Who is BTNI?

BTNI is the acronym of British Telecom Northern Ireland. They have their main offices in Belfast including their Customer Service Department in Riverside Tower. They are the leading communications/information technology company in Northern Ireland dealing in, telephony, mobile, IT and data communications. They are part of BT the largest UK data comms company and follow the same ideals and goals.

BT’s Vision

“Connecting Your world. Completely.”

BT’s Mission Statement

“BT Retail is a customer-centric distribution business that will grow shareholder value and deliver an excellent, continuously improving, customer experience.”

“We will provide differentiated solutions and a tailored service to our customers, build new routes to market and manage profitably our developing products and service portfolio. We will excite and engage our people to maximise the value they create for themselves, our customers and the communities in which they work.”

BT’s customer base

BTNI splits its customers into two distinct groups, residential and business. Residential customers are the largest group, but do not provide the largest revenue. Their needs are not as complex as business, and include telephony, mobile and internet access.

Business Customers needs are dependant on the size and type of business they run, so BT splits them into different sections;

SME - small to medium business enterprise, large business enterprises and government.

Services that they require may include; telephone switchboard facilities, mobile services, IT hardware and software, data comms services such as direct communications between different branches of a business, internet and intranet services (internal internet for a business). The customers are dealt with differently, as residential customers are mainly small users so talk to sales staff on the telephone or internet. Due to the complex make up of businesses each one is assigned an accounts manager who visits the client on site, this creates a stronger bond between BT and its business clients and through this the clients become more comfortable with BT.

In the context of customer service, BT aim to “Delight our customers, motivate our people and increase shareholder value.” They aim to achieve this by employing their values which are:

Improving customer experience- by creating trust with the customers by being open and honest and showing that there are no hidden agendas. They can do this by delivering promises and consistently keeping to BT’s values.

Reducing the cost of failure- this can be done by listening to the customer and ensuring that you clearly understand what they want, and by ensuring the customer knows what BT is providing them with.

Optimising transaction economics- can be achieved by providing each sales person with a script to follow to ensure that all products and services are promoted to match the customer’s needs.

Achieving operational excellence- is ensured through the proper training of all customer service advisors so that all operational processes are carried out during a call.

Defending the core revenues- is ensuring that all BT customers residential or business are informed of all BT services.

Growing new revenues- during calls customers are informed of new services available e.g. broadband or BT answer phone.

Creating the place to work- this is making sure that all BT advisors are comfortable in their environment so that if they are happy, a better service to the customers will be provided.

How BTNI meets their customer’s needs

BT feels that the heart of their customer service is meeting customer’s needs and in BTNI they see ...

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Defending the core revenues- is ensuring that all BT customers residential or business are informed of all BT services.

Growing new revenues- during calls customers are informed of new services available e.g. broadband or BT answer phone.

Creating the place to work- this is making sure that all BT advisors are comfortable in their environment so that if they are happy, a better service to the customers will be provided.

How BTNI meets their customer’s needs

BT feels that the heart of their customer service is meeting customer’s needs and in BTNI they see that they have to deal with both external and internal customers. The external customers consist of residential and business. The residential customer service works by the customer phoning the help line and they meet an IVF (Interactive Virtual Frame) platform this helps to steer the calls by giving the customer choices. Though customers find this irritating, because they would prefer to talk to a person, this helps to make the customer service more effective by reducing the low value calls such as customers with small queries about there bills or other similar problems. The business calls are also met on an IVF platform only instead of different options for the business IVF they are given different teams so that they can talk to the people that can help directly with their problem i.e. the after sales team.

They then have internal sales teams that help to sell their actual products throughout BTNI to the employees and help the workforce understand what the products they are selling actually do and explain the technicalities. There are also external sales teams which can range from teams that give talks to possible customers about the advantages of BTNI; to a one man/woman connection where one employee in the customer service section is assigned to a major business and they check to see if everything is working properly and that they are satisfied with the service or product. This also works the other way where if the customer has a problem they know who they are phoning and this makes them feel more wanted by the company as they have contact via a first name instead of a help line number.

The customer service team’s internal customers are the other teams that they work with within the company. They have strong links with marketing and production for certain elements such as training for new products or services. They need to have a strong link with production as they need to know what they are giving help with as it would not be a good customer service team that does not understand the workings of a product or service. They cannot be expected to help the customers if they do not understand what the engineers will have to do when installing or repairing a product. They also need to be strongly linked with marketing as they need to stage campaigns for new products or services in different areas because if they realease the new product or service all at once to everyone they would be unable to cope, as there would not be enough customer service staff to deal with all the customers that don’t understand their new product or service.

Skills that BTNI think are vital for customer service are:

Personal skills- such as creating a trust with the customer by being sincere and being accurate with the information you are giving, so that they feel that they can trust you and see that you have no hidden agendas. The employee must also communicate clearly so that the customer can understand what is on offer and so that you can make it sound simple and persuasive. Staff are also trained to take opportunities to help with other problems they have with their BTNI product or service so that they can suggest solutions.

They are then trained in the skill of how to delight the customer- how to understand and anticipate customers’ needs and aspirations, and how to focus on providing them with the most advantageous solutions. Innovation is very important and the customer service team is expected to be passionate about delivering a high quality service and to be vigorous in finding faster ways of making things happen to enhance BTNI’s reputation and add value for customers.

They incorporate customer service into their policy by giving customers compensation where required and making sure that all members of the team comply with their compliance policy to make sure that the customer gets what they want or at least thinks that they are getting what they want.

How BTNI protects their customers

The consumer protection act 1987

There are three parts in this act all of which are under both criminal and civil law.

1. Civil Liability

2. Criminal act to sell unsafe goods

3. Misleading consumers

Part I

Referred to as product liability is imposed on the manufacturer of a defective product that causes loss or damage. A defective product is one that does not reach the standard of safety you are generally entitled to expect. For BT this could be a faulty telephone or coin box, or it could be a service that does not meet the standards expected. If the product causes death or personal injury then compensation can be claimed. Damage or loss of personal property can also be claimed against if the personal property is exceeding £275. This part of the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland but there are similar provisions under the Consumer Protection (NI) Order 1987.

Part II

Part two of the act means that it is a criminal offence for a trader to sell unsafe goods. The product must meet a general safety requirement. They must be reasonably safe taking into account all the purposes which the product may be used for. Any instructions or warnings given with them must be clearly visible to all of the public. Any existing safety standards and any reasonable means of making them safer must be met. Traders will be held strictly liable if they break the general safety requirements. However retailers supplying consumer goods could possibly argue, in their defence that they took all reasonable steps to avoid committing the offences and did not know that they had broken the specific laws. The penalty for breaking the general safety requirements and other offences against safety regulations is a fine and/or possible imprisonment. The courts can also order compensation in the civil courts for breach of statutory duty.

Part III

Part three makes it a criminal offence for a trader to give consumers any misleading information about the price of any goods, services, accommodation or facilities. A code of practice prepared by the department of Trade and Industry gives guidance so that traders can avoid misleading price indications. If traders do break the code, breaking it is not actually a criminal offence but when the courts make a decision about whether a trader has broken the law, they can take into account whether or not the code had been followed. Again in Northern Ireland this part does not apply but similar provisions exist under the Consumer Protection (NI) Order 1987

BTs Standards

BT follows the trade description act of 1986 which means that everything that BT say their product or service will do they must make sure that it fulfils it description. If it does not BT would be breaking the act which says it is a criminal offence for traders to make false statements about goods offered for sale.

How BT monitors and improves customer service.

Customer Satisfaction is the number one priority for BT, and Customer Service is the number one team to deliver it. It’s right at the heart of the BT retail strategy and the heart of everything they do in customer service.

I believe that the technique that BT uses for monitoring customer service is excellent as they have random spot checks with customers both Residential and Business to see how they rate the customer service. At BT they value the opinions of their customers so much they have Customer Service call centre scorecards where they ask customers to rate them with percentages on certain areas such as Business PSTN (Public Service Telephone Network) Provision and repair. As well as scoring the customer service using a percentage the callers are asked to state whether they were:

Very satisfied with the Customer Service.
Satisfied with the Customer Service.
Fairly satisfied with the Customer Service.
Unsatisfied with the Customer Service.
Very unsatisfied with the Customer Service.

At BT they do not just record the good comment about the Customer service and the company but also the bad points as well, as this is the key point to improving their Customer Service. They see any complaint, no matter how small, as a chink in their armour of providing the customer with what they want.

So to keep track of where complaints come from they have issue numbers for each compliant, which is linked to the member of staff who is dealing with the customer that filed the complaint. Management then goes to that employee’s own personal scorecard to see how they have been dealing with complaints and how long (on average) they spend on a call with a customer. They also check to see if any customer has made any comments on the performance of their job (both good and bad comments are listed). Therefore Customer service is treated very strongly as one big team effort with the team all working towards one goal of giving the customer what they want and achieving a good score on their scorecard so that they get recognition. Managers are then able to pinpoint the team member with a lot of dissatisfied customers and check on their calls and take action if required BT’s percentages of satisfied customers have been rising each month so far and have been on target or above each time. Whereas their very dissatisfied callers are extremely low and they have been passing targets by large percentages which means that the customer service team is obviously extremely effective and the team has been putting all its good training into practice. Managers regularly give one to ones with the customer service advisors. These discussions highlight weaknesses and strengths, and action points from these help the advisor improve their performance in helping customers. Once a year the line managers completes APR’s (Annual Performance Reviews) these are a summary of the one to ones carried out during the year and the performance rating is used as part of the selection process for promotion.

The company feels that their people are the human face of the company, bringing their visions and values to life, providing the personal touch to connect their customers’ worlds completely. They make a difference to the way the customers feel about BT, and BT want the customers to be positive towards them.

The focus is firmly on Customer Satisfaction delivered by motivated people equipped with the right skills and performance capability to meet market requirements.

How to improve BT’s customer service?

Now that BT have a majority of satisfied customers I think it is important that they target their low percentage of dissatisfied customers. This is important as a dissatisfied customer will spread bad news more than a satisfied customer would spread good news, giving BT a bad image.

BT could possibly have informal meetings between the different groups who deal with customers, this would allow a better understanding of each others jobs and problems in providing that service. This means that when the Customer service team is advising customers over the phone they will have an insight into the job of the engineer who visits the customer to install or repair equipment.

BT should regularly inform their customers of improved services especially those services that will help to reduce the customers bill which will show that BT have customers best interests at heart. This will strengthen BT customer relations and will draw more customers to the company, in turn creating a higher revenue for BT.

I think that BT should increase training in how to communicate BT’s products, services and bills especially to older customers who are now becoming the largest market group in the United Kingdom. This means that if the customers find BT helpful and easy to understand, it will improve the use customers make of BT’s services.