You know, the play book is pretty straight forward for the big corporates. And we, the customers, lose out every single time.
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Step 1, appoint a new CEO on millions of dollars plus a nice little bonus if the share price goes up. Step 2, the new CEO slashes the workforce, and anyone who actually serves the customer. Step 3, as a result of all of the sacked workers, the profits and share price go up. Step 4, the CEO gets a massive bonus payment. Step 5, the CEO leaves the business, with a bumper golden-handshake payout, before the complaints from frustrated customers rise to the surface. Step 6, repeat Steps 1-5.
During this past week I have had the misfortune to need some help from a major telecommunications company, formerly owned by the people of Australia. To say that the customer service was hopeless, would be a compliment to just how terrible it was.
It starts with them trying to hide their phone number and goes backwards from there. After searching their website and trying some “self-help” tips, I finally uncover the elusive phone number. I then spend 2.5 hours on the phone and the internet, being passed around to 10 or 12 different staff. I still didn’t get a result. In the end, I was given a secret pin code that would fix everything; I just had to enter it into my phone.
Needing to hang up to enter this pin code, I was set to lose my current staff contact that I had spent more than two hours getting to. He assured me that he would ring back almost immediately. Predictably, the secret pin code didn’t work. And the return return call hadn’t come 24 hours later.
While waiting for that call, I went back online to try to solve my own inquiry. This “self-help” approach is what they really want me to do - talking to a staff member requires them to have staff. Online “self-help” is much cheaper, and uses far less staff.
The many many pages within the company website that I explored were equally hopeless, unless of course the purpose of them is to send you around in circles. So again I rang the secret phone number hidden deep within their website.
My phone call experience this second time was identical to the previous afternoon. More than five hours later, I still don’t have the help that I needed. I just want a copy of my bill/payment history for one of my devices. Time to change providers I guess, to go to another corporate with the same business model.
