Customer Service Review – How not to cold call
British Gas is one of the largest suppliers of gas and electricity in the UK. Through well placed adverts and competent marketing, they’ve become a household name. For a brand that is so successful, I can’t understand why they would decide that a better selling format would be to move into poorly performed cold calls! I have yet to find someone who enjoys these phone calls, which undoubtably means that the service they offer could use some improvement…
My first hand experience came when I was staying with my parents last year. They live in a rural area a little outside London and, as with other extreme rural areas, they don’t tend to receive the same level of service as towns and cities do. Currently, they have one mobile phone network, bottled gas and – until they discovered satellite TV – only had four channels. We received the first of these infamous phone calls – but what this caller didn’t realise or seem to care about was that he was actually trying to sell a service that wasn’t actually available to them because of the location of their home. Despite telling the man on the end of the phone that we were not interested, we received several more calls over the next few days, which showed how poor their listening skills were. By the time the sixth call came through we were all pretty exasperated and so I decided to contact British Gas directly to put an end to it all.
Apparently, it seemed the customer service department was just another division of the cold call team. Initially, I was told that British Gas had no control over who the sales department rang. I assured the attendant that, as the sales department’s employer, British Gas had full control over who they ring – otherwise they’d be hassling people who already have British Gas which of course would be a complete waste of time! He said he’d fill out a request, asking why we wanted to be removed. I simply answered because British Gas doesn’t operate in our area.
This was clearly the wrong thing to say, as the attendant launched into the same sales script as the cold caller – explaining that British Gas has the most coverage in the UK and that I must be mistaken in thinking that British Gas couldn’t reach us. He even offered to send out a consultant who could come to the area and asses our current supplier in order to offer a better deal. He asked for my postcode and I obliged knowing what was going to happen next!. Once he had the address, the computer started checking – and re-checking – I even heard him call a colleague over to check he’d filled it in correctly.
After a few moments of silence, the attendant finally let me know that “it would appear that the direct gas line isn’t available in that area”. Smug, I stayed polite and simply asked him to remove us from the cold call list once and for all. He agreed, saying he would pass my request onto the sales department. It appeared that on this occasion the customer service assistant listened to and finally processed my request. As of yet, my parents have not received a cold call from British Gas since.
If I could give British Gas two pieces of advice, it would be to ensure they know who their service extends to before trying to sell it. I would also suggest they listen to their prospects needs more fully and ensure that these needs are communicated internally to avoid frustrating potential customers.
