Experience Story: Bell - Doing the right things but getting it wrong!

I had a recent experience that made me realize that employees are often better at working around our exec grand plans than we can ever imagine.

I recently had to get a service repair man to visit my home from my local satellite provider, Bell ExpressVu because of some issues with reception on my PVR. The first time the guy came over I was not home so my wife had to deal with him. She told me that he wasn't very helpful to the point of rude and had no idea as to what the problem was or how to fix it. He scheduled to come back and this time I made sure I was home. When he returned a week later I spent an hour with him explaining the ins and outs of the wiring in my house to prove the problem was with their hardware and not my wiring. He then used my phone to call his call centre where he sat in the call queue like any other customer while he knocked back any beverage we offered. When he finally got through he told HQ it was a receiver problem and that they should send a new one out.

Just before he left he handed me the job paperwork and told me to sign in two places marked by crosses. I asked if I needed to do anything else but he said, "no, just sign please". Before signing I took a look at the two boxes to sign. The first one asked "was the engineer able to solve your problem" and the second one asked, "would you refer us to a friend". Both sections had a few tick boxes that the engineer was obviously going to fill out on my behalf later!

So this is what I mean by "doing the right but getting it wrong". Bell Expressvu have followed a best practice checklist by collecting feedback around a transaction, measuring advocacy, measuring ability to resolve and I guess based on the engineer's behavior, linking compensation to the employee with these results. However despite following so many best practices by letting the engineer administer the measurement at the front line, they might as well not have bothered.

I am guessing someone at Bell is patting themselves on the back at how "referable" they are and the level of their "ability to solve problem" metrics. They are probably in line for a promotion based on the success of the customer experience program they have rolled out. The reality is that the engineers have figured out how to play the system and the only people benefitting are the employees that are compensated on these false results. The customer is still suffering and Bell probably has no idea.

Nice try Bell, but time to go back to the drawing board.