It must be the cold weather. I’m churning a lot of my regular domestic suppliers, many of whom I’ve been with for a very long time.
Why? With all the snow, I’ve some spare laptop time which I never usually have. I have just enough time to put in the customer effort required. And with some that’s considerable.
So who are the losers and why?
EDF, 20 years – For over estimating bills and then being hard to deal with. See an earlier blog on customer effort with all the details of how they generated churn.
Friends Provident, 15 years – For not sharing risk in an insurance product and being so painful to deal with – both to try and buy from and to try and cancel with. I resorted to cancelling my direct debit rather than go through their cancellation process. If anyone at FP wants a full blog on the numerous dumb contacts, do get in touch.
BT, 30+ years – For overselling BTVision and damaging the already weak broadband service back to the world of the 1990s. And then requiring me to lock into a further contract. My replacement will be no better, but to get any progress BT wanted me to lock in to new a term contract rather than doing what they could to provide the service I was paying for.
Southern Counties Fuels have just been added to the list ( 6.5 years) – for making an exceptional £150 charge if you want fuel in the next 3 weeks before Xmas. Blatant exploitation of the cold spell. In addition they over charged on the last bill. After years of faultless low effort business, it smells like they must have had a change of management?
All are trying for “bad profits”, as Don Peppers would call them. The policy decisions may be made far from the front line, but it’s clear to those people on the front line that these are not policies that customers appreciate.
But the effort in moving supplier results in lethargy and policy makers rely on it. I shouldn’t be so lethargic or else I encourage companies to keep doing dumb things to customers.
