Follow-up on Destroying Customer Value: @Telfort is listening..

Last week’s post Destroying Customer Value was in it’s essence not about getting attention from the Telco company involved (being Telfort).

Fortunately @Telfort is listening in on-line for nearly two years now (I think). They even have a service blog (Dutch only; which turned into another marketing channel after they solved a huge backlog in complaints in 2009. But that’s another story)

So, @Telfort engaged in the comments of my last post, asking me to message them my wife’s phone number, which I did the same day. One day later or so, they promised to get in touch with my wife “as soon as possible”.

Not an “official channel”

“As soon as possible” took a bit long, so I pinched them. They sent me back quite an “odd” message, saying:

“I understand your concern, but everything will be alright. Because we are not an official channel we do not work with fixed turn-around times”

I felt the urge of sending them a message back telling them I really did not care about how “official” or not the channel is. I am (or my wife is actually) a very official Customer and I want to be kept in the loop on what’s happening, or at least some kind of notice when “asap” is..

But I didn’t. Thinking I might as well let them know in my follow-up post ;)

Another two days passed without any signs of life, so I pinched them again with a tweet last Friday. I got a quick reply, that they send my wife a letter the day before. In less than an hour I actually found the letter in our mail-box.

The official response

The letter is a typical complaints handling letter. Kind opening, stating the facts and mostly how they are entitled (legally) to do what they did and then some.. I noticed one rather important element we (my wife and I) did not know or forgot:

In the letter Telfort mentioned that my wife actually bought a 1 year subscription two years ago with the reduced price-offer. And that Telfort decided to extend the reduced offer for another year. They made it clear that they notified my wife in advance via text-message and some other channels too. I did not check, I believe them when they say so in a letter carefully drafted with legal eyes ;)

Now, this is important, for this means that Telfort wanted us to know that they extended the reduced price for another year when they thought it was good news to us, yet in the exact same situation, but for the fact that the reduced price is no longer extended, they did not go through the trouble of letting us know.

Kudos to Telfort

Fortunately Telfort also understands this was not the right way to do it. Subsequently, at the end of the letter, they apologized (apology accepted) for not notifying my wife in advance when the reduced price expired. On top of that they also promised to reduce my wife’s invoices for the excessive amounts, prior to her switching to a new offer.

And, kudos to Telfort, they thanked my wife for being a loyal Customer, choosing Telfort again.

3 final questions and one tip for Telfort

My wife is happy now, and thus, so am I. I do have some questions though I hope Telfort will answer for me here, or on their service blog:

1. Was not notifying my wife in advance a (incidental) service failure or is there no such policy in place?
2. If there is no such policy in place, will there be in the near future?
3. If not, why not?

On top of this: Telfort, please take a little more time to pro-actively inform your Customers of what you are doing, and how much time it will probably take. I also think it makes sense to not just drop a letter in a mailbox. It only takes a phone-call, prior to posting the letter, to understand whether the proposed recovery is a suitable one. In this case it was, but what if it wasn’t?