John Linton
I filled in a questionnaire yesterday for a market research company engaged by Telstra Wholesale to determine various levels of happiness that wholesale customers feel about Telstra Wholesale compared with (what appears to be a randomly selected 'other wholesale supplier') apparently selected from the answer to the question "what other wholesale supplier do you currently use". I'm pretty sure I've responded to similar questionnaires in the past because I remember thinking why did this on line program select Verizon rather than Optus from whom we buy a much larger range of services on both the previous and current occasions?
It probably is irrelevent but it produced a startling contrast when the questions followed a pattern of asking for levels of 'happiness' first about Telstra Wholesale immediately followed by the same question about (in this instance) Verizon. I would have thought that a 'late' question which asked what percentage of the respondents wholesale spend was spent with Telstra should have been slightly expanded to also include the percentages spent with other wholesalers which could have then been used to better select a company for comparison - but then I know next to nothing about such surveys and their methodologies.
So, I proceeded to mark Telstra Wholesale right at the bottom, or close to the bottom, of the scale in every category except actual performance of the service supplied by TW (in our case we only buy ADSL1 wholesale) while marking Verizon near the top of the scale, in several cases right at the top of the scale, for many of the same questions. While you might suggest this simply reflects my anti-Telstra, unreasonable biases, I wouldn't think that many dispassionate people would answer questions along the lines of "how satisfied are you with Telstra's prices" or how satisfied are you with Telstra's billing issue resolution" in a way markedly different to the way I responded to them.
I wonder whether any respondent answered that they rated Telstra's wholesale pricing as good or excellent? Perhaps some did.
It made me wonder what Telstra Wholesale would expect to see when the market research company provides the consolidation of the various answers to the questions? Would they seriously expect to actually learn anything they didn't already know? Does any company enjoy doing business with Telstra Wholesale? Does any wholesale customer actually think Telstra offers good pricing, has helpful and knowledgeable account management and senior management or handles billing disputes with anything other than arrogant disdain and a total brick wall?
Maybe they only do that for the 7 companies I have been involved with over the years in buying services (dating back to the days when Telstra was Telecom Australia)......and before you quickly point out that the common denominator was my personal attitudes (and you did think that didn't you?) I was a 'passive' observer/hearer of incidents in three of the seven companies.
On a positive note it allowed me to 'formally' review how happy we have been with Verizon over the years we have dealt with them not just in terms of 'product performance' but with virtually every other aspect of the relationship and in particular the competence and responsiveness of their account and more senior management whom we have always rated very highly - as either the best or 'equal best' that we have dealt with over the time we have been in business.
All business decisions, of necessity, have to be made along purely practical and pragmatic lines with a heavy emphasis on the financial and contractual aspects of the decision making process. However that process, especially in 'close decisions' can often be influenced by 'relationships' and, sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously, how 'helpful' you are in your pre-decision discussions with account managers you feel more friendly, perhaps the more accurate word to be used should be "sympathetic", towards. Verizon has always been very good in this regard having had three different account managers over almost five years and two different 'division managers'; Telstra over the years has been, without exception, absolutely and uniformly awful. Other suppliers have been up and down depending on their always changing personnel.
As a long time 'salesman' I have no doubt that a good company sales representative makes quite a considerable difference to many customer's buying decisions.
I sometimes wonder why more companies don't understand that?
PS: Maybe I wasted my time as I received this a few minutes ago:
" Yesterday we sent you an invitation to participate in the 2009 Telstra Wholesale Customer Experience Survey. Due to server problems with our online survey host, [company name deleted], you may have experienced some problems accessing the survey. We are currently moving the survey to an alternative service provider and will email you once the issues are rectified.
As the survey is conducted confidentiality it is not hosted by Telstra Wholesale and is the responsibility of [company name deleted]. We appreciate your patience and we look forward to your feedback once the situation is resolved."
Needless to say - I won't waste another 15 minutes of my life filling it out again.