I rather like ‘Reverse Brainstorming’ as a creative problem solving technique. Essentially, you take the problem you want to brainstorm (e.g. ‘how to deliver a great customer experience’) and brainstorm the opposite (‘how to deliver an awful customer experience’). If you use brainstorming a lot, it can provide a fresh, fun twist as well as providing a different perspective and generating some novel solutions – as long as you remember the final step, which is to use the ideas from your reverse brainstrorm to help you generate solutions to the original problem (‘so if this is what we could do to make the customer experience truly awful, what does that tell us about what would make the customer experience great?’).
My experience with Virgin Media this week makes me wonder if they have been using reverse brainstorming and then implementing their ideas without flipping the problem back to the original. Let me take you through it.
Last Tuesday, we lost our On Demand service and a number of channels – including Cbeebies. We have a three year old so this is serious. I tried to report the fault on Wednesday but a recorded message suggested there was a general problem in our postcode. The next morning I phoned again at 7.45am only to find that the call centre lines don’t open until 8. On Friday I did manage to book an engineer but for the following Tuesday. So far, so mildly frustrating. However, I was offered the option of an appointment between 8 and 12, 12 and 4 or 4 and 8 so at least I wouldn’t be waiting in all day.
Having waited in from 12 til 4 on Tuesday, I phoned the customer service number to report that the engineer hadn’t turned up. I was assured that he was ‘just finishing a job in your postcode area’ and that he would ‘definitely‘ arrive in time to have the problem fixed by 5pm (when I would need to pick up the children from nursery). He didn’t. When I phoned Virgin Media again, I was told there were no appointments available for the next day but they could get an engineer to me between 12 and 4 on Thursday.
At 3.30pm on Thursday I reported that the engineer had not yet turned up and sought reassurance that he would be with me by 4pm. I was told ‘according to my screen he is literally on your doorstep and will be with you any minute’. Thirty minutes later, still ‘no show’ but I was again told he was ‘definitely’ on his way. At 4.45 I called to say that he still hadn’t arrived and I would have to set off for the nursery at 5. I was put on hold. For an eternity. When someone finally came on the line it was a different someone (although she didn’t explain who or why). She did say that the engineer had been delayed and ‘I will get a manager to call you to let you know when we can get someone to you’. No prizes for guessing whether I received such a call.
At 9:30 this morning (Friday), I phoned the customer service centre again. Each time I call, by the way, I have to listen to a lengthy recorded message which includes an unfeasibly cheerful woman saying ‘right, let’s get you some help’ before proceding to tell me how to switch on the box in case I’ve simply left it on stand-by. ‘Will’ tells me he’ll get the Area Field Manager to call me to advise whether they will be able to get an engineer to me this morning or this afternoon. When 3 o’clock arrives and I’ve received no call, I’m guessing an engineer won’t be showing up this morning.
I phone again. ‘Maria’ listens patiently to my rant then offers to put me through to the Field Operations team. I tell her this feels like I’m being fobbed off but she explains that if she transfers me, they have to talk to me whereas if she talks to them and asks them to call me, there’s no guarantee they will. Her concern in this respect is telling, to say the least. She warns me there is ‘a bit of a queue’.
About 15 minutes later I’m talking to ‘Simon’. I explain the story so far and the first thing he says is ‘no problem’. This phrase does not go down well. He then says that he will speak to his manager to find out what they can do. I’m on hold for a further 20 minutes without Simon once coming back on the line to apologise for the wait, check that I’m still there or ensure that I haven’t died of old age. When he does finally come back on, he explains that his manager was trying to contact the engineer who had failed to turn up for the appointments. ‘But his phone is switched off. Again.’
Then, finally, a chink of light. ‘What we’re going to do is divert an engineer from another area so that we can get this fixed this afternoon’….followed by… ‘if he hasn’t turned up by 5 o’clock call me back on this number’. That was at 3.30. As I write this, it’s now 4.45 so I’m losing hope and the will to live.
I’m also such an angry customer that I’ll be satisfied by nothing short of Richard Branson himself, turning up in a tutu, bearing gifts of flowers and champagne and fixing the fault personally before giving us complimentary tickets for the maiden flight of Virgin Gallactic.
What I’ve actually got by way of recompense is a £10 credit for each of the two unfulfilled appointments.
At 5:15, while I’m still on hold to the Field Operations number, there is finally a knock at the door. But it’s a police woman come to dust for fingerprints where thieves have tried to steal lead from our porch roof. It is 8:30pm before an engineer at last arrives, replaces our faulty box and restores Cbeebies.
Try the ‘reverse brainstorm’ of ‘how to deliver a great customer experience’ and a couple of the more obvious ideas you might come up with could be: fail to keep appointments or promise to call back but don’t. However, you may also get more radical suggestions (‘why not just lie to your customers?‘) and some interestingly novel ideas, such as starting your recorded message with a cheerful woman saying ‘right, let’s get you some help’ – just to really piss off the customer when they get none.
Agree on the reverse brainstorm technique – I’ve tried it before and it’s a fun and rewarding way to highlight the issues you need to really focus on, or divert attention from! I did find both times that some attendees struggled with the concept though – I had to really clearly stress the benefits
Mr Whybrow
A link to your comment has been mailed to me.
Could you please contact me at the mail address I replied with. As the Field Operations Director at Virgin Media I am keen to discuss this further so I can understand what went wrong and how we can improve our service going forward.
Regards
Paul
I sent the Virgin Media ‘Field Operations Director’ my contact details as requested so that he could ‘understand what went wrong and how we can improve our service’. Five months later, I’m still waiting to hear back from him so I’m inclined to conclude that this message was posted at the ‘suggestion’ of whoever looks after Virgin Media’s social media PR with no real intention of acting on it.