Customer is God, Service is Worship!!!

Talking about customer service, I got to experience some of the best customer services in UK. But, unfortunately an interaction with Tiscali Broadband services has made me furious on many days in the past two months. However, we started using the Tiscali BB services since 9th August. And the compensation department has been in touch offering compensation for our unfortunate interaction with them!!! One of the letters posted to them and in Tiscali complaints website is followed. This is no different from many of them there…


From
Mrs & Mr S Nair

To
Tiscali Customer Services
PO Box 14505
Birmingham
B46 9BF

This letter has reference to 'new' request(a month back) for Broadband and
Telephone connection. After numerous efforts to get support from Tiscali, we
hereby write to express our serious concern and complaint on the unfortunate
interaction we have had to experience with Tiscali as it does neither solve
my roblem nor try to SUPPORT the customers.

Date of request: 22nd June 2008
Name: Mr S Nair

Customer account number given as: UIDL78GR (on 22nd June)

Status update:

23rd and 24th June
- No email or written communication received from Tiscali.
- Unable to log on to tiscali.co.uk

25th June 2008
- Telephone line started working
- Telephone number as shown on receiver telephone
- Unable to log on to tiscali.co.uk

27th June 2008
- Contacted 0871 2226397 on telephone line update. Customer service said,
"Telephone line is activated and request proceeded to Broadband. Within 5
working days will receive Broadband service. For any more information
contact 0871 222 3311".
Since 30th June 2008 till date (15 July 2008)
- About 10 telephone conversations with 0871 2223311 and 08712226397 In
nutshell: Both party asked to contact the other number.
Various updates during these conversations
-- Technical fault with BB service. Will be ready within 2 days.
-- No order placed, hence re-directed to sales.
-- Can't find broadband request for this telephone line (############)
-- Contact technical support
-- Contact cancellation department and reapply
-- Contact billing department for telephone related inquries!!!
-- Check your telephone number!!

On 15th July 2008 (3 weeks - 16 working days since request)
- No broadband service (Telephone working)
- No email or written communication from Tiscali.
- Unable to log on to tiscali.co.uk
- Unable to order new service from tiscali as an order already exists.

On 16th July 2008
- No broadband service or any feedback/'SUPPORT' from Tiscali
- Mrs Nair contacted Tiscali support and received a response saying this
will be looked into in the next 24 hours
- Mr Nair got a highly unprofessional e-mail from Tiscali indicating that
they don't have the necessary tools to support the customers (We never
realised when we requested for a connection that Tiscali had limitations in
supporting the customers!)
- Also mentioning that concern with 0800 numbers are resolved which
absolutely was not a concern at the moment as it NEVER helped us to get a
solution.
- Again Tiscali Customer Support Team has sent us e-mail saying this will be
resolved by Tiscali Broadband Team in the next 24 hours.

Please see the below for an example on the kind of support we obtained from
Tiscali (from an email to SUPPORT):
On 16th July
Called 0800 1079 000.. directed me to 0845 362 0344 (Tech. Support order
chasing) - 0845 362 0344 asked to contact to 0800 111 210 then back to 0800
107 9000 then to 0845 077 4488 (which eventually hung up without any reason
after making me hold for about 25 min). In between numerous reference asking
to contact the BIG TWO 0871 numbers (...3311 and ...6397). The clock hands
moved from 1:05 pm to 2:40 pm during this really enjoyable activity (which
even included asking me to speak English in English!!). If required, I can
give you a more wider list of numbers I have tried (as advised by your
colleagues worldwide).. So, hereby kindly request you to look into the
problem with bit more professionalism and do what need to solve my issue.
Otherwise, please cancel this order (I am unable to do this myself- tried
that to). Without that I am not even allowed to re-order (since a broadband
order already exists!!). Looking forward for SUPPORT

On 17th July 2008 (today)
- Spoke to a customer adviser (again a 26 minutes conversation) who
said the BB connection will be ready by 24th. The telephone line is only
activated yesterday (16th) and hence the order for broadband will take at
least 5 working days.
- Same time Tiscali Technical Support sent us an e-mail saying this
will be resolved by the Registrations Department or by Tiscali broadband
Services Department.
- Tiscali Support Team has also mentioned in the e-mail that they are
unable to pull our records after all these!!!

On 21st July 2008
- A LONG conversation (54 minutes) on 08712226397 in the morning; we were
informed that engineers were looking into that and based on Case ID
UKHD00001841642 the marker on the phone line (earlier broadband) has been
cleared by BT!! And now the request to BB order is in place.

- We were so happy to receive a call from Tiscali support team (for the
FIRST time in a month, but unfortunately the person on the other end was
asking if we wanted to cancel the order as nothing was happening.

On 22 July 2008
- Contacted 08712223311 and they informed that they cannot pull up any
records for Mr Nair in DL78GR. Sounded strange after ALL THESE. When we
insisted on transferring the call to the centre manager, they didn't listen
to us in the first place. Finally we were transferred to a fellow colleague
who didn't even bother to do any service as he was not even ready to answer
our question. 'are you the manager of the centre?'. This person on the phone
kept on saying, ' We cant help'. Finally they hung up without saying
anything.

- Contacted 08712226397. Spoke to Micheal who informed that it will take
another 2 weeks for the order to be in place. When I insisted on speaking to
his Manager after a long time of pleading we were transferred to his
colleague Jenner who informed that they are waiting for some bulk clearance
and confirmed that they cannot do anything specific to our case eventhough
it has been a month and we experienced a lot of trouble. We have explained
our situation very well and yet again they didn't even care to help. When we
insisted on speaking to her boss, she confirmed that TISCALI has no one
above her to help us in this situation. She finally told us her boss' name
is Mohammed but was not ready to transfer the call to him or give his
contact details!

Also, on request we were given this e-mail address to raise a complaint.
Hope to get a 'productive' response from this atleast. When I told the team
that I was going to report this unfortunate experience with Tiscali services
to press/media they seemed quite happy with it saying a 'ok, thank you for
your call' and hanging up.

On 23rd July
- Havnt heard anything from Tiscali.

Note: During these 4 weeks we felt travelling to various parts of India,
China, Africa etc while speaking to various customer advisors. But the end
result was the same.. Sorry we can't help, contact 0871222.... (the most
expensive of the call rates and minimum connection wait time of 20-25 min).

Unfortunately until now we have not got any productive or professional
approach to get the problem resolved.

We appreciate the idea of different departments and support teams Tiscali
hold to benefit the customers. Unfortunately this adds to the plight of the
customers as the right hand doesn't realise what the left hand does in the
organisation. I am sorry to bother you if this is one of the limitations of
the service provider (being a service which is into the world of
connectivity).

We still HOPE to get some positive and professional response back from
Tiscali and get this sorted.

I hereby attach along the e-mail communciation received from the various
departments of tiscali until now.

Many thanks for your wonderful team and efforts in keeping customers
connected.

Best Regards
Mrs & Mr SreeRaj Nair

Thats the start!

28th Aug 2008.
Why do I want to blog? I really don’t know..Just now I felt its better than saving word documents in my laptop after I have scribbled something!
So, here I go with my first one.

Simple pleasures, Endless laughs, Crazy day dreams, Unlimited chats, Occasional mood swings, Nostalgic thoughts and much more make my days!!!

Though not into the world of writing, I feel its one of the best ways you can caress your feelings. To dance like no one is watching you, pen down what you want as no one will read it. It feels good…

I start here on one of those less demanding days in office with no clue on where it will take me. There are things in which I lose interest once I have explored it, so I am not sure how blogs will be with me. Sometimes I wish I had (free) Internet access in my trains on my up and down journeys to office which consumes almost 1/12th of my time in a day. I have never appreciated the idea of being lonely in life as I have always grown up with people around. But these train journeys have proved the effect of exclusive time for myself.

I have tried reading in trains; but I can stick to that only if the topic of reading can keep me interested. Mostly the intial ten minutes will be on reading the free Metro from Leeds station. I have lost interest in reading the usual themes on rapists, killers, holiday paparazis and so on though I try to keep me updated with what goes on around. I have tried sudoku’s in trains. If the day had been stressful, I tend to tear off my sudoku rather than erasing and trying out options. However, I keep one handy for my good moods to solve them. One of my colleagues supply me with local magazines to keep me occupied in trains which is so nice of her. When I try to kill time with that I absolutely hate it when people standing stare at the magazines as they have some catching snapshots and stuff.

Occasionally I try to ring my Mums(Mum and Mum-in-law) in the evening trains. But the 3 network sometimes drives me crazy as they have limitations in covering my entire train journey! The same happens when my friend who lives down London rings me for our catch ups (quite frequently though). But, we have tried to manage our times more effectively and manage our chats while we walk or cook; this is simply because I don’t prefer to talk in local language when I am trains as most people would find it annoying. Its sad that both of us can’t manage each other’s mother tongues, the only language we have in common is English. Somehow, I don’t know how annoying it can be to others when I talk in my mother tongue while I am in trains. My perception is that no one understands it and so would not be a problem. Sometimes I may be wrong and this must be something which annoys people more. However, last ten minutes of my journey I continuously challenge the network to get me connected to my hubby baby to check when he would come home. Another hidden intention (interest!!!) is to check if he can pick me up from station even though its less than five minutes of a walk to home from station. He likes it not to be first at home in the evenings. So, he tries to catch me in the evenings if he can.

And yeah, that leaves me with almost 40 minutes again in trains. I have always tried to do my Vishnu Sahasranamam in the mornings. But then, it’s a shame that I doze off in the middle of that. However, I try to do it as much as possible in my conscious mind. And I take a little nap which gets me neck aches when I reach my destination. I should confess that it gets really embarrassing in the mornings when you wake up with your alarm 5 minutes before it reaches Leeds station and you see a number of people looking at you in a funny way (may be I sleep awkward!).

Now that leaves me another 20 minutes to rush to the station now to catch my evening train. If possible I will be trying to pen down something regularly while I am in trains. That again depends on my good will to carry lappy toppy everyday as I tend not to work from home much. That’s it for now, a considerably good start I guess. Cheers!