GRRRR: Service games

Call Esther Rantzen!, originally uploaded by webby.

Esther Rantzen's TV programme That's Life! used to do the odd skit on 'consumer problems', Adrian and Gavin would read our the, increasingly exasperated, letters that the customer had sent and the company's replies with comic pauses and everything was sorted out in the end. One famous case involved British Gas (publicly owned as it was then) whose new computer system had sent out a bill for £0.00 and then threatening cut-off for non-payment. This was entertainingly bizarre, and unusual, and held interest all the way to Doc Cox's witty song, which was no doubt something to the tune of his "I'm a Wanker" song with different words, or "I'm the Gas Man" to the tune of The Beatles "Taxman".

The here point being that up to the early eighties it was rare enough to have protracted trouble with a large company to make it a TV item, they had complaints departments, you could write to them - or telephone if you wished - but more usually they would have a branch in your local high-street. You could pop-in, although not on Wednesday afternoons or Saturdays or Sundays, and if it came to it refuse to leave until they'd sorted it all out.

It was rare to have that much trouble anyway, you bought something, it either worked or it didn't and if it didn't someone would come round to repair it.

Not any more.

Now every purchase over and above the price of a pint comes with labyrinthine 'Terms and Conditions' documents, the ultimate get-out clause (or hundreds of closely-typed clauses). You'll probably find, upon employing a legal professional, that British Gas aren't actually obliged to pump the gas you've bought to you, that iPods aren't actually supposed to play music, or last for much over a couple of months.

When something does go wrong, the merry-go-round starts spinning. The shop you've bought it from is actually a franchise and doesn't deal with returns, or repairs, and you have to call a 'customer services' number. More often than not their first gambit is to pack you back off to the shop - after they've told you to turn it off and on again.

Almost all of the call-centre customer service experience seems to be wilfully designed to stop two things: admission of guilt or responsibility, and not having the company have to act in any way. First-line support is brilliant at this, whilst keeping up a nauseating level of obsequiousness. "Bear with me Mr Smith".

It starts at management level, by deliberately employing people with a limited grasp of English, both abroad and in the UK, who are not able to deviate from the scripts they're given. Intelligent people can use reasoning to solve problems, they can tell when a complaint is reasonable, but they wouldn't want to work in such poor conditions for such low wages. On top of this is the culture of fear, of targets for numbers of calls dealt with, a call passed on to people who can actually deal with the problem is a black mark. Recently I had trouble with a service offered my by mobile phone operator (for a fiver extra a month!), it is a fairly complex system and has it's own dedicated support team. Not that you'd find out by calling the main customer services helpline - it took me over 2 hours of arguing to get put through to the right people. I was continuingly given solutions to different problems with different software. Poor training, whether deliberate or not really does make for some of the worst-spent time of your short life.

The operators lie, and fob you off - the brilliant one for mobile phone companies is "switch it off an back on again". Knowing of course that you're calling on the phone and if it doesn't solve the problem you'll have to call back. Most of the time you'll give up, and they can tick a little tick box.

Despite, of course, your call being recorded "for training and monitoring purposes", quite often a repeat phone call will reveal no trace of the first one you've made. Promises to return calls won't be kept and that person with special responsibility who is 'on leave' will never return. Comet claimed not to have received any of our phone calls or letters when we had a problem with our dishwasher, despite sending an engineer out to fix the problem, although when a Small-Claims Court summons reached them they sent us a cheque. Odd, when they made it clear that they'd never been contacted about the problem, and it wasn't their fault or responsibility anyway.

When your life turns into That's Life! and you spend more time on your mobile to their customer services that your friends, there's something wrong with the culture of service. It's something that our 'respect' obsessed government could sort out, perhaps a start would be plain English service agreements so you could understand just how little service you'd signed up for. And they could start putting items about deformed vegetables on the telly again.