Make it easy!

I know the exact moment when I finally lost my temper dealing with Kabel Deutschland’s terrible customer service. It was when they apologized.

Some background: I had been a customer since 2004 — and for one reason only. Kabel Deutschland broadcast the English programme Sky News. As a journalist, I considered it worth €10 a month.

Then, without any warning, Kabel Deutschland made it impossible for me — and, no doubt, thousands of other customers — to watch Sky News.

Three phone calls later, and after waiting more than 30 minutes to speak to someone, I was finally told by a technical support man that they had changed the frequency at which Sky News was broadcast. As a result, the cable connection in my flat could no longer receive it. I would have to build in some extra component.

I decided to cancel my subscription with immediate effect by email, even though it officially had six months to run. In the same email, I also complained about the long waiting times on the phone.

The first reply from Kabel Deutschland ignored everything I had said and simply confirmed that my cancellation had been noted for January 2011.

My follow-up email, pointing out they hadn’t actually dealt with my complaints, was swatted away like a fly. “We’ve looked at the case again and see no reason to change our decision.” They told me I couldn’t cancel my subscription just because I could no longer receive one programme.

My next email told them that their customer service seemed amazingly customer-unfriendly and counterproductive — losing a customer for life for the sake of €60. This brought the “apology”: “We are sorry that we are unable to do anything.”

Sorry, my a---, as I more or less told them in my fourth email (no reply as yet). Unable? Don’t make me laugh. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

I’m not looking for sympathy, and I know that my case is nothing special. But that is the sad truth: it is nothing special. Companies like Kabel Deutschland should read a fascinating article in the July/August edition of the Harvard Business Review.

In their article, “Stop trying to delight your customers ”, the authors argue that, rather than offering extra-special super service and trying to “exceed expectations”, companies should concentrate on getting the basics right and on making life easy for their customers. Among these “basics” are:

• Don’t make customers contact you more than once.
• Don’t transfer customers from one member of staff to another.
• Don’t make customers re-explain their service issue.
• Don’t make customers switch from one medium (e.g. phone) to another (email).
• Give the customer a satisfactory solution to his or her service issue.

All of that makes sense. And none of it is brain surgery, is it? So, Kabel Deutschland (and others): why don’t you do it?