Vodafone: another customer services disaster, this time featuring BlackBerry

Oh dear. Whilst I’m waiting to hear back from Vodafone on them sorting out my mobile broadband problems (they’ve decided there may be a fault with their network and are investigating – thank you, Web Relations Team), I’ve had a problem with my BlackBerry handset.

The good news:

• Customer Services answered the phone quickly.
• The person I spoke to was cheerful, listened to the issue and quickly diagnosed the problem (hardware fault).
• He gave me clear instructions on what to do next (go to a store, etc.) and some extra information on top (helping me locate one near me, along with opening hours)

But then I went to the store. The bad news:

• Long queuing time – 20+ minutes. Only one person dealing with problems from existing customers – long queue – but lots of staff dealing with possible new customers – no queues. Perhaps not the image Vodafone should be giving of what it thinks of existing customers…
• They have a ticketing system and a display board with an estimated waiting time. This was showing the existing customers queue getting worse and worse whilst I was there – but no-one took any action until I went up to a staff member and asked them to do something about it. Overall impression? “Oooh! Shiny screen with live data! But just don’t expect us to use that to manage our service to you.”
• Even when got to be seen, terribly slow process to go through with long waits for the computer the member of staff was using to load or refresh information.
• My contract details with Vodafone are wrong. (Yup, they’ve not just made a mess of the mobile broadband records, but there is a mistake with the Blackberry contract too.) And when I pointed this out? No interest from the person dealing with me in checking or fixing the problem. Perhaps that’s because they know these problems are widespread and don’t really matter or perhaps that’s because they just weren’t interested. Don’t know; but either way, not impressive.
• Vodafone wanted to charge me, although the nice man on the phone didn’t mention any charge. Now, it’s true that I didn’t ask explicitly on the phone, but corporately staying quiet until the last moment and only then talking about a bill doesn’t suggest keeping customers happy really matters. Just get the pennies in the till.
• The nice man on the phone told me I could get a similar loan handset whilst mine is repaired, provided it is in stock. The person in the shop? Insisted they never did such a thing and always handed out only a very basic phone. Who is right? I’ve no idea, but then Vodafone shouldn’t be making me second guess which of their staff is right and which is wrong.
• The form I had to sign had a 9 point checklist of things I should have been told, asking me to confirm that I’d been told them all. Bit unfortunate that only three had actually been mentioned to me. Writing “no” next to six of them didn’t seem to disturb the member of staff at all. Perhaps they are at fault for not doing their job? Or perhaps Vodafone gives their staff duff document which, although presented to the customer as a legal set of terms and conditions they have to sign, are actually full of out 0f date points? Given what some of the “missing six” points covered, I think most likely the former. But either way, not impressive.

Let’s hope the person fixing the phone is more like the person on the phone line and less like the one in the shop…

UPDATES:

1. Hooray, mobile broadband looks to be working much better now. Haven’t yet heard back from Vodafone but looks as if they’ve found a fault and fixed it.
2. I’m not alone in having Vodafone trouble.
3. Having been doing some searching around of other blog posts to see how widespread my problems are, it’s interesting to note how often someone from Vodafone Web Relations pops up in the comments (even with a touch of nicely done humour on occasion). Brownie points for that, though interesting it doesn’t seem to have carried over in to a drive to improve Vodafone’s overall search results as searching for them and their services produces an awful lot of complaints near the top of search results, not all of which have been tackled by the Web Relations Team.