I got my first phone in 9th grade and got on a Vodafone monthly plan. And I was loyal to them for 12 years. That is the longest relationship I ever had. Until I disappointed them. Once.
I did not pay my bills. 30 something euros. I will not find excuses, I postponed until it was too late. I went on holidays and forgot to pay. I postponed bills because I got a new work phone. I failed Vodafone. Everyone was very keen on highlighting how I am to blame for me losing my phone number. Yes, they erased it because of the debt.

But then I thought twice about it. In the last 12 years I must have forked more than 1,500 euros to their company. I was loyal despite other offers from competitors. On my first offence they ditched me. Maybe I was expecting more of them out of naivety: I thought 12 years meant something and expected we could sort it all out: me to pay the bills, them to restore my personal phone number. After 2 hours of customer support phone calls, some lengthy useless conversation on Facebook and 2 trips to different Vodafone stores I decided it was not worth it. The brand was not worth my time anymore as they seemed to not give a damn.

What I did do during this week-long saga was to learn a thing or two about their customer support system and why it failed. At least in my case. I wrote down notes on how digital could have saved me this entire ordeal and Vodafone a loyal customer.

Lesson #1: New Tech Can Fail. Double-Check It And Update/Optimize It.

→ Vodafone leverages bots for customer support. All well, I understand the need to be cost-effective. However, what they fail to do is to validate the customer use cases with real customers and update the tech accordingly.

Sometimes scenarios written in the confines of a company office do not stand the test of real life. Go back to the drawing board once every a couple of months and ask users how they engage with bots and where they could be improved.
make it easy to use and communicate it flawlessly across channels.

I needed to contact a customer support operator over the phone. A customer support representative in store said I could reach someone at a specific 800 number. I called and got the bot with no option to dial in for a human being. I checked the website: a different phone number for the human operator. Tried that one, got the bot again. I had to try 4 other numbers and a combination of keys to actually get to talk to a human being. Wasted 40 minutes of my life. Frustration level:100.

→ Vodafone also gets you to create this personal account on their website. Customer support does not seem to have access to it/leverage that information to provide…support.
Why? Why did I have to tell my story to each and every single support person I came in contact with? They had the data, why were they not able to access/use it?

Lesson #2: Customer Support Should Happen Cross Channels. Yes, Social Media Too. It’s Your Brand Across Channels.

When I first started working for the North American market I was pleasantly surprised to see that customer support was a key responsibility for the Community Managers. And most of the times it was also integrated with customer support and sales teams.
In this case, Vodafone’s social media team was completely oblivious to workflows/procedures of the customer support teams in the call center or in their headquarter. And from the looks of it, they did not have access to data on the customer they were talking to. I wrote to them on Monday and 5 days later they came back with the same reply I got from in-store representatives on Tuesday. I offered to give detailed feedback on the entire process. The Community Manager did not seem interested at all and lost the opportunity to actually collect user feedback and try to improve internal processes/workflows.

Lesson #3: Customer Support Should Happen Across Corporate Functions.

In-store representatives did not know the procedure I needed to follow to recover my old phone number. Phone customer support then sent me to another in-store representative and commented on their lack pf professionalism. Social media was far from effective, replying 5 days later. Not once was I contacted by the company to try to solve the issue and mend our relationship.
Friends and people I talked to told me I should have called another department — the Loyalty program one, as they are being paid on monthly subscription retention rate. And they had been offered deals they could not refuse. Frustration level with the company: 100.
My saga ended a month ago. I will not renew my monthly subscription even if they did make me an amazing offer right now. Because I do not trust them anymore.

If I were Vodafone I would invest in:
1. Customer support training for people in ALL corporate functions that deal with end customers. Even for partner stores like Arsis or others.
User cases on customer support workflow. For instance, they only contacted me at the Vodafone phone number, not email. I did not have access to that phone number and was not living at the personal address they had stored for me.
2. Integrated CRM system with permissions and approval processes for all departments involved. And channels. Yes, even social media Community Managers. If I give them my name and an unique identifier, any brand representative would be able to access my information and history with the brand. And from there have a pre approved workflow.
3. Initiatives to refresh customer personal data within the CRM system regularly.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and any idea you might have on the topic.