Consumer Exit Surveys - For when proper customer service hasn't entered

Posted by Aaron Bloxsome on 28 June 2010

Tags: consumer exit surveys, customer service

It's very seldom I've been asked to do consumer exit surveys, probably for the reason illustrated in the title, but when this last one came up, it really knocked me.

I was a customer of a very large Australian telephone company. With their uncompetitive broadband and telephone package, I served 4 years as a dutiful customer. I never really had many problems per se, but frequently saw cheaper deals with other companies advertised elsewhere.

Not having suffered any real issues (i.e. - never having to speak to their customer service department), I didn't bother moving to another provider. It seemed easier to stay put.

So after 4 years of a mediocre deal and inaction on my part, the whole fiasco began when I moved house. This was when I actually had to deal face to face (or ear to ear) with this company and realised how downright terrible (to the point of being traumatising) their customer service was.

As the house I was moving into already had a phone line installed, used by the previous tenant two weeks earlier (with the same service provider), I anticipated that the reconnection process was going to be fairly straightforward. I wasn't transferring my old phone number and the existing phone line was functioning properly.

However, no.

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock and my continuing disbelief that then prevailed. After the ordeal of dealing with them I felt like I needed therapy. As part of the healing process, I've had to put many of the incidental, niggly details to the back of my mind, just to retain my own sanity.

To summarise, I made over 25 phone calls, was put on hold for a total of more than 40 hours, usually waiting about 45 minutes at a time, often to find out I was put through to the wrong department, then to be put on hold again for about another 30 minutes to find out I was put through to the wrong department, again, and then be put on hold, again, for another 30 minutes or so. This happened nearly every time I phoned up.

When I did eventually manage to get through to the 'right department', promises were made to call me back or take action on the issue and consistently broken (this occurred at least 6 times). In total I must have spoken to at least 45 different people, including about 8 supervisors and was told nearly as many conflicting things by this many people.

I was not a happy camper. All I wanted was to have an existing, functioning phone line reconnected, in an urban area. How difficult can it be for Australia's largest telephone company to do that? Obviously very.

Each time I called them, I asked for my concerns to be recorded (and was promised every time they would be). Annoyingly however, each time I called again (after not getting the promised call backs), I had to re-explain the situation from scratch (which was becoming more and more tangled up and needlessly complicated). This multi-headed behemoth obviously didn't know its head from its other heads, or tail.

After about 3 weeks of banging my head against a wall and still no resolution (not even an ETA as to when this could be sorted out), I was now very frustrated. This was getting beyond a joke.

Needless to say, I eventually parted company with this cancerous ogre and found another supplier, only to find out that they had to go through this same company to access the phone line. In total, it took over 6 weeks to get this existing phone line reconnected.

When I did change supplier, still having to wait another 2 and a half weeks was more of an inconvenience than an aggravation. Their customer service was much better and they were a lot friendlier.

The new company never kept on hold for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time and the relevant departments who could deal with my situation were open after 3pm Western Australian time (unlike the other company, who was not contactable outside of Sydney office hours). And they called me back when they promised to.

I was so happy that I eventually moved providers. This ogre telephone company promised to phone me back at least 6 times when I was their customer. Not a peep.

But hey! Guess what? As soon as I said 'bye bye' and went elsewhere, 'ring, ring', it's ogre telco asking me to do an exit survey!

Ha, ha! Are you serious? The short answer was 'No'. Absolutely not!

The Simply Red song lyrics came to mind "If you don't know me by now...".

Corny pop culture references aside, I have to say I was simply reddened by their barefaced cheek.

What was the point of this survey? I gave them so many opportunities to address my concerns when I was their customer. Maybe these exit surveys look good on paper.

If a team of faceless, overpaid yes men can give themselves a nice pat on the back for monumentally doing nothing, except pretending that they are interested in customer feedback, I guess they can call that 'a job well done'.

My job was to move service providers, which I should have done much, much sooner.