It seems very little judging by my experiences in the past week of moving my broadband and trying to fly out of Gatwick.
1) Both provide little to no information in advance of the journey or anything specifically useful via the website for the journey. A lack of publishing and sharing of knowledge with customers is at the root of the problem.
2) Getting to someone who can help you is then very hard and isn’t part of their process.
3) Suggesting someone else can fix it is part of their approach, so that the problem goes to someone else.
4) Having the obvious FAQs at point of need, is not something that’s available.
5) Managing the resolution easily has no structure, no triage.
6) After the problem, all appears to be very well done. Must be an expensive way to work.
If you’re interested why, then read on – its a bit boring – as detail often is.
Let’s take the airline first:
Gatwick departures board not available online all day so you can’t see the real situation and decide to stay home or not. Airline’s site shows half a dozen cancellations and a general warning. Nothing specific on my destination. Can’t get through by phone, not surprisingly. Nothing on twitter, except customers irate about the fact the website is still pushing Xmas offers and providing no data.
Departures screen shows delays back though the day. Self serve check-in is not working anymore so I must join the queue. I could see 150 people trying to get to 3 desks in a tidy crawl. Later discover this was only the part I could see and it was much longer. One lady has a clipboard and is besieged. I find out there is an intention to fly. So I join the queue and move a few metres in an hour. I give in and go home.
Appears to me that the snow isn’t the problem – ticketing passengers is broken. Obviously more desks would help, but failing that do 2 things. FAQs on white boards or flip charts – show us what you’re checking on your clipboard. Make it relevant to the outcomes. For example If you’re waiting for Belfast then a) if you are prebooked we have enough capacity once you get through the queue b) if you are not pre-booked you wont get out today so go home or get a hotel via desk xyz and c ) we are expecting all flights to go. And put this on your website – the whole queue is trying to find out anything via laptops and mobiles.
Secondly simply triage the queue by walking down it and checking for relevance and outcome – many people could have been sent home according to destination and seats/numbers. Many were probably in the wrong queue judging by the number who talked to each other and left. Many would have had certainty that it was the right thing to do.
Saying “the airport isn’t giving us slots” isn’t useful. If the airline and the airport haven’t worked out a plan, then it may be the only answer. But scenario planning should have taken place and the scenario be planned so that capacity is known and decisions, made in advance, enacted so there is clarity.
I get home and check the departures board and airline on the web – no information so I don’t know if the flight ever went. Brilliantly simple claim procedure for the ticket just using one screen and the booking reference. Let’s see if the money comes through as efficiently. Pity they cant be as efficient in the other things they do.
Customer effort? A wasted day.
What about the broadband journey then?
An order placed and MAC code provided. A welcome call about 10 days before to take payment details and tell me what was happening – a specific date but very general about the process. On asking apparently I need do nothing. They’ll send me a router but I ask them not to as I have one – they say you might as well as its free.
The router arrives in a plain box a few days later and goes in the cellar. I dont think I had any email confirmation – at least I have no memory of one despite several references to email later . A search now, shows I don’t have one. I suspect it was sent to their new email address that they gave me and I dont want/need/use.
By the day of swap over I’m already sceptical. An absence of expectation from a lack of information.
When I come home, the phone still works. Alas the broadband doesn’t. I have an idea and look in the plain box that the router came in – there is in fact a letter. No expectations but at least the account id, password etc is there. and lots of web addresses to check things on if any problem. But no phone number in case you don’t have broadband access to check things with.
I chill for the weekend and get by on my iphone checking all the obvious things on the website – but there’s nothing for “my service hasn’t cut over” so on Monday I phone the broadband number on the site. The IVR option 3 for faults is advertised on the site and the IVR is very simple. ( Later I get bored with it telling me I may have to wait up to 10 minutes and there’s a big queue – regardless of whether there is or there isn’t).
Eventually I get through to be told I’m through to the wrong broadband and am transferred. My phone battery dies before I get through. Later I start over and speak to someone who explains its due provisioning today – I retort that to me, it was due provisioning Friday. They don’t seem fussed. It’ll be done today.
Later I get a text to say its been done. It still doesn’t work. No response from a Twitter escalation.
It still doesn’t work Tuesday morning so I call again. Same number but I get a travel firm – redial and it goes through fine – weird. ( Later I have this again twice but to wrong routes within the company these times). This time they check and it will definitely be provisioned by noon and I’ll get a text. I get a text but no working service by noon.
In the afternoon I call again and get someone who checks and says the order hasn’t gone through but he’s getting it done whilst I’m on the phone. I ask if I’ll need to do anything else. He says no that the router is preconfigured with passwords etc. The first I know of it. So he stays with me whilst I swap out the router and reconnect everything. Still no service but he says it will be in the next half hour.
No service a few hours later.
I call again and they say there’s a fault and it’s been reported to BT. I say there can’t be a fault because it hasn’t been provisioned yet. How can BT check something that isn’t provisioned. He says that’s tech support’s process and that’s that. I ask for escalation – he says there isn’t anyone. I cut off and immediately dial again to talk to someone else who goes through the same excuses. I ask what the SLA is with BT for faults even if there were one – you guessed, 5 working days. Escalation – there isn’t one.
I cut off and escalate with a little help from my friends.
The chief exec’s office call within 10 minutes and an engineer 10 mins later. And the engineer’s boss ten mins later. The engineer does some triage, finding out the story so far, runs a line test and says the line is dead and there’s a BT physical problem which I challenge because nothing physical had been touched until the router was swapped. I agree to change the line filter and dismantle the wall socket and he phone’s me back. No change. I’m not willing to give in and he listens and we swap the router back to my old one and he repeats the line test – heh presto there is no BT fault. “You’ve got a faulty router, we can send you another one”. Hmmm Xmas post. We try to configure my router and whilst he’s helpful, we can’t do it. Later I manage to crack the router config using my iPhone to get a website that helps. And it works first time.
The new router is in the bin, as will the second one be if they send it by Xmas post.
Customer effort? I lost 5 days working and several hours of my time.
All avoidable by some really simple stuff around setting expectations, being transparent and sharing set up processes, providing information that’s specifically relevant to the scenarios ( eg what you will have to do, how to troubleshoot etc) and doing proper triage from the outset. Will I be surprised if I get problems with the billing? You can imagine the start date for service wont have been updated ….
And when they call for a netpromoter score I’ll refer them to this blog post.
