e-Service
My Play.com Customer Experience
I just wanted to share with the interwebs a letter I just wrote to play.com about my experience of purchasing from them and dealing with their customer support. Normal blogging service shall resume shortly.
Hi,
A month ago I placed an order with play.com for an xbox, games and peripherals which totalled just under £268. It wasn’t a small purchase so I’d done quite a bit of research on where I’d get the best value between the various bundles and after quite a bit of consideration I decided play.com offered the best value.
The order went through and I was really happy with my purchases, gradually they started arriving in the post although the console which had been in stock when I placed the order had changed to out of stock. After about 2 weeks of this I called up the support line and explained what had happened and was told that the stock cycles can be up to 28 days so I should hang on. After a month of waiting with still no change to my awaiting status I called up again (at this point all the other items had arrived but were rather useless without the console). I explained the situation and was told that the item was not awaiting stock but was out of stock and was in fact a Christmas bundle so would not be back in. I explained how I was pretty pissed off with this since I’d called up previously, and the fact that my order was taken in the first place and I’d not been told that it was out of stock at any point in the previous month. In fact I might never have found out if I hadn’t taken the initiative and called first. I asked if there was anything that could be done and the operator said he’d speak to his manager. I was then told that the manager would try and put together a bundle, though he couldn’t get into the system at the moment to do so and could I call back tomorrow to do so.
I called back this evening (the previous call was yesterday) and asked to speak to Lucas as I’d been instructed. the operator was aware that play were going to try to put together a bundle for me. She spoke to the manager for a while and returned to tell me that the bundles have been restructured and they could not put one together for me because the price has gone up also. At this point I was too tired and annoyed to argue, and while she went to great lengths to explain why the error had occurred and how orders taken are only temporary, this didn’t really help the fact that play.com had wasted my time (making a number of phonecalls and waiting a month for nothing) and my money (the restructured bundles mean I’d have to spend a lot more to get less).
I’m not the sort of person to write complaint letters but this has been such an exceptionally bad experience of customer service I really wanted to let you know about it. After my previous phonecall I was optimistic that play were wiling to make up for their error and so to call back and then be told flatly that there was nothing they could do and basically that it was not their fault was especially annoying. Anyway needless to say I don’t intend to shop with play again if I can avoid it.
Regards,
Colm
P.S. Not providing an email address so customers are forced to call the support line (and usually hold for 5 minutes before speaking to an operator) is also really annoying.
e-Service that’s badly in need of energising
So I’ve been looking at the web offerings in the utilities sector lately and I’ve been amazed at how bad their e-service is.
You have to wonder why when the benefits of providing good customer service online are so huge
- When people self serve (i.e. solve their own problems) they feel a sense of accomplishment. You get happy customers.
- When people self serve they don’t call up your call centre. You get fewer calls to your call centre. You have to hire fewer people to answer calls (particularly the more trivial ones). You reduce costs. Is there any company in the world right now that doesn’t want to reduce costs?
- When you allow customers to access their accounts online you don’t have to send out thousands millions of bills out every month.
- When you invest in technology such as smart meters you don’t have to employ meter readers to go round checking the meter and disturbing people in their homes. Again with the cost reduction. You also stop overcharging people with estimated bills, and give people tools to help cut their energy costs.
BUT yes to allow people to do these things will require some investment. However the potential ROI is huge. Sure it’s not in income but in cost reduction and less obvious aspects like customer satisfaction which will reduce customers switching.
There’s a huge gap in the stagnant UK market for a big retail brand to swoop in and disrupt the marketplace with a very competitive offering. Tesco Energy? Virgin Energy? Companies that specialise in disrupting sectors dominated by monolithic organisations.
In Ireland where the energy sector has only recently been deregulated, ESB the incumbant is hemoraging customers at a rate of 1000 a month to Energia who have come in with a great online service offering on top of simply being cheaper. They’ve used the Resource Kraft product to let people visualise their usage and spending in detail, and while their help section isn’t great (British Gas deserves an honourable mention in this department), they have nice touches like their request a call service.
Time for the big boys to do something about it or just watch their customers drift away in drip and drabs and droves eventually.