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Graduate team is Better Together
Tuesday August 19th 2008. Posted: 09:35
A team of Customer Service graduates took an in-depth look at how BT treats its older customers for the latest Graduate Challenge Cup.
Called Better Together, the team - Lindsay Sharman, Louise Simpson, Richard Woodward-Court, Ed Kyte and Jennifer Peters - wanted to see if there were ways BT could improve its contact with repair private switched telephone customers (PSTN) who are elderly. Captain of the team was Lindsay, a keeping customers informed (KCI) manager based in Lincoln. She said: “Since the separation from Openreach, BT has been unable to do as much as we previously did for our more vulnerable customers - and we wanted to look at ways to rectify this.” One of the issues the team looked at - in liaison with the age and disability team - was where elderly or vulnerable customers were asked to do a check if they had a problem with their line. “This involves unscrewing your line box and plugging two different corded phones into the test socket one at a time, which is rather challenging for those who are not completely mobile,” said Lindsay. The alternative is to call out an engineer - and if the fault is within the customer’s own property, there’s a £118.33 call-out charge. “This is a source of customer dissatisfaction - and it's just not a very nice thing to do to our vulnerable customers,” said Lindsay. The team’s suggestions included liaising more closely with local councils to help the elderly with such issues, liaising with Openreach about installing more customer-friendly line boxes - and more information for the public on how to carry out the line box tests. And, although Better Together did not reach the final, it gave the team a chance to develop its idea and gain experience in the competition.
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Last updated:
08:55