Protecting People From Mistakes

A while back, I had a really frustrating experience with a local telecommunications provider after my prepaid phone was suddenly disconnected. It took the better part of a week, several hours of online research and several long phone calls to find out what had happened and then resolve it.

On one hand, once I explain, you might say, ‘That’s your fault.’ But on the other hand, I think it’s actually a good example of how service providers could do more work to protect people from mistakes. Let me explain…

The phone in mention is a basic model with a simple prepaid plan from a local telecommunications service provider. It can be recharged via vouchers or online with a credit card. Its purpose is only to receive calls. I recharge it about once every six months and I’m happy to pay to keep it active.

At some point, I started getting texts from the telco provider that they’d added a data bonus to my account. I assumed they were trying to entice me into paying for more usage or a more expensive prepaid rolling plan, so I archived the messages.

Two weeks later I got a flurry of texts about my bonus data expiring. These went into the archive as well. I didn’t think anything more of it until a friend contacted me to let me know my number wasn’t working.

I spent about an hour puzzling over the phone. I turned it off and on. I took out and returned the sim.

Nothing. It just didn’t seem to connect.

I thought about adding more credit, but was worried that if the phone was disconnected, I’d be throwing the money into a black hole. I attempted to set up an account with the telco and add the phone to see if I could work out what was going wrong, but it needed a text message confirmation, and the phone couldn’t seem to receive any texts. I checked the provider’s forums, but couldn’t find any information about this problem case.

I tried the chat help, but it was offline for the weekend. So was the call centre. I waited until Monday and called.

It turned out that my phone had been disconnected. It turned out that I’d missed one of my spaced-out recharges. My credit had expired and so they had disconnected the phone and cancelled my account .

I was surprised. “But I didn’t get any warning,” I protested as I scrolled through my archived messages.

With a sinking feeling, I opened the messages about the bonus data and realised that each ended with the sentence: “Top up before midnight on [date] to keep your mobile active.” They had added the disconnection warning to the end of an advertisement.

“Can I restore my number?”

The operator spent a while clicking and tapping. “I’m afraid not,” they said. “You’ll have to go to a store with identification.”

“But I’m just trying to reactivate it so I can put more credit on it.”

“I’m sorry,” they said sententiously. “That’s our policy.”

I hung up and started at the dead phone. This would now cost me a few hours of travel, extra cost and administrative bother.

The next day, I tried calling the call centre again. To my surprise, the new operator could indeed help me. I didn’t need to travel hours to the nearest store after all. It took about half an hour to reactivate the phone but eventually my phone was connected again and my account reactivated.

“How much credit do I need to add and how often, to keep the phone active?’ I asked. “I’ve tried to find the information online, but it doesn’t say anything anywhere.”

The call centre assistant was very reluctant to tell me, insisting that I should get one of their monthly pre-paid plans. Even the most cost-effective plan was expensive for a phone I only used to receive the odd call.

“I just want to keep the number alive,” I insisted.

It turns out, I can recharge it once every six months and that will do the trick. But nowhere is this evidenced in any of the provider’s collateral.

I thanked the person who had saved me a lot of effort and hung up.

It got me thinking about the whole cancellation and recovery paradigm, not just of phones. For most services, cancellation is a pretty big moment, as it winds down a service that may be important to someone.

You’d think that it would be such a destructive action that a service provider would build a significant interaction around it to make sure that it’s what the customer wants.

I can also think of a bunch of straightforward fixes.

How about an automated robotic call-back in the last few hours before the service goes dark, to ensure that people know a destructive action is about to end?

Then, if a mistake is made, surely it’s a better experience to have grace periods and easy methods to bring the service back up to functioning? People shouldn’t have to dig through reams of online material or spend hours calling through a call centre. Nor should they need to go in to restore a service that has only just been cancelled.

Finally, it should be clear and transparent to people about what they have to do to keep their service alive. Don’t make excuses or try to up-sell people to ‘better’ plans. If they just want the basics, let them have the basics. They’ll be more likely to be a longer term customer and to advocate on your behalf than if you try to ‘move’ them up in value.

You can find these sorts of insights out by talking with your customers or clients and offering channels for honest feedback. They’ll tell you stories, like the one I just told you. If you listen, you have a chance to make your product or service better.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.