I finally took the plunge and decided to replace my trusty Nokia with a Blackberry. I'd hoped to hang on for a bit longer, the the clamshell feature has ceased to work and the phone pops open constantly. Now I thought about the iPhone, but in general battery power and roaming costs etc were high. in addition I could simply upgrade by Vodaphone account for no additional cost on line and that swung it. I made the order on line Sunday and as I will not be home until Friday asked Vodaphone by email if I could pick it up at one of the their London stores Tuesday. You would think this would be easy, but oh no. Here is the response: The stock of phones each store have is separate from the stock that we have for orders placed over the phone or online. We can only deliver your phone direct to you at home or work. If you miss the delivery of your phone please call DPD on the number supplied on the calling card to get delivery rearranged for a more convenient day. Call that customer service? When I was a accountant (yes I was for several years) we could do things like stock transfer journals in a few seconds. The process was not hard. Not only that they can not give me a delivery date or time so I can make sure someone is into received it. It may well take three weeks of phoning DPD on my occasional visits to the UK. Why is it easier to be a new customer, than an existing customer changing plans?
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Comments (3)
It is interesting that in recent years there appears to have been a significant change in the nature of what constitutes customer service. The emphasis now seems to be new customers rather than customer retention. It is apparent in what you experienced here Dave, but you see it everywhere with better T&Cs being on offer to new customers, at the expense of existing customers. I would suggest that what this leads to is in fact a low touch relationship which has significant implication for risk perception. It is probably symptomatic of systems or technology based relationship management as opposed to personal trust based and human based relationship management. I recently spoke on this to a group of MBA students at their summer school in the context of issues in retail banking.
Posted by Tim | November 18, 2008 11:05 AM
Posted on November 18, 2008 11:05
The mobile phone business is strange. At its strangest is Orange - I managed to escape a business account with them under the 2 week clause, but it was pure hell. They seemed to be in a model where their business was giving away expensive phones, and people using them was just an inconvenience.
Ref your experience with Vodaphone. Such things come from the notion of 'service delivery' rather than customer pull. The whole understanding of business is about them defining what they do and pushing it at you. Now well documented in standards, with conferences etc, and all truly dreadful.
Henry Mintzberg wrote a little book generally about this - well, nearly about this, but it made me laugh.
http://www.henrymintzberg.com/flying.htm
Posted by Brian Sherwood Jones | November 18, 2008 8:41 PM
Posted on November 18, 2008 20:41
Because business is fixated on sales not service. Rather like a bossy dog with one favourite ball. And we play along as it's easier that way.
The alternative seems to be spending time navigating and making sense of their deliberately obsfucated apparently competitive offers and negotiating with hordes of fast talking commission-driven sales people in order to end up with basically the same service in a different bucket.
Hurray!
Posted by Ed | November 19, 2008 11:45 AM
Posted on November 19, 2008 11:45