(Originally posted on April 20, 2013)

Sometimes, I do not understand the world – and no, I do not mean all those new features Microsoft has hidden (‘automated’) into its office suite that prevent me from writing a normal letter – I speak of websites. And not just any websites, but specifically websites that are meant to interact with people.

Let me not talk about some other websites, but let’s stick to myself. First I started writing about my hobby which is customer service. After producing some ‘self-proclaimed major pieces of art’ this resulted in less then 10 hits, which mostly were the result of my own checking whether anybody at all had read what I had written. Increased activity in other social media where I contributed to the public debate on the subject resulted in weekly Hootsuite reports which confirmed that there were a mere 3 readers in total which had clicked through on links to my blogs. I did not care much, because I wrote for the fun, although my ego had totally different views on it…

When I started to follow a couple of industry experts on Twitter and re-tweeted some stories I found interesting, some of them started to follow me back, and even tweeted links to some of my blogs. One day, I even had a spike of 100 readers this way. Something similar happened when I wrote – in English – about a phenomenon like Klout, and how people artificially inflate their followers for a couple of euro’s (or more often: dollars). By the way, these articles also resulted in my website being found much more by spammers, who added comments to especially my English-language articles referring to Louis Vuitton bags at wholesale prices, and payday loans from Virginia(?). Undoubtedly marketing activities from very succesful internet enterpreneurs… That put the more than 8.000 hits a month I got kind of in perspective: how many of those hits were from real readers? (By the way, my website-provider is notoriously bad in protecting the comments, so what does that say about visitor numbers of other blogs, where spammers do not get through security to post comments and thus be visible?)

And then the amazing thing happened: I got entangled into a very busy assignment, where I had virtually no time to ‘breathe’, let alone write well-thought through articles. So my blogs became scarce and limited to customer service bloopers I experienced myself, easy writing. Not in the way I often see consultants write about their own frustration-experiences as if those are exceptions – like their insights… – but ‘killing with irony’ and also indicating how it could be done better. The former is my way of working through frustrations, the latter my excuse to write about it at all. After a couple of months I looked at my visitor numbers by pure accident (kind of avoided looking at them, would be bad for the aforementioned ego anyway) and visitor numbers had gone ‘through the roof’. On top of that, I started getting al kinds of reactions IRL (In Real Life for those of you like me who do not Twitter ‘enough’). People complained I wrote less, and others that they wanted me to write in English.

So my conclusion is clear: the ‘market’ (wish there were one) for blogs is not interested in learning, but only in entertainment, and customer service horror stories are found entertaining. So I will let go of my goal of showing how customer service can be improved, and just take you along in the horrors that ‘Chris’ experiences in the world of customer service. What’s in it for me is that this allows me to vent my frustration. All based on true-life events, and without any pretenses left…

New cases might be published not as new blogs but as comments below this original blog. That would guarantee that all those wonderful offers for Louis Vuitton bags get sufficient attention… But no guarantees given.

Since ‘all’ Dutch readers also read English, but some of my German readers seem to have difficulty with Dutch (incomprehensible for me), I will from now on focus more on works in the English language.

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Case 1

Christian is moving to Germany for his work and is seeking a connection for internet. Through sheer naivity he signs a contract with Vodafone for DSL. Not for the choice of Vodafone, but for the choice of fixed internet. Although, come to think of it….

The installation takes a couple of weeks, and a couple of steps. Step 1 = that he will get an order confirmation by letter. One guess: whether he really receives it. Step 2 = a letter with his installation password and the date and time the service will be switched on. Second guess: whether he really receives this second letter. Step 3 = he will get his hardware by mail. Which he does get. As described, he is fairly naive, so he calls Vodafone and asks where the previous letters are. Guess whether the lady is apologetic or not. “You have received this letter already” is the accusative reply, as if she can physically access the mailbox at his door. Duly impressed by the fortune-telling capabilities of this lady and well aware of his own lack in this area, Chris asks for this letter to be sent again, because he needs the installation password of course. Thank heavens that at least this favour is granted to him by our good fairy, at least in the conversation. Guess whether he ever receives this letter.

Step 4 = an SMS. Guess whether Chris ever receives this SMS.

Step 5 = the service activation itself. Like a Russian ‘Matrushka’-doll, it consists of 5 substeps. Of those, the first 2 (5.1 and 5.2)go like the fire brigade: connection of the modem to the electricity socket and pushing a ‘Restart’-key are well within the capabilities of our hero.

Step 5.3 though, is the check that the signal is active. Somehow, this one requires a little more work. On a Monday, Chris is in Frankfurt with the movers, who unload the van with his furniture and other belongings. Around 11 am a technician from Telecom shows up, with a wild look in his eyes. A comparison to Tom Hanks in ‘Outcast’ (oid) is the first that comes to mind. Chris is on the (mobile!)telephone with a client (his fault of course), but the technician is very adamant, he does need to get to the meter closet, in as little time as possible, to compensate for his own delay apparently. When access to the meter closet is not immediately available, the technician runs outside, mumbling that he will then switch it over in the public area. 15 minutes later he comes to Chris with a form to sign that Chris has checked that at 1 pm the service is working. Chris: “But how can I sign that I have checked if I have not been able to check it at all?” The response from the technician is unintelligible, but he takes the form away irritatedly again and marches off.

When Chris checks the service, guess whether it has been activated. Fortunately his company mobile is Vodafone as well, so he can call the Vodafone service line for free. After working his way through a jungle of multiple choice he gets to an operator. The first thing she asks him, is his telephone number. Chris: “I do not have that number, and that is exactly why I am calling you.” Then the lady informs him that of course, the service is only activated for the first connection point in the house. That is obvious, right? Especially since that connection point is in the hallway, where there is no electricity socket for the modem, and we would not want to place it in the living room, next to 2 electricity sockets, of course. Why do you have 2 connection points anyway?

Chris, demotivated to the bone, hangs up and checks the socket in the hallway. No success (of course). The next Vodafone customer service employee is kind enough to at least provide the ‘Modem Installationscode’ by Phone, and schedules a technician for next Saturday.

This final savior finds out that a setting in a central switch is not correct, so the system could not work at all anyway. By the way, the socket in the living room is the first one in this particular case, no problem to have it activated. After his intervention Chris has succesfully mastered step 3(!) of the installation process. He has only 2 more to go…

That next and fourth step is an easy one: you just put an analog phone into the socket… We live in 2013, who still has an analog phone? Chris is old-fashioned, and he has one, but stil in his old place. Fortunately one of the neighbors lends Chris one. He only has to connect the phone, and the system will lead him through the way… No more guessing at this time whether this works. In utter despair, Chris then connects the wireless connection of his laptop, and ‘Lo and Behold!’ he gets a conection to the modem. It allows him to enter the modem-installation code, and now he is home scot-free, because Step 5 is fully automated! The next 10 minutes are a breeze!

Except that afterwards the wireless connection between the laptop and the modem does not work any more. A service desk employee informs Chris that he should – of course, how do you even get the idea to make a wireless connection to your modem instead of a wired one – first connect via one of the wires delivered together with the modem. For a wireless connection, Chris first has to de-install McAfee’s firewall. He decides to wait with that for a little while…