Customer expectations delivering disappointing experiences

During a recent power failure at home, we all presumed it would be a short term problem; yet more than 12 hours later it was evident that this wasn’t going to be the case. By 4.30am it was time to find out what was going on so my initial thought was e-mail my electrical service provider, of course without power there was no internet so next option was to telephone them. Although I could have found a telephone number from a previous bill, I was reluctant about getting out of bed. Fortunately the blackberry came to the rescue, and with its service package I was able to get internet access and found the electricity company’s website.

Back to plan A, I attempted to log into my account but was met with a slightly unfriendly “unauthroised” notification. It then literally took 10 minutes to find the emergency telephone number, to which the company gloated that you ‘could’ call free from a landline but as our electricity was off we inevitably had to pay the premium rate mobile charges.

I called the number and after two minutes (which included the slowest ever repetition on my landline number- why they wanted that, I do not know) I was told by a recorded message that they were aware of the problem and had no idea when it would be fixed. The call then ended after I was told to call back anytime for an update.

What ultimately ruined the experience for me as customer was the lengthy process that made me feel like I kept hitting a dead end when trying to communicate with my electricity provider. I thought the navigation of the website was poor on a mobile and had expected to at least find an e-mail or telephone number more quickly.

Ultimately I certainly had very different expectations of what my electricity provider would do in the event of a power failure. It was disappointing that there was no section listing areas affected by a power failure. My expectations were to find a section on the website where I could search power outages in my area; perhaps I am asking too much technical information here? Finally, once I managed to eventually e-mail my provider, the automatic reply was that “if” my e-mail warrants a reply, I’ll get it in ten days’, alrighty then!