Of customer service and the lack of it...

Let's dream up a scenario. You're running a customer service organisation. How do you keep customer complaints to a minimum? Did I hear someone say, "provide bloody good service"? Wrong. You provide world class service when you don't answer the phone when they call to complain.

Let me explain. A large telecom company in the middle-east has been in the news because it tried to allegedly bug Blackberry users' phones so they could conveniently tap into the messages and emails sent from these devices. All in the name of national security and upholding the religious, cultural and moral values of the country, no doubt. Such high objectives must always be saluted. However, said nanny software implementation went very wrong and Crackberry's started heating up and running out of juice faster than you can say "tally-ho!".

I'm no master of human psychology, but life experience tells me that humans like to complain when things go south, so I am not completely misguided in thinking that the telecom company's call centres must have been flooded with calls from every bloke whose ear was scalded by a hot and dying Blackberry. You see heat is the last thing one wants when the ambient temperatures outside hovers in the late 40s, degree Celsius that is.

I also feel it is my duty to clarify what I mean by a flood here. The Blackberry population in this country is around 145,000 out of a total population of around 3,000,000. Which is not a frightful lot, but by any standard 145,000 callers at the same time surely come within the definition of a flood. Here comes the fun part. The company issued a statement and I quote, "This has resulted in reduced battery life in a very limited number of devices. Etisalat has received approximately 300 complaints to date, out of its total customer base which exceeds 145,000". A beautiful statement and I can almost visualise the PR exec who wrote this statement giving his colleagues a hi-five on a totally truthful statement supported by verifiable figures that completely clarify the magnitude of the problem, putting an end to this circus once and for all.

Nope. The same paper that carried this statement also carries another article on this subject and I quote, this time from the newspaper, "Gulf News alone received 239 complaints about the issue since running an article on the troublesome patch on July 13.

Many of the complaints cited either a lack of response from Etisalat’s customer support lines, or a lack of awareness of the glitch among customer support agents."

Did I just visualise the PR exec scurrying for cover? I guess I did!

So there you have it, to provide the best customer service and get the least amount of complaints on your service, don't pick up the phone.

You want the icing on the cake? Etisalat has now found a solution to the problem - wipe your device, delete every scrap of data on it and make it as clean as the day it was born in the factory...