customer service levels

If you think that Proximus, now Belgacom mobile (the Belgian nationalized mobile phone company) is bad try this for size! The following story is a good example of designing a credit procedure that touches the customer and alientates them right from the start.

Recently I started a new assignment in Germany and so needed to buy a German SIM card for my mobile Phone. I chose T-Mobile (the biggest supplier in Germany). The following describes their approach to customer awareness and demonstrates the internal workings of their business processes:

1 Visit T-Mobile Shop in Leverkusen
a. Wait 30 minutes to be served
b. Friendly assistant (speaks only a very little English)- OK
c. Explain my needs – business use, lots of international calls etc., give permission for them to take as much from my account or from my Master card they need to cover my bills.
d. Walk out with Sim card
e. 2 hours later active.
2. All contracts, letters and bills in German
3. Cannot set up my answer phone - do not understand German (I speak Dutch and English but these are not options)
4. Visit website – no website in any other language than German
5. Get help - someone calls and I am given a special number, obtain the option for my outgoing answer phone message in English!
6. (Two weeks later) phone service stops working – German message, don’t understand it – get help. Message says “Use another phone to call this number.”
a. My German friend calls the number : they refuse to speak to her because she is not me!
b. We ask for English customer support – not an option!
c. A colleague then calls telling that I do not speak German so please speak to talk to them instead, eventually they agree.
d. Phone is cut off because I have spent 260EUR on international calls, Remedy:
i. I must go to a post office and pay in 260EUR in cash
ii. Obtain a receipt
iii. Fax the receipt to a special number
iv. Phone will be re-connected
e. Go to bank - obtain cash
f. Go to T-Mobile shop to pay in cash and to tell them to increase my credit.
i. No one speaks English
ii. Cannot pay my bill in the shop – must go to Post Office
g. Find Post office – pay in cash – must pay 8EURs extra for paying in cash
h. Send Fax and letter
i. Phone re-connected quickly – but for how long?
It seems incredible to me that such a high technology company cannot contact the customer prior to their credit limit being reached, that they cannot inform the customer in advance what their credit limit is! That customer’s cannot pay in money in their own shops!
Proximus (covering a client base of a fraction of the size of T-Mobile) has customer service and a website in four languages, it has shops in every town that are open right through the day, they will take your money and they treat you with respect. + their technological options seem way ahead of T-Mobile re their answerpohne (T-Mobile have no delete message, save message or auto dial caller options.
I am NOT a typical Brit that expects everyone to speak English, but I have just arrived in Germany and have not yet had time to learn the language and I cannot believe that there are no other people living Germany that do not speak German either?

I think we should invent an award for the worst business process ever - any contenders?

I am on holiday this week so I thought I would just share with you a shortened account of a conversation I had last week.

I was having a breakfast meeting, in an hotel in Brussels, with a Bayard Associate when the conversation turned (again) to the incredible cost of employing staff in Belgium and the extortionate level of taxation and social security that has to be paid over and above the actual salary.

I commented to my breakfast companion that it is amazing how the major hotels (across the globe) seem to be getting away with employing illegal immigrants in a way that smaller companies could never do. His reply was:
“But Harley, speaking on behalf of the hotel, our hotel does not employ illegal immigrants; the staff you might be referring to are representatives of an international workforce who come to Brussels on an international training program, and all this to improve your level of enjoyment and comfort while staying with our hotel!”
“is that true?” I asked,
“No” he replied, “I just made it up”
“You could have fooled me”, I replied “it sounds just like the plausible nonsense that one might read in the hotel information brochure.”

So that’s it, no more illegal immigrant workers, from now on everyone is on international training programs, and why not? Who give’s a dam who does what and where? Most business people want a global economy and freedom to work and travel where they like.

I, for one, would like to see are more international training program employees, so that, when I am having breakfast in an hotel, I can simply place my breakfast order with a waitress (or waiter) who will then have the courtessy of briniging it to me at my table, without my having to wander around trying to find it for myself. Is this really too much to ask? In some four and five star hotels they do not even bother bringing tea and coffee to your table anymore!

I am fed up with having to do everything myself, ‘self banking’, self breakfast’, I just don’t see the point! Who benefits? I do not see any real evidence of reduced bank charges or hotel bills as a result? Go to a cheap Bed & Breakfast hotel in the UK and you will pay a fraction of the price of a four star hotel (often with exactly the same amenities) but have the added benefit of a really sumptuous breakfast, served at your table, by a friendly and sympathetic employee. If the only way giant hotel chains can do this is by employing a few extra Asian or East European trainees, then so much the better. I might even be tempted to learn to order breakfast in a few additional languages, to make the exchange of information a little more fun and reliable!