Never having to say sorry
When is a specialist not a specialist? When they work in customer management at MBNA, I reckon. Or nPower. Another week, another piece of appalling customer service.
This one was a particular humdinger. I called MBNA to inquire about a payment on my card that didn't seem to have appeared on my account. The 'specialist' who - eventually! - answered the phone was as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot. He apparently wasn't able to answer my question because it would take up to 2 hours to access my account information on another system. So you don't have a single view of the customer then, I asked? Oh no, we do, of course we do, he spluttered indignantly. So why can't you access my account, I asked? Because it's on a different system, came the depressingly inevitable reply. So you don't have a single customer view, I persevered. What do you mean by single customer view, he replied? Now I'm no 'specialist' but the clue does rather seem to me to be in the phrase...
Still, if ever he wants another 'specialist' position he can always make a career move to nPower. I moved house earlier this year and contacted nPower to shift my gas bill over to them. They sent me the appropriate forms, I filled them in, they issued me a contract number and I thought no more about it. Not until this week when a gas bill arrived from British Gas. On contacting them, I was told that nPower had not made any arrangements to transfer the supply.
I contacted nPower to find out what had happened. After three attempts - with the phone being put down on me twice when I asked a question that they didn't want to answer - I finally made contact with someone who confirmed that although the contract with nPower had been issued, the arrangements with British Gas had not been made. How could that happen, I asked? Oh, it'd be the computer, came the reply, it sometimes happens. It isn't the computer, I snapped, it's the incompotence of the people running the computer! At which point, she offered to send me a gas bill to go with the one I already had from British Gas.
So I asked to be put through to customer complaints. Eventually - and it took a good few minutes - she agreed to put me through. I got through to someone else, checking first that this person was authorised to handle complaints. I ran through the saga, only to be met with a strained silence followed by an offer to take over the account now. I said that I didn't want to deal with nPower on the basis of the debacle to date and pointed out that so far, having spoken to 4 nPower representatives, not one person had used the word 'sorry'. Oh, we wouldn't apologise unless you made a complaint in writing, came the priceless reply.
And there you have it. Customer service 'specialists' who don't understand the concept of a single view of the customer and companies who put you through to a complaints department on the phone but won't accept complaints unless they're in writing. But then customer management means never having to say you're sorry.
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About this article and author: This article is taken from an April issue of Customer Management Community's "Inside Executive" in which Stuart Lauchlan, the news and analysis editor, writes about the pervasive poor service he experiences with call centers.