I am hoping Andreas Laukenmannr will find the opportunity to read this. The purpose of this message is not to just highlight my personal issue but to address my broader concerns with Vodafone's Kabel service in Germany.
Like many, I have spent an astronomical amount of time trying to resolve an issue with my Kabel service. The exact number of hours tolls to over 50 hours of phone calls, 3 trips to the store and 4 forum posts, and countless emails sent. Incidentally, the issue remains unresolved.
I am an Ex-pat, one of 350,000 in Germany. I was sold my Vodafone Kabel service in English but later found out that Vodafone doesn’t allow its call centre staff to speak English. I’ve made 76 calls to Vodafone and managed to get through to a handful of people who were willing to speak English. Most could speak English but quickly switched to German after explaining they would be reprimanded for speaking in English. Most of these conversations ended in them disconnecting the call, and I left furious as a customer.
Having had my own experience and after reading hundreds of comments on review sites and even this very forum, it’s apparent some common reoccurring themes need to be addressed. The key areas, being staff avoiding taking ownership of issues (misinformation or passing to different departments), lacking empathy and ultimately putting the customer last. The truly alarming fact is the consistency of such complaints.
It’s clearly a companywide culture issue. In my personal experience, Vodafone staff have expressed the same concerns when I’ve called or gone to the store. To paraphrase a store manager “This is how Vodafone in Germany is, I’m sorry”.
Surely as a business, common sense will prevail and someone will figure out, wasting all this time, is draining your resources as a business. In my case alone, you have wasted 50+ hours of call centre staff time, paid for engineers to come to my property and even sent out equipment to only have it returned. The fact is, none of the staff was reading the correct notes or internal documentation (it was a noted network issue, not on my line). I imagine I’m one of the thousands of customers with a similar experience.
The reality is that it feels like nobody cares and everyone at Vodafone Germany is okay with that. It’s easy to say “send a letter” or call another department. Granted it’s hard work to train your staff to be empathetic and instil a company-wide culture of taking ownership and putting the customer first.
We now live in an age where your new customers expect much more beyond standard service. In that, lies an opportunity for industry disrupters to come into this marketplace and take a substantial share from complacent operators. Every disgruntled customer will inventively pass their experience to friends, family and colleagues. People will eventually leave and never come back once they have the opportunity, regardless of any changes you might make when it's too late.
Vodafone Kabel in Germany has been the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. I am personally past caring about fixing my issue, nor do I care for an apology. I just hope one person reads it and does something about it, it may just help the next person who experiences something similar.
I’m realistic that this is likely to fall on deaf ears, unless Andreas Laukenmannr reads this and acts on it, or all the frustrated Vodafone customers (or ex-customers) in Germany connect and make enough noise. Feel free to share this post if you think it will help.
Edit: @Trajan Thread moved to feedback. Best regards Kurtler
