I finally got a reply from a real person at O2.
Dear Marc,
Thank you for taking the time to email us.
I would like to apologise for the number of emails you have been sent with regards to this query. I am aware that some of these emails have been irrelevant to your original email; I can assure you that I will feed this back to the advisors in question.
As previously stated I would like to thank you for taking time to provide us with Website feedback and will pass this on. We have recently updated our website, I can only apologise if you feel this has not improved matters. We have also received very positive feedback regarding the update from other customers. As you can appreiciate it is hard to satisfy all customers the same, which is why we are glad to hear of areas for improvement.
Should you require, I can arrange for a paper bill to be sent to you free of charge every month. I understand this is not a perfect solution to your problem, I am however, trying to negotiate a ‘happy medium’ with you in an attempt to improve your satisfaction with O2.
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
Kind regards,
Gemma White
I can feel that this relationship may be nearing it’s natural end….
Hi Gemma,
Thanks for your offer to send me paper bills; I never had problem getting the bills form the website. I was simply frustrated by the lack of thought that has gone into your site.
You say that you have updated the site. Yes you have updated the front of the site - but a few clicks in and the old site is lurking just beneath the new skin – so functionally nothing has changed.
I suppose I just wanted to achieve a level of ‘real’ dialogue with O2 customer services rather than receiving standard responses.
I have become seriously frustrated with the way in which customer service has become simply a marketing tool, measured by how many emails, complaints and lost calls in call centre queues, rather than a genuine desire by the company to provide a high level of service to your clients.
I run a small company, and we pride ourselves on our ability to respond personally to all of our clients in an individual manner. I think the number of standardized emails (which seem to me to have come from some kind of outsourced support centre in the Indian subcontinent) that went back and forth before you finally wrote a ‘real’ one is indicative of the corporate attitude to service.
I don’t blame you or any of the automatons who reply to customer queries, I think that it’s just the way the corporate world has gone. I do, however, think that there will be a backlash against companies such as yourselves and your business will ultimately suffer.
O2 should be proactive. They have an opportunity to address their poor customer service record and actually start dealing with their customers in the way that your adverts already claim to. O2 need to stop thinking of service as being a number and start thinking of it as being the public face of your business.
All that said, I’m sure someone will now write back to me explaining how to empty my cache or something. And I am certain that this email will never get further than your desk.
Feel free to prove me wrong.
Regards
Marc
Written by exmonkey on July 7th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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The latest from O2 - this time Garima Sobti presses the button on the empty email writing machine.
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
We appreciate all the feedbacks provided by you in our recent emails.
If you are having problems related to our website service, please email us mentioning your problem and we will then be able to assist you.
For further assistance, please contact our Customer service team on 08009 777 027. They will transfer your call to our Data Support team who will be able to assist you in this matter.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Garima Sobti
O2 Customer Service.
My reply….
Dear Garima,
Thank you for contacting me regarding my previous email.
If you are having problems understanding my comments, please email me with your problem and I will then be able to assist you.
For further assistance, you may want to try actually assisting people. Alternatively, why not try contacting your own Customer service team on 08009 777 027. They will transfer you to the wrong department or simply keep you on hold until you chew off your own leg with boredom.
If you need any more help, visit your online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help, unless you are using Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape, IE 5 and below or any browser other than the single version of IE 6 that seems to satisfy the requirements of your lazy web developers.
Kind Regards
Marc
Written by exmonkey on July 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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I’m sure I got this email when I first wrote to them….
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
We do appreciate all comments, ideas and suggestions from our website users and we will use this information to help us improve your website experience.
If you have a Customer Service issue which needs a response, please reply to this email.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Richa Agarwal
O2 Customer Service
My reply:
Thank you for yet another robot mail.
I would like someone in customer services to: a)admit that your customer service responses are formulaic and often completely irrelevant and
b)communicate to me, in a meaningful manner, what changes O2 are going to make to actually provide the kind of customer service Sean Bean’s voice constantly touts on your television adverts.
Our contract is up for renewal in September, and I want to know that your customer service is not simply a small number of bland brush off emails, but actually something that provides SERVICE for you CUSTOMERS.
Regards
Written by exmonkey on June 29th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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The latest….
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
I am sorry for any inconvenience that may have been caused.
Your original email sent on 19 June 2006 did not have any query other than the feedback regarding our website. If you have any query regarding O2 online product or services, please reply to this email with your query. Which will then be passed to the relevant department and dealt with accordingly.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Divya Bhushan
Eh?
I think they are just going through their templates now.
My reply.
If that is the case, why then did you send me a long email telling me how to reduce the security level of my browser and delete all my cookies?
Also, can you stop apologising for any inconvenience you may have caused.
Marc
Written by exmonkey on June 26th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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Brilliant -they replied to my last email with instructions on how to empty my cache!
Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Customer Service.
I am sorry for any inconvenience that may have been caused by our website.
Problems viewing your online bill can sometimes be caused by settings within your Internet browser itself.
Please follow this simple procedure to ensure that this is not causing you a problem:
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click TOOLS from the top menu bar. A dropdown list should appear.
- Select INTERNET OPTIONS from this list. A new window will open.
- Across the top of this window will be several tabs with headings such as GENERAL and SECURITY, select the GENERAL tab.
- Click DELETE FILES. Another small window will open.
- Click the small check box titled DELETE ALL OFFLINE CONTENT.
- Click OK. This window will close. Your offline content will now be deleted. This process can take up to 2 minutes.
- You may also have an option DELETE COOKIES next to DELETE FILES, if so, click this also.
- Click the SECURITY tab.
- Ensure that your security level is set to either MEDIUM-LOW or LOW.
- Click OK, this window will now close.
- Close all Internet Explorer windows.
Now, go to the O2 home page at http://www.o2.co.uk and attempt to log in using your username and password.
If you are unsure of these log in details please reply to this email and we will reset these for you.
Once logged in, please select the link “View My Bill”, you will then be presented with a screen containing a number of different options relating to your account. Amongst these options you will see a link entitled “Online Bill”, clicking this will take you directly to your current online bill.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at:
http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Sanjay Rawat
O2 Customer Service.
WHAT THE FUCK? I have no idea why they thought that I needed to know that!
Here is my reply (CC’d to their communications director and media affairs director)
Dear Sanjay Rawat,
You have not read either of the original emails I sent. You have simply pasted a load of irrelevant instructions in to a form email.
This has nothing to do with either my ability to see the my account details page or my cache needing refreshing.
Please read through the previous emails then come back to me if you like - but DO NOT - I repeat DO NOT simply cut and paste some rubbish that you use to brush off the feeble minded every time you get a support enquiry.
All you and your colleagues are doing by responding to my email in such an obviously contemptuous and slavishly machine-like way is proving my point and showing your company for the frauds (in customer service terms) they clearly are.
Regards
Marc
Written by exmonkey on June 22nd, 2006 with 4 comments.
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Dear Marc,
Thank you for contacting O2 Online Business Customer Service.
I am sorry for the inconvenience that may have been caused to you.
We need feedback such as yours to help us identify any area of our service which our customers feel is in need of review. Changes are then made on a regular basis, which reflect what our customers are telling us.
Please reply to this email with all your queries.
If you need any more help, please reply to this email or visit our online help service at http://www.o2.co.uk/help
Kind regards,
Richa Agarwal
O2 Customer Service
Nicely generic, whilst completely missing the point. Clearly they haven’t been making regular changes, as the current site has not been updated (other some minor CSS mods) in over 3 years.
My reply:
Did you even write this letter? Did you even read mine?
Written by exmonkey on June 20th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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My email to O2.
Hi - question was going to be:
Are you aware that your site is without a doubt one of the most difficult to use, buggy and annoying sites on the web - entirely unfit for purpose, especially when you consider the size of O2 and the money spent on advertising?
Every time I am unlucky enough to have to use the site to retrieve my online bill, I get an alert box telling me that my browser is out of date and that you recommend I get an upgrade. For your information, my browser is V1.5.0.4 Firefox (the latest version) – which had a 20% market share at the end of last year in Europe.
However I then spent 5 minutes trying to find this form and almost forgot my questions.
Sequence is as follows –
1 – click on ‘contact O2′
2 – enter in mobile number and click ‘go’ – BTW this is not explained. The contact O2 link still appears at the bottom of the page, clicking it just reloads the page. No explanation why.
3 – Locate the ‘Contact Us’ link in the ‘General Help’ list. Not the ‘Contact O2’ link below this list that pushes you back to the previous page.
4 – Select ‘Email us’ from the list on this new page.
5 – read the 6 paragraphs of information entitled “How to email us” and then click the ‘Contact Us’ link at the bottom – but not the ‘Contact O2’ link 1cm below the ‘Contact Us’ link.
6 – hooray – the email form!
Having found this form I now want to know, why does O2 need my postcode and date of birth to answer this email? The details are mandatory – do you only answer emails for people in specific areas or born under specific star signs? I am a Pisces. Does this qualify?
The subject check box is interesting and a little scary. Two options:
1 – Email us and
2 – Other
Is that like ‘The Others’ in Lost (Channel 4). I think I’ll chose ‘email us’ as I don’t want to be kidnapped by badly dressed pirate types.
I bet you’re going to tell me that a new site is being designed as I write this, and I can expect to enjoy the new O2 online experience, ala Web2.0 very soon.
Can’t wait. I really can’t.
Count them up - 6 pointless pages just to send an email. How difficult can it be to have a ‘Contact Us’ button that just links to either an email address or an email form. Anyone would think they don’t want to hear from me.
You too can have O2 related fun at: http://www.o2.co.uk and while you’re there, check out the page title: O2: The leading mobile phone site on the Web. We’re all doomed. Again.
Written by exmonkey on June 19th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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