Editorial: Telecom not winning friends

OPINION: Telephone technology is a wondrous thing – when it works.

And as Telecom has found out this week, when their highly-publicised XT network doesn't work, they will hear about it.

The company has found itself batting off irate customers and a questioning media about why the hi-tech network has had its second major malfunction in six weeks.

We're not talking about tiny pockets of population either. We're talking major regions within the country and, at one stage, a whole island.

(The bungle certainly took the heat off Transpower for their electricity stuff-up earlier in the week).

Unfortunately for companies like Telecom, they provide a service which its clients rely on 100 per cent of the time, or as close as it can get to that.

Anything less simply infuriates those clients.

More and more people need their phones and/or phone networks to go about their daily business, keep on top of work and keep in touch with family and friends.

A phone connection has moved beyond something to have a quick natter on; it equals a lifeline.

In those situations clients don't want excuses, they want answers. On Wednesday, when the fault struck, Telecom didn't have the answers.

It wasn't even clear that they knew how many customers were affected or where they were. Even this morning there were still sites which hadn't been fixed in the South Island.

Telecom's update messages through Wednesday and yesterday only served to enrage their customers because of how vague they were.

If they'd been upfront and admitted they weren't clear on what was wrong and didn't know how long it would take to fix, it would have gone down a little bit better.

Instead their PR team and multi-million dollar chief executive Paul Reynolds had to go into damage control, apologising to, and placating, people.

The whole saga, which coincided with a drop in share price, was a dark day for the blue chip company.

The financial burden can be absorbed, but the true cost was in the damage to the company's reputation.

In cases like this, people take a long time to forgive, if at all. That is the real cost of this embarrassing episode, which has eroded so much goodwill among clients.

ONE MORE THING

This time next week I'll (hopefully) be at the Wellington Sevens, my first time at the massive capital event. I was lucky enough to get a ticket through a friend at the last minute, but am not sold on the costume I've been allocated.

There's a group of four of us and all the costumes are completely different – but with a connecting theme.

I'm sure it'll be a fun occasion, but it will take a lot to top my first Cake Tin experience, when the All Whites qualified for the Soccer World Cup by beating Bahrain in the best sporting atmosphere of my life. No pressure Wellington.

- © Fairfax NZ News