Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

We’ve all been there before, pleading our case with some salesperson who can’t seem to grasp that retaining your long term custom is more important than upsetting you over a solitary incident. Francois Gossieaux shares his recent frustrations with T-Mobile after trying to get an upgrade.

I am a T-Mobile user and yesterday I tried to upgrade to the Blackberry Curve. Even though I am long-time loyal T-Mobile customer, spending $180+/mo on their services, I would have to pay $400 for the new handset instead of the $250 that new customers have to pay. I was furious but the guy in the store could not do anything and recommended that I call customer service - which I did. Half an hour into that call I got the same response.

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I am a very loyal customer and if they would have switched me and not screw up too badly in the future I could have easily been with them for another 4 years. At $180/mo, that is a loss of $8,640.

What’s really surprising is that some industries seem to be hellbent on frustrating customers. As Francois points out, do the dumbest marketers work for mobile phone companies? I’d have to go for telecoms companies, but a number of other industries also seem to share the same shortsightedness. A company’s success is built on forging long term relationships with their customers. While the customer isn’t always right, it helps to cut him a break every once in a while. He’ll thank you for it in the long run.

Given that telecoms companies have a bad reputation for customer service, one wouldn’t think that any of them would try to play up the situation. I try not to criticise other companies’ marketing efforts, but I really did have to shake my head when I heard about one Irish telecoms recent viral efforts. I received an email a number of weeks ago which made out that someone in the telecoms company’s customer service department was having a bad day. By calling a customer service helpline, customers could select to hear a duck quack from the usual list of options. Turns out that it was all a prank and designed to drum up interest in their services.

I have to admit that when I called the number I thought it was funny. However I came away with the impression that their service must be so bad that their own staff mock it. Yet the campaign’s objective was to drum up sales!? It just goes to show that viral popularity doesn’t necessarily translate into commercial success.

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