[3GScottishUser]

Service issues cool dealer reception to new business proposition

Reaction amongst dealers has been mixed after 3 announced a range of new Office Share plans designed for small businesses.

The new plans are aimed at SOHO and SME companies which 3 says will give them total flexibility in their mobile working.

However, 3 has fallen out of favour with many dealers recently after Mobile News reported last issue that 3's call centres in Glasgow will be closed, with all dealer service calls now being fielded by call centres in Maidenhead and Mumbai.

One dealer said: "They opened the call centres in Glasgow with the aim of dealing with small businesses.

"With call centres being moved to India, people will want to speak to people in this country because 3's overall customer service is abysmal. Anyone daft enough to sign up to these plans must be completely bonkers."

Another dealer said: "A lot of dealers are annoyed with 3 at the moment for obvious reasons. It’s too much of a headache with not enough benefit."

3 will become the first network in the UK to include Windows Live Messenger and voicemail in their five Office Share plans, as well as free calls to other 3 phones.

Four packages offer voice, text and data bundle whilst the other package offers data-only.

3 UK's marketing director John Penberthy-Smith said: "3 is the challenger brand in the UK and with our Office Share plans we are doing for small businesses what we did for customers, offering great value and easy to understand price plans."

http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/cgi-bin/articles.pl?section=13&id=9429&action=display

[Ben]

The £15/user fee for shared packages is so five minutes ago. I was counting on Three to scrap, or at least reduce, this fee - or somehow make things more interesting.

As it happens they just, finally, put together actual business tariffs. They're not bad, but I can see why the reaction to them is less than fanatical.

[getti]

Business CS will STILL be Glasgow not India

[Hands0n]

"With call centres being moved to India, people will want to speak to people in this country because 3's overall customer service is abysmal. Anyone daft enough to sign up to these plans must be completely bonkers."


I'm entirely in concord with that particular sentiment. Unless and until 3 realise that their Mumbai CS is the spear in their heart they cannot expect to grow and prosper. Every single retail or business customer that is pi55ed off by Mumbai adds at least another ten to twenty who will not buy into 3, purely through word of mouth transfer of the badwill generated.

They have let me down utterly several times in the past and lost by domestic business accordingly. I have my own business and it would be a very cold day in Hell before I would place any reliance upon 3 to support my livelihood.

That said, I love their network, like a lot of their product and feel that their portal is leading-class. They have a superb 3G coverage wherever I have to live, work and play.

But it is simply not enough, all the great stuff in the world is completely negated when at the time you need support most, when things go wrong, you are confronted by those complete muppets in Mumbai with their scripts, impoliteness and downright dishonesty in dealing with a customer.