BT’s Poor Customer Service: A Case Study

Broken BT

This article is a case study of BT’s poor customer service. It is based on my own personal experience of trying to change my Internet service provider. Just to put the case into context, you need to understand that I live in a village that use to have very slow broadband. So in June when BT informed me that it would be introducing “Super Fast” broadband with their Infinity Fibre option (the term super fast is a bit of misnomer: I can now only get 15 mbps, this is not particularly fast but when you are starting with 0.5 mbps it is better than nothing) I jumped at the opportunity.

I signed up for this new service over the internet and even paid for my annual line rental in advance. I was given a date for an Openreach Engineer to fit the new sockets and I received a new BT Hub5 wireless router. All was well, or so I thought: about a week before the engineer was due I received a phone call on my mobile, I was busy at the time so could not take the call directly. When I had an opportunity to listen to the voicemail I found that I could not understand a word that was said! The customer service individual had a very strong accent; there were no follow up emails so I thought nothing of it. The following day I received an email saying that BT were sorry that I had cancelled my order and that I need to return wireless hub. I rang the customer service department to find out what was going on, unfortunately this team was totally ineffectual, the operative kept saying that I had cancelled the order and if I wanted to reinitiate it I would have to begin the whole process again. I kept trying to tell her that I did not cancelled the order and that BT had taken nearly £350 from me. She was not able to explain what went wrong or what would happen to my money. After about 30 minutes of trying to find out what had happened to my order I gave up.

I found the details of BT’s Managing Director (Libby Barr) and email her: I wanted an explanation as to why BT had cancelled my order. She did not answer me directly, a chap called Bruce Laywood (part of BT’s Executive Level Complaint’s team!) responded. He informed me that he was not sure why my order had been cancelled but would go about reinstating it. It did mean that the installation would be delayed from the 24th June to the 13th July, which was somewhat frustrating. In the meantime BT sent me another Hub 5 and a bill for its delivery: why did I need another Hub, but more importantly why was I being asked to pay for it again. Unsurprisingly BT’s customer service team and finance department could not explain why, but an individual did inform me he would sort it out (he never did).

About a week or so later I received another mail and letter from BT saying that they were sorry that I had cancelled my order and that I had to return the wireless hub! I got back in touch with Bruce who could not explain what was going on. He did say that I would have to start with standard broadband before being converted to the “Super Fast” Infinity fibre broadband. I was then sent a Hub 4 wireless router, and surprise, surprise they asked me to pay for its delivery! I should have canceled the order then but I thought that Bruce, a member of BT’s Executive Level Complaint’s team, would resolve the issue. How wrong was I, 2 months after placing the original order, BT finally managed to take control of the telephone line from my old Internet service provider but now I have no internet what so ever! No one from BT was able to explain what the issue was and how it would be resolved: BT kept blaming Openreach (which is part of BT). What I also found was the staff in their customer service department were making false promises so that they would not get a bad survey report (one of the operatives even said that she understood the issue, but urged me not to take it out on her when the survey on her performance was sent through to me). To make matters even worse I was now receiving letters from BT saying that I had not paid for the postage and packaging of the hubs they had sent me and the issue would be passed to a debt collector. This was all too much for me so I gave up with BT and moved to Plusnet (I am aware that they are part of BT, but at that time none of the other ISPs could offer fibre broadband in the Village).

Plusnet’s customer service was much better (although my average waiting time to speak to an operative was approximately 30 minutes): it makes a big difference speaking to someone who lives in the same country as you. I never did found out why BT were unable to connect me. Interestingly I managed to get a refund for all the Hubs that BT kept sending me, but sadly they are just sitting as credits in a BT account that I no longer use.

So where have BT gone wrong, looking at the series of events I can suggest that BT should take the following lessons onboard:

  1. There is an inherent flaw with its system to sign up new customers: if its own staff cannot process an order then the general public are going to have no hope.
  2. An organisation cannot take its customer’s money then cancel the order with providing an immediate refund or explaining the issue.
  3. BT’s CRM system needs to be integrated: none of their customer service team had any idea of the issues I had experienced. I wasted a great deal of time having to re-explain everything whenever I made a call.
  4. It appeared that BT’s customer service team were judged on the feedback they received through the quality control surveys: this meant that rather than address the issues the customer service teams would mislead customers with false information.
  5. BT should not confuse its customers by giving them multiple accounts: I found out in the end that I had 3 different accounts (a new one was created every time a Hub was sent to me).
  6. The quality of their overseas call centres was poor: they lacked any autonomy or authority to resolve issues.

Given the choice I would never go back BT unless some major changes in their infrastructure took place. Be warned if you are thinking of using them, particularly if you live in a rural area.

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Dr Alan Shaw is a Senior Lecturer and Marketing consultant focusing on a range of sectors. His main interests are in strategy development, social marketing, digital marketing, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing application.
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