Vodafone is a life saver for me. It provides me with broadband through its dongles, allows me to access 5g through phones it supplies me and my family with and it backs up my data to the cloud. What I like about Vodafone is what goes right – and as 99% of my time is spent with signal, the 1% that isn’t is a little trying.

This morning , when I started work, there was no wi-fi from my “dongle” (router) . The router had no power, I went to the Vodafone shop and they told me I needed a new battery but they couldn’t help me as I needed to call 191

In the old days, putting a new battery in device demanded no more than buying the right battery. This battery was in warranty so I shouldn’t even have had to do that, the battery is the size of a credit card so do not present a storage problem

Nevertheless, a process is a process and I resolved not to make an issue of it,

I called 191, two hours later and having been verified on 7 occasions, had two dropped call and spent around 50 minutes on hold, I was advised to hand my dongle to the shop and I could expect to have a repaired or replacement dongle in 6 working days.

I returned to the shop. By then Moin- the manager, had arrived. He took off the back of my phone – went into the backroom and inserted a new batter- it took about 30 seconds. I now have a fully working dongle.

His assistants looked a little shamefaced. Clearly they were under instructions not to sort my problem but to refer me to the call centre. It doesn’t matter if that call centre is in Islington, Islay or India, it is a truly hideous experience using it.

By contrast, a Vodafone shop is very pleasant and the staff – when allowed to service customers, most likeable. The trouble is that Vodafone has designated shops as sales outlets and call centres as service centres. The automated triage , the verification , the holds as advice is taken and the inevitable dropped calls make 191 the new room 101.

Moin’s staff weren’t empowered;  though I’m sure they knew that my problem could be fixed in seconds, they had no authority to dish me out a new battery.

Moin may not have had either, but he worked out that I needed connectivity over the next 10 days and saw no sense in sending my phone to be “repaired” when he could fix it in 30 seconds. Thankfully there are still human over-rides.

The Vodafone shop is a 10 minute walk from my home, but not everyone lives approximate to a well-heeled high street like Cheapside. I had been instructed to spend the next day at home so I could hand over the phone to the Vodafone collection service. How hard would that have been!

In short, Moin has saved me many hours – made me more productive and kept me on top of my work. Vodafone were not setting out to cause me mischief, but if I hadn’t been close to the shop and insistent on using the shop rather than the delivery, I would not have met Moin.

But we should not let serendipity let Vodafone off the hook. The 191 support service is very poor and creates reputational damage to vodafone. Shops should and do make a huge difference but they can do so much more than just sell people things. Shops can be service centres (Apple prove that) and high streets with Vodafone shops are the better for technology stores that help us.

Vodafone is a great British company and I’m proud of it, but our increasing dependency on technology means that when it goes wrong – the 1% – it must do its best for us. Right now, the 191 call centre experience is not doing the best for us.

Mention 191 and I  think 999. Technology is as hard as our suppliers make it. 99% of the time – technology makes things easier but if the 1% is a nightmare – that doesn’t matter at all.

It’s no use complaining, the Vodafone complaints procedure is even worse than the user experience using the call centre.

Technology providers must align their service to the needs of customers and that means upgrading service to the quality of sales. Most of us are potential customers for life, poor contact centres are the best way to lose that lifetime custom!

Postscript – phones on trains

Thanks to South West Trains for returning my iPhone to the Waterloo sorting office and thanks to the Waterloo service office for pinging me a message asking me to come on down,  MissingX.com worked a treat. SWT, for all its deficiencies has found a way to align the needs of customer to its customer service