Do you have a mobile phone… is the provider any good? Mine wasn’t so I changed, I went elsewhere.

What surprised me the most was that there was no contact from the original provider as to why I had left. If they had called me I would have TOLD them about their many failings. It’s the 1% factor, the many little things that add up, the negative compund interest if you like.

Here’s just a SMALL sample of how they stuffed up.

• It was challenging to pay the prepay service I had with them, if you rang to make a credit card payment there were so many layers in the phone menu to get through and even then they would tell you it was the wrong extension, when they went to put you to the right one, you would end up in the wrong place… If you went to the store to pay, they would look at you stupid and actually say “Errgh, why don’t you just call them?” (Even when I told them about the hassles, they would roll their eye’s…)

• It was the changeover, I wanted to get out of the prepay and move back to an account… sure that’s easy… but why do you want to change? “So I can get an invoice for business purposes”. “Oh Okay… here’s the new SIM card, wait until the old one stops and then put the new one in.” The old one did not stop until 8 months later!, THEN the new one did not work. (funny that…) but the free calls in between were useful, thanks!

• It was the attitude of the staff, “Yeah whaddaya, want…” the girl looked like she was a real sad sack… and I got the same one three times in a row. When they are not happy, neither am I.

• It was the hassle of it all, even changing to another provider was fraught with hassles but I won’t go there.

In all it was the little things… too many of them, what really gets me is the fact that they could have called and run through a few points to figure out where to improve things.

Moral of the story, ask people why they are moving away from what you provide, keep in touch to follow their progress, your companies progress, your people’s progress. Be a customer, send in mystery shoppers, GET the FEEDBACK to know WHY and HOW etc. your business could be better. DO the RIGHT THING so I and others like me don’t have to get so frustrated at BAD service.

Stumble it!