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If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will be aware that I am regularly referred to stories of both great and not so great Customer Experiences. As I am a big believer in the use of stories to bring Customer Experience to life, I feel that I am very fortunate to be allowed to share some of these stories with a wide audience.

This week I have been given permission to share a story of the ‘not so great’ variety. Over recent months, I have been increasingly made aware of customer dissatisfaction with Virgin Media. At least a dozen unconnected people have been only too eager to talk to me about their tales of woe with the company. In recent years, Virgin Media have actually been a Customer Experience ‘stalwart’ – I know a number of the team who developed one of the most robust Customer Experience programmes in the UK. Sadly they all departed soon after Virgin Media’s takeover by US based Liberty Global.

Until now, I have not felt compelled to write a blog post about the stories I have heard. This changed when I was directed to a story you will shortly read. The fact that the story is about a doctor is not really the point – this experience is being replicated with customers of all professions. However the story does highlight the frustration, anger and pain that Virgin Media is causing customers on a daily basis. What makes it even more annoying is the fact that the issues experienced in this story and others are all about the execution of the Customer Experience – not the quality of the product. I talk a lot about the move from being product centric to customer centric – if you want to know what being customer centric is all about, this story demonstrates what it is to NOT be customer centric…

Dear Virgin Media,
I am disappointed at your lack of common decency to your customers. I have taken the afternoon off work so that your engineer can unplug my current virgin box and plug in a new one. It is now 18:15 and no-one has turned up. I called customer service at 17:00 and they said they would look into it and call me back in 10 minutes, I haven’t received a call.
I partly blame myself for falling for your pressured upgrade calls but I just wanted you to stop calling as after no less than 10 calls I gave in. The caller who I eventually answered was very nice and offered me a special package as I had been with Virgin for 5 years and was a loyal customer paying over the odds. I hadn’t upgraded as I was happy with how things were. Anyway, I fell for the sale and accepted the ‘special offer’. Straight after ending the call I went online to your website to see that new members could get the same package but would pay £60 less – do you think I am a mug? I think that this is frankly disgusting and misleading behaviour! Anyway, after calling someone back and holding, I managed to get the package reduced to that of a new customer (aren’t I lucky!) and duly booked the time off work for the change of box.
I work hard as a GP seeing people who are sick every day. It is no small thing to take time off work, it costs me money, it costs the NHS money, but I had no option as you only offer 9-1 or 1-5. Anyway, I opted for the latter and missed seeing minimum 18 sick patients this afternoon. As it turns out, I could have seen them because your engineer has not turned up. Not only have I not received a call or an apology, I will most likely have to take more time off work at some point to try again, likely after I have spent money calling you to explain your error. I feel you not only owe me an apology but my patients an apology. I appreciate that things go wrong and people get delayed, but if I have patients who need to be seen, who are booked in, I don’t just clock off and not let them know!
I’m stuck really with what to do now, I like the fast service your broadband service offers but hate the way you treat your customers, it’s a catch-22 which I why I have tried to avoid communicating with you at all over the years and avoided upgrades. Anyway, writing this on Facebook has been cathartic and maybe others reading this and empathising with me make me feel a little better.
Just for info, if I ran a service where I told a customer they could see me at any time either in the morning or the afternoon but there was also a chance I was not going to see them, but I wouldn’t tell them that, then it would be all over the Daily Mail the following morning, just saying!

Every time I read the story I find myself shaking my head – I have never worked for Virgin Media but feel deeply embarrassed for them. There are so many customer journey failures in this story that it is difficult to know where to start summarising them – it is ‘Virgin on the ridiculous!’. Understanding how capable your business is of delivering the customer journey is absolutely imperative – that is if you are aware that you have a customer journey in the first place. Continuously improving your ability to deliver the customer journey should be the at the heart of any Customer Experience related activity.

I hope that senior leaders from Virgin Media and Liberty Global read this – the sustainability of their business (like all businesses) is dependant on being able to consistently meet (and sometimes exceed) customer expectation. Unless they systematically address complete Customer Experience failures like this one, I almost hope that they are not able to sustain themselves.

If you have experienced a problem with Virgin Media in recent months, please feel free to share your story by commenting on this post.