Customer Service, the big companies just don’t get it!

@Virginmedia @O2 @Galaxy Living. The first two are large “communications” companies that seem to find it difficult to communicate! The third is a lot smaller company but the biggest difference is that their customer support is unparalleled. If you phone them, a real person answers and if they can’t help they will  advise that someone from technical (or whatever) will phone you back shortly and they do (phone you back in a timely fashion)! If you email them, you get a reply usually within the hour. I had a bit of a problem with my new Hot tub recently. One email, in which I was able to fully explain the issue and a call FROM technical and issue sorted, replacement part sent out the next day.

So what about the the “communications” companies? Firstly they insist you phone customer support. If you can be bothered to listen to all the crappy announcements and are happy to press this button, press that button and let them guess what your issue is about, you might eventually get through to someone that doesn’t natively speak the same language as you.

If you have a hearing impairment, forget it!

Email! they don’t seem to know that it’s the most common method of modern “communication“, along with texting on social media; its good to talk though isn’t it 🙂 They send out emails which are apparently sent out from an “un-monitored email account” so “reply to” is a no no but the footer advises using the “un-monitored” email address as a way of contacting them, is it me! It seems that the big communications companies think they are above government guide lines that require a valid email address to be “advertised” on their websites! Check Here, if you need educating!

With regard to @Virginmedia all I wanted to do was cancel the SIM because I was going to be working in area that had very poor EE coverage. How hard can they make it, I had to email the CEO (obviously I knew that Tom wouldn’t reply) and eventually got a reply from “the team”. Issue resolved and why? It’s because I was able to “Communicate” in ONE EMAIL everything they needed to know. It seems their idea of “Customer Service” is to point people to the “unpaid” forum and the answer is always “phone customer services“! They are happy to take your money but “Customer Service” and “Customer loyalty” appear to be alien to their mind set!

FYI, Giff Gaff actually have an option to cancel the SIM and so far I’m loving Giff Gaff, which runs on the O2 network and I’m actually getting better coverage than I did with Virgin Mobile (EE) but it will depend on where you live / work / Play etc.

The Virgin TV everywhere iPad App has been broken since the back end of last year and we had to wait until June this year for a fix (yes it does now seem to work and doesn’t keep asking to prove you’re not a robot). They might still be the fastest broadband but when you have to keep power cycling the “router” several times a week to get the WiFi working or to cure the connection problems, it can become a little tiresome. Their solution is to look on the forums to see the bit about “phoning customer services“. If they were interested in “Customer Service”, they would at least have a secure messaging facility, manned by people that DO NOT insist you “Phone Customer Services!!

Don’t get me started on how they have pretty much made the Tivo box unusable with all the cr*p they are trying to spoon feed us all. Pressing a button on the remote can take ages for it to respond and still after all these YEARS, they still haven’t replaced the awful remote handset, they just suggest you use your iPad as a remote control but the App is (was) broken. Obviously they are not interested.

VirginMedia just want your money, otherwise they wouldn’t be charging customers a “Line Rental” for the a landline that isn’t used (because they have sold us a Mobile phone or SIM, which includes “included Voice calls” that most people would find adequate)

It’s just ONE CABLE and this squirts down anything you want, TV, Broadband and Voice calls. It doesn’t  matter how you dress it up, voice calls are routed via the “Internet”, there isn’t a separate cable; it’s the same cable that delivers Broadband and TV.

For those that use the “landline” and pay extra for “Unlimited Use”, that’s fine and paying a monthly fee for a landline is probably acceptable but if you don’t use the landline, it’s just a guaranteed profit for VM.

VM = Virgin Mugging!

With regard to @O2, I was being billed for a SIM I no longer had. Several visits to the O2 shop and several attempts using the on-line chat didn’t resolve it, I had to email the customer complaints resolution “team” and a few days later this was resolved because I was able to include ALL the relevant information. ONE, just ONE EMAIL was all it needed!

I have to say that all the people I “chatted” to via Twitter, on-line chat etc for both companies were very nice people that tried to help but they couldn’t give me an email address. I can only conclude that the senior management of both @virginmedia and @O2 are not really interested in customer service or they are suffering from the stupid disease which seems to put them out of touch with reality!

For the pathetic excuse that emails are difficult to process using “Call logging” systems, ha. Any “App Developer” worth their salt should find it easy to grab the email and insert it into the call logging system by writing a bit of code! We live in an electronic world, FFS, learn how to use it or IT in general!

What about “secure messaging”, instead of email? It really IS NOT difficult to set up.

Seems to me that good customer support involves having an email facility (or secure messaging facility) to allow people to give the full information and a phone system that doesn’t include the “automated” cr*p that we are served (press this, press that, play a guessing game). Real people answering the phone is the future! Real people replying to emails (or secure messages) is the future.

Make it so!