We are having trouble at one of our clients with their ADSL service and it has now got to the stage of getting a BT engineer out to check the line. Outside the office is a lake and whilst we are waiting on BT to pick up the phone and reset the service the water skiers are making ski jumps in the sun shine.
The down side of the whole ADSL not working thing is having to get BT involved. I had swapped all out network equipment as soon as there was an issue to eliminate that as a cause of the problem. I then called BT Tuesday afternoon and explained the situation to them, they carried out some tests and passed it onto engineering. Late in the day on Wednesday I got a call and had to explain the situation again and was offered an onsite engineer visit between 8am and 1pm or 1pm and 6pm Friday – I opted for the early slot and that was confirmed a few minutes later.
So Friday morning I am at the client’s site at 8am, at 9am staff arrived so I went off for a coffee and I eventually got a call at about 10.30 am to meet the engineer onsite.
Now I know BT will have good operational reasons for booking appointment times as they do (I do not really consider 8am to 1pm an appointment more like an intention to come) but I work with many support companies both large and small and BT is the only one to do this to me.
Anyway the engineer turns up – and after a few tests discovers we have a serious problem. He has trouble contacting various departments he has to speak to – and then he tells me about the system that means he has only two hours allocated to this job and if he cannot solve it in that time then he will leave and a new job raised and another visit organised (and I expect it will be either in the morning or in the afternoon). The even better news is that if that visit does solve the problem in two hours they will leave and another job will need to be raised! You can see where this system is going. Somewhere at some senior board level in BT or OpenReach they think this is good or even acceptable customer service!
On the up side each person who I have spoken to or dealt with in this system has done a good job, is polite, knows what they are talking about and are very helpful. As I write the engineer is down a manhole checking wires and testing at a furoius pace trying to solve my problem. The issue I have is with the system.
But at least I am sitting out in the sunshine.