John Linton
I'm constantly puzzled, I almost used "perplexed", by the very strange attitudes adopted by people when they do business with a supplier or a buyer. I understand that humanity is an inherently complex species with individuals made even more complex by the events and influences in their upbringing, education, societies in which they live(d) right down to the state of their current finances and relationships, the performance of their favourite sporting team and the quality, quantity and timing of their most recent caffeine, or other ingestion, intake.
Nothing, in my quite long experience of both the corporate and retail aspects of running a business, has prepared me for the amazing diversity I have either directly participated in or 'witnessed' via being copied on over the past few months.
I've always thought that Exetel would be a difficult 'customer' for a supplier to have because their representatives would be far less experienced (and considerably younger) than the one or two people they would have to deal with at Exetel.
Of course, in the case of Telstra Wholesale that was never going to be an issue because Exetel was, and is, far too small to be worth bothering with and we just pay our bills on time with a minor billing dispute every year or so and never have any contact with them other than operationally in provisioning and fault resolution. I think we've had four "account managers" in the time we've been dealing with them.
1) I never met the first one (she was based in Melbourne).
2) I met the second one when he insisted on meeting with me when he 'took over managing the Exetel account' for 15 minutes and never saw him again and eventually received an email saying our account would be looked after by someone else who he named.
3) The third one never contacted me that I can remember.
4) The fourth one sent me an email introducing himself but I've never met with him in the 9 or so months he has been the TW point of contact with Exetel.
We had a lot of dealings with Optus in the first two years but have had no reason to meet with them for over six months now. We stopped attempting to maintain an ongoing relationship after it became apparent that we would never understand their attitudes to the supply of the services they sold and the people who bought services from them. That was undoubtedly our failing but I eventually (after two years) ran out of the ability to attempt to discuss issues with a succession of people whose concepts of business practices seemed to diverge so widely from mine.
We reached a similar situation with Unwired almost two years ago when they appointed, yet another, person to 'manage the Exetel account" (I'd lost count of the number of 'primary contacts' we'd had in the previous year - something like 4 or 5). We had one meeting with the new 'primary contact' which seemed to be based on tearing up our contract and selling us the same services at a 40% higher price. Obviously I was too obtuse to see how this would benefit Exetel so I ended the meeting and I haven't seen anyone since then - around 20 months ago. We pay their bills and they provide a service.
Both Verizon and Powertel are very easy to deal with and their reps are obliging and prompt and their management is helpful and knowledgable but it can be months before we need to contact them.
Our other suppliers are pretty small and, like us, are content to offer and provide services which we either accept and pay the requested price for or decline and buy from someone else. We buy for a while and sometimes stop buying if we get a better deal from another supplier - we seldom need to have any contact with them other than via email. No acrimony is involved by either party when we end the relationship.
With the exception of Verizon and Powertel we pretty much have no real contact with our suppliers which is a sensible, and very efficient, way of maintaining a business relationship.
And so it is with 99.99% of our own customers to whom we provide a variety of services - business and residential. We provide a service. If, at any point in time, it is somehow deficient in the end customer's view then we attempt to rectify the deficiency in the shortest possible time which we generally do. Sometimes, for whatever reason that isn't possible and the customer leaves us and goes to another provider whom they believe will be better at providing what they want.
Fair enough - disappointing but it sometimes happens.
Then theres the .01%.
Few in number but amazingly time wasting and expensive, not to mention vociferous and not uncommonly foul mouthed.
For this tiny number of customers it would appear that Exetel is the Devil incarnate whose only objective of corporate existence is to make a customer's life as miserable and difficult as possible.
OK - perceptions vary - perhaps they are correct.
Easy solution - go to another provider.
But no....it seems, at least to me, that there are customers whose principal pleasure in buying a service isn't to use the service but to give them the ability to endlessly point out to the supplier what a totally !@#$%^ service they provide and what an !@#$%^ier company provides it. (Because 'the customer is always right' they seem to believe they can address another human being in what ever foul mouthed and abusive manner they see fit to use).
Why do I make this ridiculous statement? The reason I say this is....despite all of the problems they point out with the service and the company they REFUSE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.
Exetel is a small and very efficient company - we do our best and when our best isn't good enough we reluctantly acknowledge that we have failed to meet our customer's expectations and that they will leave us.
However there is a small, but apparently growing, number of customers who will express their dissatisfaction with every, and I mean every, aspect of the service and the people and the company generally in the most condemnatory ways. I say this because on those few occasions where Exetel is unable to provide what the customer is demanding we suggest that they move elsewhere.
They never want to do that.
Recently we began (as we legally and clearly can do under the terms of our contract) advising those abusive customers who find nothing we do for them is capable of making them happy that we would be unable to continue to provide them with the service and giving them the required notice to move to another provider. A standard business solution to a, fortunately rare, business situation.
It's impossible for me to understand what now happens with these desperately, vociferously and continually unhappy people.
As soon as they are disconnected........A NUMBER OF THEM SIGN UP WITH EXETEL AGAIN.
I can only conclude that these people have a psychological need where they can abuse other people from the safety of their telephone and email account rather than taking the consequences of abusing random unknown people face to face.
What other explanation can there be?