"A BATTLE WITH BT.....AN UPDATE!"

Yesterday, I posted on my blog the saga of my battle with BT in Manila about a sum of money I deposited in the Post Office in payment of a BT bill. Today I had a phone call (what else!) from a lady called Judith who is part of the famous "offline" BT team in the UK. She works on a Saturday and had good news!

After only 5 minutes of investigations she had isolated the missing sum of money and confirmed it was actually with BT. However I have two BT phone lines and for some reason I have two accounts and the missing sum had been allocated to the wrong account. She spotted it straight away, and yet the Manila lady took up an hour of my life without resolving anything.

The money has now been allocated to the correct account and the "offline" lady has put measures in place to ensure it doesn't happen again. In total I talked to her for 10 minutes, some of which was to chat about the view over Winchester I was enjoying at the time.

It just goes to show that UK companies like BT are so keen to put their call centers anywhere in the Asia Pacific region for reasons of low cost, and certainly not for the benefit of their customers. Whether it's language, dialect, culture, or just time zone difference, talking to call centers in India, or Manila is far from a joy and definitely not a good experience for the vast majority of people. And yet a ten minute call with a lady in the UK resolved everything and still left time for us to chat happily.

UK call centers may be a thing of the past, but if UK companies (Telcos, banks and financial services operations) don't rethink their tactic of moving overseas they're is severe danger of losing customers and money.

How nice it will be to hear a Liverpool, a Manchester, a Birmingham, or Scottish accent.
Dream on!

Blog on, Dudes!