Sunday, April 4. 2010The Customer Is Always RightJohn Linton How many times do you think to yourself "I don't have to worry about that any more" - and then you do? It seems to me that it happens constantly and just when you think you have absolutely, and for the very last time addressed some niggling, or major, issue and moved on to something else - you have to go back and do it all over again. I'm beginning to think that I am simply not equipped to do the things I have taken the responsibility for doing in either my personal or business life - either that or I simply don't understand the fact that some large number of things will never work or work out as you have every right to expect them to. Perhaps it's just that the human species gets bored easily and doesn't want to do things that obviously work well when you do them a certain way so they must do them differently after a while to see if they achieve the same, required, results? Maybe human beings are innately creative and therefore can't bring themselves to do things the way they know produces the expected result or maybe they simply get bored with doing things that are required to produce essential results and don't bother to do them at all? Too negative? Perhaps. But even on this beautiful Sunday morning with its bonus extra hour of sleep can't rid me of the annoyance I felt in dealing with my emails this morning. There was the latest email (five previous) from a woman customer screaming (in the written sense) abuse at me, Exetel generally and all of its employees that she has been without internet for three days over a long weekend because of our stupidity, indifference, ineptitude and rudeness and..... Her internet service was suspended for non-payment. She had lost her credit card and canceled it. She called up and was told to look at the screen and enter a correct credit card number which would restore her service or simply click on the 'forgiveness button' and restore her internet for 72 hours while she sorted out how to deal with it. So she tried to do this but, for whatever reasons, she, three times, entered credit card details that were incorrect over a period of two days. Interspersed with each wrong entry were abusive calls to Exetel demanding restoration of her service and for the last day and a half emails to me of unbelievable levels of abuse demanding the same thing. Eventually she managed to enter some correct credit card details and, magically, her service was restored. So, the first email I looked at this morning was yet another tirade of abuse demanding "compensation" for her children not having internet access for two days of the long weekend and a statement that the first thing she did when her access was restored was to churn away to a "half decent ISP". The second email I read earlier this morning was a similar stream of abuse, if anything even more unreasonably worded, from a person who had emailed me twice before over the past two days stating that not having telephone "support" had caused him to lose "$112,000" in his business and he was going to "sue Exetel for every last cent". I replied to his first email which I received around 10 pm on Friday night saying that he could call Exetel support 7 days a week and that on week days (including public holidays) and that support hours closed at 9.30 pm (AESST) so he could call again tomorrow but as it was a weekend support opened at 12.30 pm but closed at 9.30 pm. Around 11.30 I received another even more abusive email saying that "he had checked on a third party forum and had been assured that Exetel had no telephone support and demanding that I resolve his problem. I replied giving him the support telephone number and the url of the support contact page. Back came an even more abusive reply saying I was a liar and and he had checked on the third party forum and been assured that no telephone support existed and "he was going to his lawyer". I got two more abusive emails yesterday and this morning he sent, presumably his final, abuse email saying that he had got a 'PC help company' to come over and fix his problem (he didn't specify what the problem actually was but obviously it was no fault of Exetel's) and that he was going to charge Exetel for the cost of that plus all the "hundreds of thousands of dollars he had lost" because he didn't have an internet service required to run his business. The customer is always right even when they can't enter a credit card number correctly or seek (completely wrong) advice about how to contact Exetel on a third party forum and refuse to believe the url and telephone number details provided to them by the CEO of the company whose contact details they somehow managed to find. Such people certainly do nothing to brighten up your early Easter Sunday morning.
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I don't suppose it's possible to post some of these tirades (names withheld, of course), is it? I'm sure we could all do with some laughs at the expense of some of the bozos that are out there.
Hope you're having a good Easter break, nonsensical rants from the personal responsibility deficient notwithstanding. Comments (2)
My usual response to these amusing lowlifes you occasionally mention for our enjoyment is I hope you gave them the flick. Verbal (written) abuse of this level is not acceptable. These LL's need some compulsory anger management classes.
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I don't think we really need to read those tirades here. They're probably on Whirlpool if you really want to see them.
Enjoy the rest of Easter. Comment (1)
About time for a new 'moron of the week'? I love those posts!
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For what it's worth, I'm really happy with the business grade service I'm receiving form Exetel. I had had my doubts (very visible rants from residential customers on Whirlpool), but the business service has been great.
A couple of your business sales people know that I'm always happy to tell prospective customers how good service is. Don't let the bastards get you down. Happy Easter. Comment (1)
Perhaps there should be an extra box on the Exetel application:
Tick here if you need to blame others for problems in your life. John, your business and management seems to me to be anything but flaky. Keep up the good work Cheers Comment (1)
That could be a good idea - resulting in the application being 'rejected' and the IP used to make the application banned from further access.
Also - thank you for the reassurance - but I have my doubts. Comments (3)
Unfortunately a fair percentage of our population are morons, and a percentage of these are also customers. Really if there's a problem with your service, how hard is it to call directory assistance to get Exetels phone number...
For this reason I can't see how you can achieve your goal of 0 support calls. No matter what tools are provided there will always be people who lack reason or logic. I got sick of dealing with unreasonable customers face to face. So when I sold my last business, I decided online only support for the next one. But have found (as you have) that people can be even worse in the language and threats made via email than they ever were face to face (even when they are blatantly wrong). Unfortunately it only takes one or two morons to ruin your entire week, you quickly forget about the thousands of happy customers who are not contacting you. Apart from suggesting these morons seek service elsewhere I have not found a solution to this problem, as new ones always replace them. From what I see myself Exetel does not do much brand marketing. So when a business is approached by Exetel sales people one of the things many potential customers would do would be to Google this unheard of company. Usually on the first page of results there will be some negative forum posts about Exetel. Today one of the links on the first page pointed here (http://forums.cnet.com.au/broadband/exetel-customer-service-10019853t.htm). Unfortunately a lot of people still think that anything written on the web is the truth and this harms your image (and if true may not apply to business services). Even though you are looking to move away from relying on residential ADSL, I believe it would be beneficial to improve the image of Exetel in such forums. Perhaps one of the roles of your new assistant (or Sri Lankan based employee) could spend an hour or two a day to post some replies to the slurs and even copies of these abusive messages with the responses to add balance to the negative image portrayed on the various forums. It couldn't hurt and would not cost a lot to implement. PS sorry about the long post. Comment (1)
Thank you for your suggestions.
While many of the things you suggest are sensible the amount of time we have to spend on 'non core' issues is almost nil. I have never heard of the forum you referenced and doubtless there are more than that. Comments (3)
". . . spend an hour or two a day to post some replies to the slurs and even copies of these abusive messages with the responses to add balance to the negative image portrayed on the various forums."
In my experience, the problem with responding to negative rants on public forums, is that the easy anonymity of posting leads to even more hearsay, slander, etc. People who want something for nothing, or abrogate their personal responsibilities will always complain, and as loud as they can. It's my belief that people's sense of entitlement has grown out of proportion to their actual entitlement, fostered by media beat ups of "big corporations" taking advantage of the "average battler". This has removed the, for lack of a better phrase, "social etiquette" of dealing with businesses, allowing people to rant and rave in their communications with a business, instead of taking a measured approach, and collaboratively solving whatever problem exists. In the communications industry, it's made even worse by a lack of understanding of the technology, and the limits that it imposes, hence the many diatribes complaining of "my speed sux". Comment (1)
If I was involved in the type of business thathad the potential of "hundreds of thousands" of dollars of lost business because of my internet going down, I'm sure i'd invest the few thousand dollars a year to have a second connection with another provider. Perhaps even a few wireless connections with different carriers just in case.
It's the same as having airbags in my car, I didn't pay extra for them because I expect to use them. If something ever goes wrong, i'll be glad I did. Comment (1)
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