COLD COMFORT FOR FIRMS WHO DON’T PREPARE FOR THE WORST
One of my favourite stories of life on a tabloid sports desk – and, my friends, I have a good few of those – is about the day the newspaper in question brought in some time-and-motion people.
They stood around with their clipboards and were overheard at an early stage in the day, as work proceeded at a leisurely pace, wondering why on earth all these bodies were needed to do the job.
A few hours later, in the throes of a busy football night, with copy flying in all directions and pages being completed and sent to the presses at a desperate rush, those same observers were heard to wonder why there weren’t more bodies on hand to do the job.
This story came back to me as I waited for a British Gas engineer who was booked in to fix my boiler as the UK shivered in the grip of the so-called Beast From The East.
I’ve always liked British Gas. Their Homecare service has always been very good and the guys at the sharp end are polite, professional and thoroughly efficient when they visit to make sure we have heating and hot water.
This time, however, someone at the top end of the business really messed up.
Not only was there no sign of the engineer, we could not speak to anybody at British Gas because all their phone lines appeared to be down.
This was the bit that drove customers berserk. Twitter filled up with furious people desperate to speak to somebody, anybody, who could tell them when their heating and hot water would be repaired.
It made the papers. The damage to the reputation of British Gas in general, and its Homecare service in particular, will take ages to repair. This sort of cover is like any insurance policy; you never want to have to use it but, when you do, the service has to be exemplary.
I recall the time my car broke down at 1am in a rather challenging part of London and my breakdown service did not answer the phone. I have neither forgotten nor forgiven – and that was 16 years ago.
In a way it’s reassuring when the big beasts of business mess up as hugely as British Gas clearly did this week.
But this situation acts as a salutary reminder, even to a small company like LeBoo Media, that it’s essential to get the logistics right when it really matters. As much when you are offering copywriting and content management services to businesses in Kingston as when you are supplying energy to the nation.
British Gas knew this cold snap was on the way but the evidence suggests it did not a) give all customers a few basic suggestions to lessen the chance of our boilers breaking down, b) ensure it was able to get enough staff on hand to cope, and c) make absolutely sure its telecoms systems were robust enough to cope with a huge surge of customers at a time when we needed to know where we stood.
The good news is that the engineer did turn up later in the day and fixed the boiler with expert aplomb. Nice one, Danny!
The other good news is that the wait in the cold allowed me time to check my systems so I can be sure none of my customers ever gets as cross at me as I did at his bosses.