I recently switched my mobile phone from Vodafone (who I’ve foolishly stuck with these last nine years) to O2. I couldn’t resist firing a parting shot off to Vodafone’s CEO’s office, detailing my reasons for leaving:
I am writing to you as somebody who was a Vodafone customer for 9 years, but who has recently switched to O2 to due increasing dissatisfaction with Vodafone. I hope that you will be able to learn from my unhappy experiences, and improve your service to remaining customers.
The final straw which led me to abandon Vodafone was being asked to pay for a new handset which Vodafone offers free to new subscribers, even though it was more than 2 years since my last phone upgrade and 9 months since my fixed monthly contract expired.
I might have been tempted to avoid the hassle of changing operators, had I not just endured the hell of Vodafone’s “customer service” line. I assume that you have never used this “service”, so allow me to talk you through it.
On calling the “customer service” number, the customer is asked to key in their mobile phone number. I can only assume that the person who implemented this procedure has never used a mobile telephone: a mobile telephone is generally a small self-contained unit, with a keypad that is somewhere between the mouthpiece and earpiece. It is usually used by holding the device to the ear. This tends to preclude use of the numeric keypad, except for those lucky few who have fingers growing out of their ears.
Having keyed in one’s telephone number and waited for an indeterminate length of time, one is then put through to an operator. Without fail, this person will then ask the caller to give their mobile telephone number (the same number as was just keyed in using one’s ear-fingers). It is almost inevitable that this person will not be able to assist directly, but will transfer the call to another person, who again requires the caller’s mobile telephone number. Sometimes, before being allowed to speak to this second person, an automated system demands that one first key in one’s mobile telephone number. Often the second person will not be able to deal with the query, and so (after keying in one’s mobile telephone number) the caller will have to tell a third operator what their mobile telephone number is and, hopefully, finally get an answer to their query.
If you ever visit Sheffield, I would like to introduce you to my local minicab office. They have some sort of space-age system in there, I believe it’s called Caller Line Identification or somesuch, which means that as soon as they answer the phone to me they can tell me my telephone number. Talk about rocket science!
Joking aside, a company which claims to be involved in telecoms really ought to have an understanding of CLI. A company that repeatedly asks its customers to first key in and then recite their telephone number is not a telecoms company, it is a fly-by-night cowboy outfit. I would not trust such a company to drive my minicabs, let alone rely on it for my telephony services.
The final reason why I left Vodafone is its clumsy and antidiluvian approach to the Internet. In the days of Vizzavi, Vodafone’s Internet service was a very poorly structured “walled garden”. I assumed that things would get better with Vizzavi’s demise, but they got worse and have continued to go downhill from there. I now find it impossible to use “Vodafone Live”, as it takes me an eternity to navigate past screens full of adverts for ringtones and downloadable pornography. The whole site screams out that this is a company who lost its shirt gambling on 3G licences, and is trying to recoup its investment by fleecing its customers in any way possible. Even the recent deregulation of Internet services on Vodafone was overshadowed by the ridiculously high data tariffs.
As you can gather, I am no longer a fan of Vodafone. I am sorry to leave a company that I have had a relationship with for 9 years, but I am no longer willing to stick around in the hope that things will one day improve. However, I hope that you will take seriously the comments made in this letter, and that perhaps they will help you to improve the lot of Vodafone’s remaining inmates.
Yours Sincerely,
Dan Sumption
Good morning Dan
I’ve read through the letter that you’ve written and sent to the CEO of Vodafone and I’d like to respond to your comments.
Firstly, I’d like to begin by saying that it’s disappointing to hear that after all the years of being a Vodafone customer; you’ve decided to move to 02. It’s evident that you’ve been truly loyal, and as such, we really should learn from the feedback you’ve been good enough to give us.
With regards to the 1st issue raised about the cost of upgrading your phone, I understand your frustration from how you’ve described your experience.
Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that there are often more lucrative deals offered with new contracts, as this is an incentive to try & gain more customers to the network. As a business this is a reasonable rule to follow.
When an upgrade is worked out for an existing customer, it’s based on numerous things such as the cost of the phone, the length of the new agreement and the new tariff that you’d be going on to. With this in mind, it doesn’t always mean that it will be the same as an offer that could be given on a new connection.
It doesn’t however mean that we don’t value our existing customers and it’s a shame to learn that on this occasion we’ve lost you to another network.
Secondly, moving on the subject of our IVR system, I’d like to agree that your experience of having to repeat your telephone number numerous times and having to be transferred numerous times must be rather annoying.
The system is designed so that when you enter your telephone number into your keypad at the beginning of the call, it works out what customer base you’re on (i.e. pre-pay, business, post-pay), after this, the options on the IVR should route your call through to the correct people to deal with your query. If your call was answered by the wrong agent and had to be transferred, this suggests that the wrong option was selected on the IVR. What we as a company can take from this is the fact that the options may not be clear enough for customers to understand, and to make the correct choice from the stated options.
Finally, with regard to your comment about Vodafone’s Internet Service (Vodafone Live!), your thoughts on this matter have been heard and provide basis for feedback to the project team who deal with all Vodafone Live! issues.
I can reassure you that when your letter to the CEO is received, it will be dealt with by our Customer Relations Team who will address the issues that you’ve raised, but most importantly will use your comments to feedback into the business to improve things for our customer. We have an official feedback mechanism where we identify the route of the problem, and how this affects our customers. We’ve got steps in place to make improvements to the business based on this type of feedback.
Again, I’d like to say that it’s a real shame to lose you as a customer and I wish you all the best for the future.
Amy Rose
Vodafone UK
Dear Dan,
Interesting letter - may I step in to defend Vodafone?
Firstly, good point about the requirement to repeat your number verbally after having keyed it in, however this is for security reasons. I do agree though its not a good experience.
Secondly, the experience you describe of being transferred to various customer service representatives is not an accurate description of business as usual process, and so I can only imagine it could possibly have happened to you once only, or that you’re making it up.
Thirdly, Vodafone agree with you about the previous “walled garden” situation of Vodafone Live!, and changed it accordingly to something which no other mobile operator can match (especially O2). It’s a fact that it only takes two “clicks” on your mobile phone to get to Vodafone Live, so again, another inaccuracy. Also the data tariffs are cheaper than ever before, and give more value for money than ever before - I wonder if you did any shopping around before you described them as “ridiculously high”? Yeah, sure, you may get cheaper, but I would read the small print on them if I were you - especially as it’s obvious you don’t pay too much attention to detail.
Vodafone continues to give customer more value for money than anyone else - always has done and always will do. Also, any changes in Vodafones products and services are always as a result of customer input in the developing process - that’s how they have more customers than anyone else…by listening to them.
Which brings me to my final point - what’s the point of constructing a letter like that and putting it on the internet? Vodafone have numerous ways of collecting feedback from customers and feeding it directly to the process management teams. If you had put this letter to Vodafone directly, you might not have the misfortune of being with O2!
Amy,
Many thanks for your response. I do understand why businesses sometimes offer cheaper deals to new customers, but you must also understand how this makes existing customers feel. It is, no doubt, still better financially for you to continue to treat new customers better than existing ones, because very few existing customers will take the trouble to quit. It was partly for this reason that I thought it was my duty to make the effort, and to make it clear to Vodafone why I had made that effort.
It also didn’t help that, when I was enquiring about new phone options, I ended up asking the operator “so, am I right in thinking that the only way I can get this handset for free is by switching to another mobile operator” and he replied “that’s right”. Under the circumstances you can hardly blame me for following his instructions, even though I was subsequently offered the handset for free by Vodafone.
Thank you also for your description of the IVR system - this does go some way towards explaining it, although it’s still a ridiculous system. The O2 system is also far from perfect, but at least once I have keyed in my phone number I never have to repeat it to an operator. I believe there are also in existence voice-operated systems which should make it unnecessary to key in any numbers (keying in numbers during a call is even harder with some of the modern generation of mobile phones, which use virtual on-screen keypads that are sometimes replaced by a different screen or screensaver during the course of a conversation).
I can absolutely assure you and Vodaboy that I do usually end up speaking to more than one operator when I call customer services. This is not because I “don’t pay too much attention to detail” (in fact, quite the opposite I fear), or because I press the wrong numbers. Neither is it unique to Vodafone - in my (all too detailed) experience, customer-service-by-numbers very rarely takes into account the fact that human beings are complex beasts, and their needs can seldom be categorised into a simple “1, 2 or 3″.
Turning to Vodaboy: why do you assume that I would make things up and lie? As I said, I have been with Vodafone for nine years. You are still only a boy, and cannot fully appreciate the wealth of both good and bad experience I have had in dealing with Vodafone. I am sure that, as you say, my experience does not describe “business as usual”, but I have found that business is usually anything but usual. I estimate that in about 50% of my calls to Vodafone customer services I had to speak to two different people, in about 20% I spoke to 3, and on one occasion I spoke to 4 (admittedly, this was a cock-up by Vodafone because I had been transferred back to the beginning of their automated system). This is based on calling customer services an average of about once every six months over the last 9 years.
Your description of Vodafone Live is a lie (oops, sorry, I mean an inaccuracy - little slip-up in my attention to detail there). It only takes one click for me to get to Vodafone live. However, my issue is not how many clicks it takes me to get there, rather how long it takes me to find the content I am looking for once I am there. There was a time when I could occasionally find local maps and businesses using Vizzavi. My most recent experience of Vodafone Live (2 months ago) is that one now has to pay for these services, and they are not easy to find because the raison d’etre of the service now seems to be to make money through selling pornography, while any potentially useful links are hidden away at the bottom of the page.
(Perhaps ironically, I knew somebody fairly senior within Vizzavi when the service was first launched and, having seen how shoddy the system was, I offered my services as a usability consultant. Unfortunately, this did not fall within his remit and it seems Vizzavi were not interested in usability, and Vodafone still are not).
Also innaccurate is your description of O2 not matching Vodafone’s Internet service. On my O2 phone I have exactly what I want: unlimited and genuinely useful access to the Internet (the real Internet) without having to first fight my way through an operator’s vision of what the Internet ought to be like.
No, I didn’t do much shopping around for data tariffs. That doesn’t change the fact that they are ridiculously high. So what if all operators have ridiculously high data tariffs? Occasionally I would like Vodafone to confound my expectations!
Finally, I find that it is you who do not seem to pay much attention to details. There are many points to constructing a letter like this, posting it to the CEO’s office at Vodafone, and then also putting it on the Internet. I leave it to you to work out what they may be, but perhaps you could explain to me the point in “defending” a service (one which I am already less than pleased with) by calling me a liar and a fool?