cover and made off with more than 200 metres of copper wiring.
It has been said many times before but it is no less true that you judge a company, not when things go right but when they go wrong. On this basis the judgement on BT in this case was pretty damning. Not because they did not fix the fault quickly (impressively they were working day and night for three days) but because they failed to communicate with their customers during the process.
Surprisingly for a company in their line of business, BT does not have a very advanced call centre. It was almost nostalgic to work your way through several automated menus before speaking to anyone, until you remember that the reason why these automated menu systems died a death was because everybody hated them.
Ironically, the company continued to advise me to check on my fault online, apparently totally oblivious to the fact that, if I have a fault on my phone line, checking online might be a bit of an issue. When I did make it to a public Wifi connection and checked online as to the status of my fault, I was advised the problem had been solved. A quick call to my home phone line confirmed this was not the case, as did a text message from BT a short while later. Confused? I was.
Perhaps I was unlucky. Yet a colleague of mine who moved house this week experienced similar issues, both in terms of the company not doing what it had promised to do and then with the company failing to take his complaint seriously when he called. Between us this week we have spent eight hours on the phone to the company. I wonder if I can invoice them for the time?
As I sit here eight days after the fault was reported, I have no working phone line but I do have a working internet connection. No one has called or sent a text to check the fault is resolved and I have yet to pluck up the courage to take on the automated phone line again.
The examples change, but the lessons remain the same: solving the problem in itself is not enough, unless it is accompanied by good, clear communications. What could have been a positive brand experience of the company (obvious signs of people working on the problem + problem fixed quickly = company taking the issue seriously) has become a poor one (lack of communication + confusion = company does not care). Shame really because BT did the difficult thing and fixed the problem. The company just forgot to communicate along the way.
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