A French customer received a telephone bill from Bouygues Telecom for
€11,721,000,000,000,000. That’s 11 quadrillion
Euro, roughly 1,000 times the United
States government debt.
OK, so computer errors happen and
the company cannot know the error has occurred until the customer contacts them
to have the problem fixed. The real issue here is that what happened next is
symptomatic of the way large organizations, both corporate and government seem
to deal with errors entirely of their own making.
The call centre operator told the customer,
Solenne San
Jose that they could not amend the bill or stop the amount being debited from
her account. What a load of bullshit.
It smacks of the all too common try
on when poorly trained staff do not know how to fix a problem and are too lazy
to go and find out what to do, so they just lie to the customer and pretend
they cannot solve the problem in the hope the customer will give up and go
away. How many of us have experienced this crap?
Many readers might be thinking: Call
centre … India or Philippines (or their Francophone equivalent for those who spotted that the customers would speak French) …
what do you expect? But no: according to Bouygues Telecom, they have 6 call centres, all in France.
It took several calls to have the matter
resolved. The company finally admitted the real amount was €117.21,
then waived it in compensation for the inconvenience (and to try to ameliorate
the PR damage), which was the least they should do.
Even then, Bouygues Telecom stated that the problem had been due to
“a printing error and a
subsequent misunderstanding between the client and staff at their call centre”
Yes,
certainly a printing error, but no “misunderstanding” BETWEEN the customer and
your staff. The blame lies entirely at one end: with your idiot employees. Obviously
the amount was wrong, so just apologise for the inconvenience and arrange to
send a new bill with the correct amount. Even if you can’t work out the correct
figure immediately, put a stop on the bill, then refer it. Simple, but still
too hard for the staff at Bouygues Telecom.
Why don’t you
just tell the truth and admit that your staff should have fixed what was
obviously a billing error the first time the customer rang? Don’t pretend it
was a “misunderstanding”. Your staff are clearly stupid and poorly trained.
That is the fault of management. Rip the call centre manager a new arsehole and
have him / her commit to ensuring improved staff training and quality, or be
sacked.
Unfortunately,
this episode is an example of the way large organizations too often deal
with customer complaints, even when as in this case, it’s obviously a system
error. First, they require the customer to do most of the work, usually
exacerbated by their staff’s failure to promptly identify and solve the problem
(even when it’s blindingly obvious). Staff often instinctively deny any
responsibility for fixing the problem, or sometimes for the problem itself. Then
if the matter does blow up, as in this example, some oily oxygen thief from Corporate Communications adds insult to injury by trying to pretend it was all
a “misunderstanding”, the insinuation being that the customer is partly to
blame.
It’s part of
a modern, Western malaise: nothing is really ever anyone’s fault. No-one will
take responsibility for anything and we can’t blame anyone because that would
be unfair.
No it isn’t.
If a customer tells you they have received a bill for 11 quadrillion Euro and
you say you can’t fix it, you are a lazy idiot. Your manager is probably
incompetent for inadequately training you or employing you in the first place.
Both of you should be told to improve your performance or be sacked.
The correct
approach is to take the customer’s details and only call back when the error
has been fixed. But how many times have you experienced this? In my experience,
it’s a minority of cases. If organizations did this properly at the first
contact with the customer, they wouldn’t need bullshit statements from
Corporate Communications.
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