Tim Robson

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The Visible Slap

Disgruntled Sky customers storm Customer Services

And lo! My bitching and moaning got my wifi sorted.

8:30am Saturday morning a good BT engineer turned up. Often they are shit and uninterested. You're just a number. Not a name. They turn up, fiddle about and then leg it knowing the thing ain't gonna work and that some bitch in customer service is going to get a thrashing.

Rightly. 

I can't help feeling my thermo-nuclear eruption on Thursday had something to do with my resolution in record time (still late, of course). My non sweary rant had me 'personally' go for the customer service rep. I alluded to the fact that Sky tape their calls and hoped her manager would be playing this back to them soon. And how it should be used in their annual appraisal to determine her annual pay rise.  I made my formal complaint against both Sky and the customer service rep. Unfair perhaps? Random - certainly. Cruel? NMFP.* Effective. Yes. 

By the way the rep was confrontational, incompetent and insensitive.

All my years in customer service has proved to me one thing; he who shouts loudest gets their complaints dealt with soonest. It shouldn't be that way but nine times out of ten it is. 

It's only when people are personally engaged that you get great customer service. From a company stand point that means allowing the front line to override policy if they deem it necessary. To reward regularly and comprehensively incentivise the front line.  From a customer point of view you need to get names, set deadlines, invoke complaints policy, make it personal. Only then will you be taken seriously.

I'm basically on a one man altruistic mission to improve Britain's utilities. Eliminate errors, drive down costs, improve efficiencies, cut down-time; compete globally, bring wealth to the country, bolster tax revenue and simultaneously reduce tax rates whilst increasing spend on social necessities.

The parable of the talents is one of the strangest biblical parables. It seems Jesus is a Gordon Gekko capitalist - 'Greed is good, greed works, greed clarifies!' A little bit like the Samaritan quote that got Thatcher in so much trouble in the 80's (wrongly). 

Driving costs down is a moral mission, brothers and sisters.

No, I'm not pissed.**

 

 

 

* NMFP - One of my favourite Malcolm Tucker-isms - Not My Fucking Problem

**Yet

*** The Visible Slap - The Invisible Hand!!! Geddit? I do stand up too.