Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Showing Initiative to providing better service

We (Alpha-Male and I) are some of the last of the species to have a “land-line” at home, we use Belgacom the local previously state-owned telephony provider; in an earlier blog post I have written about the disappointing Customer Service we have gotten in the past  (http://blondiesvision.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/setting-expectations-i-live-in-belgium.html). However recently we got fantastic service and I want to share that as well.

We needed to move a mobile phone from one account to another, so as we were shopping anyway we dropped into the local Belgacom store. Here we were served by Fred (not his real name but I do not want him to be in trouble) who seemed genuinely pleased to help us, but when some bureaucratic issue came up he really went above and beyond.
It turned out that to move this account we needed a copy of a piece of paper left at home, so Fred – who does not have a work email (Surprised that is even possible!) gave us his private Gmail address for us to scan the paper at home and forward to him, this way he could get all the papers and complete the transaction for us, without the need for us to come back. Of course this would have been much easier if this particular transaction was available on-line, but since it is not, we were very pleased that Fred showed initiative to be able provide great service.  And we were both delighted that we got this done with so easily.
However I think Belgacom has really missed a vital interaction format with their customers, if you cannot go to clerk in their store and then keep an online communication with the same clerk in order to finalize the transaction.