• Weak Management – can’t get its programs under control and is unable to communicate effectively to staff. The entire Holiday plan was a major mess.
• Poor Internal IT systems – An order processing system that requires you to give a customer a sales order number, a plan order number and Case ID and then can’t reconcile the three is absurd. In 1990, it would have been acceptable but not in 2011.
• Sales and Marketing – programs which are available but not available; a website that is inaccurate on critical issues; use of ridiculous terms which confuse rather than enlighten (what is a take-out store and how is a consumer supposed to know how a take-out store differs from another store); stores that aren’t stores; stores that sell but don’t sell sim cards; stores that supposedly accept refunds but don’t accept refunds when you show up.
• Poorly trained customer service reps – for the original order, it took 45 minutes to order a phone, this is unacceptable; in dealing with these poor first line reps, it’s clear they have no idea what to do when something doesn’t follow the script. Next you have reps who tell you to get a new SIM card when it’s not necessary; Reps who give out false information about what store can service your needs and so on.
• Ineffectual customer service reps who have no ability to make decisions, only follow orders – Reps telling me they would love to help and then would read to me from their information sheets. Clearly they were trying but they had no power to make some common sense decisions to resolve the issues quickly and efficiently;
• Supervisors and second line support who can’t make decisions because they are forced to follow poorly designed and poorly documented procedures – the second line support staff and supervisors were unable to break through the problems and stuck to the script which led to providing me with information which was false;
• Culture that encourages deceiving the customer rather than admit problems - from the first sales rep I met to the second line tech support to the supervisor, I was told and promised information and feedback that was nothing more than a lie. The first Wind staffer told me there were better plans than the one I wanted but when pressed could not come up with anything and refused to help me, second level tech who lied when he said my card would be activated by days end for sure, the supervisor who promised a call back in two hours, the condescending supervisor who assured me that a store would look after me when clearly they could not.