Random Musings of a Technohippy

One of the blogs I follow is by a remarkable young lady, named Jill Homer, living up in Alaska who’s feats of endurance cycling make my triathlon exploits seem like sunday afternoon outings. She has cycled the course of the Iditarod dog sled race, more than once. This summer she cycled the Great Divide mountain bike route from Canada to Mexico (2,700 miles) in an astonishing 24 days. She has a wonderful approach to life that I admire greatly, but today she posted a comment that stopped me in my tracks because it resonated so much with how I currently look at my life.

“I don’t want to ever become the kind of person who doesn’t dare to fail and fail spectacularly. I don’t ever want to be unwilling to approach the unknown. I don’t ever want to live a life free of risk.”

Too often we are afraid to attempt things because of worries over how we might appear to others or too ourselves. It’s a timely reminder and one that I intend to write out and put up on my notice board. Thanks Jill, for reminding me of how important that is.

It’s been a while since I posted and, once again, I’m singing the praises of Vodafone. My contract ran out a few weeks ago and I’ve been waiting to see what happened with my work before I renewed. I phoned Vodafone yesterday and asked how much they could get my monthly bill down to if I didn’t get a shiny new phone, and they said £19.57, which is pretty good.

However, one of my friends pinged me about an offer with O2 where I’d get the same deal for the same cost, but with £100 cashback, bringing the 12 month contract down to £11.57. Much as I’d love to stay with Vodafone, that’s a significant difference. I told the customer service guy (Matt) this, and that I needed to keep the cost down as I’d recently been made redundant (which is why I didn’t go for the new phone) and he said, ‘hang on a moment’ and went off to talk to someone.

When he came back it was with a very interesting offer. Apparently Vodafone have a customer retention unit that are authorised to make occasional extra special offers to customers who would otherwise leave the network, and that they could get my bill down to £14 a month, on a 12 month contract. I was happy with that and I get to stay with Vodafone for another year.

Now, the thing that struck me most about this is that not many people know about the retention service, but it’s there and obviously something they will use to keep their customers. They’d rather get less money and keep a customer than have them go elsewhere.

Think about that for a minute, let it really sink in.

How many companies do you know that are as committed to keeping their customers and keeping them happy. Given the appalling level of customer service that is the norm in the mobile phone world, the personal stories I have from T-mobile, who I’d never, ever consider going back to, and the stories I hear from friends on O2, this strikes me as a rare and precious thing. Customer service that is there to help customers, treat them respectfully and maintain the brand loyalty.

We always complain when we get crappy service somewhere, but we don’t often give praise where it’s due. Over the past two years I’ve been with Vodafone they have repeatedly shown that they have an attitude to customer service that is second to none in the mobile phone market, at least as far as this customer is concerned.

So I’m telling everyone about it.

Peace, out.