Chris Stylianou, MD of Sky TV Customer Service Group boasts “Sky is leading the way once again when it comes to happy customers” … but is Sky TV service really up to much?
- Sky TV expects customers to be mini engineers
- Sky TV passes off old films as new ones
- Contrary to what Mr Stylianou brags about, Sky service is pretty poor…
It’s a Saturday night and myself and Mr Smith-Squire have decided to have a night in with a film. A simple request it might appear to be but unfortunately once again it has been fraught with difficulty.
First the Sky box isn’t connected to broadband (it has dropped off yet again…) and has to be rebooted. This is a complicated procedure which Sky regularly expects its customers to do. It involves switching off various parts of the TV and Sky Box in a certain way, waiting several minutes between each switching off, and then waiting for the box to reload.
Finally, having done the job of a TV engineer, the Sky box reloads but then – yet another glitch. This time the ‘new release’ films are showing old ones. For some reason the movies aren’t updating.
And so once again we have to reboot it. Alternatively we have to ring Sky – we have to go through a password system worse than actually getting a passport and finally get through to a technical advisor. Only, then just as he is about to help, we are cut off.
But neither of us are surprised. As well as regularly dishing up old films on its new movies as if they are truly new releases, glitches on Sky seem incredibly common.
Luckily I don’t watch much TV.
Because when I do I find the programme I set to record doesn’t because of the wrong sort of weather, the on demand service has a freak half way through the programme and everyone is talking out of sync – and when you go online to try to sort it out (Sky’s preferred way it appears) you are greeted with a round robin of moaning customers and broken links to outdated pages of useless solutions.
So a message to Mr Stylianou – you might write little puffs about how Sky customers can find customer’s details easily, and the speed taken to resolve issues. You might kid yourself that ‘customers have the very best viewing experience’ and that they are ‘especially satisfied with the support received from our advisors” but this long suffering customer has a very different story to tell.
You say you want to keep improving so how about investing some of the vast sums of money you earn for your clunky Sky service into actually doing just that.
As Tesco showed, misplaced pride often comes before a massive fall. And I am afraid there is nothing about your shoddy service for you to be so complacent about.
