Friday 6 February 2015

How to Ruin Your Customer Relationships - A Lesson by Vodafone


 Dear Vodafone

You have failed the ABC of modern marketing.  You appear not to have tested your customer journey, or considered the customer experience.

You have;

  • A Product Management group that are incapable of communicating a supply problem to keep customers informed. Twitter/Website/Forum/Stores had no up to date information.
  • A web shop that displays questions marks when something is not in stock, (you have to do a web chat to find that out). 
  • A web shop that will not let you purchase accessories only, even when you are a logged in user and customer.
  • Your website chat does not distinguish that the user is on a business page, and connects you through to a personal customer team, who cannot help.
  • Google search results for store numbers that are out of date, so the customer has to make two calls instead of one.
  • A call centre who do not have access to store inventory systems, or the web shop, and advise you to visit or call your local store.
  • A Twitter team who declare company policy that store numbers are not made public, and then tell you publically that the call centre should not give out store telephone numbers, as customers should be encouraged to visit their local store. 
  • A customer account system that requires the customer to phone up to get credit notes made active on their account. 
  • An accounts team who recommend the customer calls back, if the credit is still not on their statement on the next run, as "the billing system doesn’t always pick up credits on accounts". 

The root cause that found all these problems?  A 3G Sure Signal Device