Wednesday, November 25. 2009Every Commercial Company Claims To Offer Excellent Customer Service....John Linton ...why is it that so few actually deliver it? We completed the second day of the Sri Lankan company review yesterday which remains on schedule with only some relatively minor aspects to be cleared up tomorrow. Annette also completed almost all of the personnel reviews by COB and we will do the full personnel review after completing the business plan review tomorrow morning. The Sri Lankan company has grown rapidly over the last few months and will continue to grow as rapidly over the coming three months if we continue to develop the facilities as we have discussed over the past two days.
Our objectives are to create as perfect a customer support I’ve heard it said , As can be seen from the article by Paul Sheehan cited Exetel does have the directorial will to aim to provide perfect So why aim at such a very, very difficult objective? The Exetel have the opportunity, by hiring truly excellent people in Sri Lanka (which we have the opportunity of doing because we choose to pay three times more than other companies and provide working conditions that are, at least, three times better than other employers) to deploy customer support personnel that are in every way 'superior' in terms of the ability to deliver the very best standards of customer service. The only thing that we can't be sure we have is the management dedication and long term commitment to making a perfect customer support operation a reality. So that is our challenge in Sri Lanka and what we will concentrate on later today. It will be the first step to delivering perfect customer service - unless we fail like so many other commercial operations before us.
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Your customers seem very happy with the customer service that you provide. Based on my crude analysis of the 2008 Whirlpool Survey results, Exetel finished a statistical dead heat with iiNet, and comprehensively beat many of your bigger competitors...
http://thebernoullitrial.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/which-australian-isp-has-the-best-customer-service/ Exetel punch far above their weight in terms of customer service, for which I think you should be commended. The 2009 results will be interesting, because I'm expecting satisfaction with Westnet to fall after the takeover by iiNet. Comment (1)
The main problem I continue to have with Exetel support, is that they do not keep me updated on the status of faults.
Even if the problem is with a supplier (Which it has been the last 2 times) just a single update a day or two would be appreciated. Sometimes these things take weeks to resolve. (like the last problem connecting to HSPA) So many times over that period Exetel support just went quiet, in the forum and also the helpdesk. It is incrediably frustrating... I do understand that somethings are out of your control, but going days without an update makes me question is anything is happening. I actually agree with and like the support system Exetel has in place. I would much perfer to email/forum support with any problems. It gives support a chance to check anything before responding and I would imagine is just a quick as contacting by phone. If I could just be kept informed of the status it would be great. Comments (2)
That could be the case today and if it is it is a process error which as you have drawn it to our attention will be looked at - just as we use all customer feedback.
Perfection is the goal - I know it is not in existence today but my discussions over the past two days encourage me to believe it can be achieved in the future. Comments (4)
tech companies come and go. once every major ISP has a helpdesk operations run out of a 3rd world country the advantage you have disappears. Managers also pass off the benefits that cost advantage give as the result of good management.
Dell are showing this more than ever... Comment (1)
Perhaps you're correct.
To date, anecdotally from what is reported, those companies that set up support operations outside Australia haven't done it very well......which was my point....they did it for the apparent cost savings....not to actually do it better than could be done in Australia. Comments (4)
I think it because measuring the true performance of a customer service team is very difficult. So companies resort to measuring what they can measure - average time per call, average time spent unavailable etc and focus on those. So the imperative becomes to do more, faster. "Better" simply doesn't figure into it.
Comment (1)
You define the problem precisely.
The issue is to determine how end user satisfaction is achieved not how some set of metrics is achieved. It seems very few companies have been able to achieve this. Comments (4)
The single biggest complaint I've seen with Exetel support is more to do with confusion than anything else, the 'closed' status of support tickets confuses a lot of people into thinking they received less than stellar support, something along the lines of "Q: my connection keeps dropping out" might receive an initial reply to do an isolation test and the ticket is marked as 'closed'
To those that don't know how the ticket system works (which seems to be plenty of first time users) they think they just got brushed off, some will open another ticket which can break the audit trail of issues they may be experiencing The one improvement I would like to see is the word 'closed' changed to something that better describes the actual situation to remove the confusion, maybe hard to do in one word but it needs to be something that reflects the correct status 'ticket responded pending customer feedback' or something along those lines anyway for what it's worth I've found the support to already be leaps and bounds above what I've experienced from other suppliers Comments (2)
Rick,
It is difficult to change as it's a function of the Cerberus system. You are quite right though and we must make more effort to find a solution. Comments (4)
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