recurring problems

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have been a triple-play customer for almost a year now, and I write to you to offer my observations on two issues at the heart of du’s operation: problem escalation procedures and customer feedback processes.

Sometime during Tuesday 28^th Internet stopped working (TV and home line had no problem). I tried disconnecting and reconnecting my equipment as this normally helps (I have to do this between a few times a week and several times in a day) but it did not resolve the issue.

Next morning on the 29^th Internet still was not working (still no problem with phone or TV). On closer look the port was completely dead (the ‘ipconfig’ command on an XP PC yielded “Media disconnected”). I called customer care to report the problem.

Although I was calling from my du home phone I had to answer a whole range of security questions about date of birth, PO Box, nationality, etc. – to report a service outage. When we got down to business I suggested that they could reset the port remotely. ‘No’, not possible.

I told them about my background in IT, that my last job was director of IT for a company here, and reiterated that du must be able to reset the equipment remotely. ‘No’. I asked if they could see that the port was dead. ‘No’, that cannot be monitored from customer care. I was told that dead ports must be escalated to networks department which would resolve the problem by calling me to set an appointment so that they can send someone to my home.

I called back in the afternoon only to be told that I would be receiving a call back “later today or tonight”. I then called back in the evening with the same response, and then late in the evening. After being put on hold for a long while – customer service cannot monitor network departments job orders? – I was informed that someone would call me back the next morning (Thursday 30^th).

They called, and they came. Two nice gentlemen told me the port now was not completely dead but that they could not get a connection. So they said that they had to call to the office to have it reset remotely as “this could not be done locally”.

The port was reset remotely and then internet was working again.

On the evening of Friday the 1^st of May, customer care called to ask if all was OK again.

I said yes, and thinking that this would be a good time to give feedback, I also said that I could not understand why several different people at one department had told me the issue could not be resolved remotely, and when representatives of the other department finally came – after me calling them several times – they said it had to be done remotely.

The reply that I was given was that customer care was only following instructions.

“These instruction seem to be not so efficient. I tried to convince you guys that you could fix the problem instantly remotely, but you insisted on sending someone over the day after – only to call the office for a remote reset”. The reply was “yes sir, but now it works” to which I replied “are you calling me to see that it works, or are you calling me to see that it works, and get some feedback?”.

“Sir, could you please send an email to customer care so that your feedback can be escalated?”.

Your teams are nice and work according to instructions. Still, I have worked with customer care and organisational processes for support and service activation in the past, and it would seem that the processes could be optimised considerably. Fewer people involved to deliver good service to customers faster.

So, despite everyone at du following process customers are at a disadvantage, while not collecting feedback to enhance those processes. Is that not a crying shame; have you planned to improve on this?

Regards
Sam

PS You will find my customer profiled under my home phone number 04-430 30 60

Sam Spens Clason

sam@spensclason.com
Mobile, U.A.E. +971 50 421 72 01
Mobile, Sweden +46 70 782 10 22