The Attention Economy: In Praise of British Telecom (BT) (posted by Oliver Nyumbu)
Posted by Oliver Nyumbu
February 22nd, 2007
Today BT delivered customer service that truly surprised me. You see, my phone at home has not been working for the past four days and I thought it was due to faulty hand sets. Last night, I phoned BT to establish whether the fault might have anything to do with BT equipment.
My previous experience of seeking technical assistance from BT or to offer its staff constructive criticism had been so bad that it put me in mind of Winston Churchill’s words;
“When people stumble onto the truth they usually pick themselves up and hurry about their business.”
Needless to say, I was not full of hope and expectation when I phoned BT.
The person I spoke to was wonderfully professional and personable. Having established that the fault was to do with a local exchange, she was able to promise that an engineer would fix the problem by the end of the following day – today. Straight away, I received a text saying, ‘Fault investigation underway. We will update you when we have more information. If alternative online access is possible go to www.bt.com/service’.
I was reassured by the text message but gave it no more attention than that. Then at 8:36 this morning, on my way into work, my mobile pinged. It was another BT text with the heading BT FAULT UPDATE and it said, ‘We are pleased to confirm that your line is now back in service. Thank you for your patience’.
This left me feeling that in terms of giving paying customers focused attention BT was ‘getting it’ at last. In an attention economy where customers tend to be promiscuous neglected or unloved, customers will walk into the wide open arms of the competition.
March 4th, 2007 at 9:52 am
I had a similar experience with BT faults a few months ago, and was similarly astonished. My contact with BT was entirely through interactive technology (pressing buttons rather than talking to people), and I think shows how BT have struck gold (in this particular niche of their services, at least) in making their processes *and* people work together to offer a brilliant level of service. So often one aspect or the other - or usually both - are found wanting, and the result is disastrous.