John Linton
......and just like the guy whose financial needs are to big for his... (apologies to B J Thomas).
My personal share holdings mirrored the average by losing 10% of their value over the past few weeks and show no sign of reversing a continuing decline. While it's re-assuring that Krudd and Whine have declared the 'GFC' to be over (because they have spent all the money that artificially propped up one or two financial indicators for a few months) every sign I see around me is that financial conditions are steadily getting tighter and tighter - both around the rest of the world and in Australia. That is not particularly bad news for a highly efficient company like Exetel but it does have some very real negatives.
Declined payments from the monthly bill run increased by over 10% and perhaps some of that is due to the usual 'time of year issues' (overspending over the Christmas holiday period) it doesn't account for all of it. Suppliers, irrespective that Exetel pays every bill very promptly and all small supplier's bills as soon as they have been checked continue to demonstrate increasing anxiety about their outstanding receivables and Exetel continues to get lower offers for services we buy if we buy greater volumes.
I conducted a mini-survey of new customers who churned their connection to Exetel over a one week period and got some surprising replies. The 'survey' was ultra basic and was via email:
Thank You For Choosing Exetel
Dear [ ],
Thank you very much for choosing Exetel to provide your internet services, we very much appreciate your business and will do everything we possibly can to make sure you continue to believe your decision to move from your previous supplier was the best decision you could have made. Should you care to do so we would appreciate it if you could 'reply' to this email and filling in the brief questionnaire below before hitting the 'submit' function in your email client.
1) Why did you decide choose Exetel?
a) Recommendation by a friend?
b) Your own research ?
c) Previous Exetel customer?
d) Other - please specify?
2) What Prompted Your Decision To Move ISPs?
a) Need for more downloads at better price?
b) Need for same downloads at lower price?
c) Unhappy with previous ISP?
d) Other - please specify
[Of the 312 emails sent we received 287 replies. Of the replies the percentage break down by reason was:
Question 1)
a) - 47%; b) - 29%; c) - 15%; d) - 9%]
Question 2)
a) - 17%; b) - 64%; c) - 5%; d) - 14%]
A surprising result. I haven't had time to think through whether this very small poll actually means anything or not but the 64% moving to a new provider to reduce costs rather than to get more downloads would not have been what I would have picked before seeing the 'results'. If it is at all reflective of something more general then it seems to indicate that there are more people in Australia than just me who think times are tougher than some people would have the more gullible of us believe. Of course it is a less than minute number of responses and in that clear sense has absolutely no relevance but it has encouraged me to look at implementing some sort of ongoing questionnaire for new customers that can be automatically parsed in to an ongoing report of reasons why new customers come to Exetel. It might be very helpful.
I guess we could also, if we can develop such a process for new customers, put in place the same process for customers who cancel their service with Exetel. The current feed back mechanisms (fora, suggestion box) do a great job in making suggestions on how Exetel's services and processes can be improved (over 600 suggestions were implemented in 2009) but I imagine a formal analysis of why customers leave could also be very useful. I will check on what's involved but it shouldn't take too much effort or time to put something useful in place....and as we will write the code ourselves we can make alterations/additions as we find out what can be improved.
One more thing to add to the never ending list of things that should be done.