eicolab: design thinking for business innovation

Sending strangers to your home

A friend told me about an appalling “service” perpetrated by one of our local big telcos today.

Imagine this: The day’s finally finished. You have just arrived home with the kids in tow. There’s dinner to sort out, the cat to feed, and the family to settle. Suddenly, there is a knock on the door. A strange man wants to be let in. He is from your friendly telephone company, wanting to present your bill to you personally, and to sit down with you to work out how you can save a few dollars here and there.

WTF?! Obviously, getting a stranger from a quarter of a planet away to ring you at home when you are busiest is no longer working as well. Perhaps they think a more “personal” intrusion would work better? Does anyone ask what customers actually want?

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3 comments on “Sending strangers to your home”

  1. Six on Sunday and a challenge at Facibus On Blogging said:

    [...] talks about sending strangers to your home – where personalised service becomes intrusive and [...]

  2. Andrew’s Autoblog Experiment » Blog Archive » Six on Sunday and a challenge said:

    [...] talks about sending strangers to your home – where personalised service becomes intrusive and [...]

  3. Jen / domestika said:

    Ohhh, I don’t think so! They’d pull a stunt like that on me exactly *once*! What were they smoking, to think that was a good idea?!

    Quite apart from anything else, don’t these companies consider what it might feel like to a woman living alone, to have a stranger show up at her door with an ostensibly valid reason for asking to be let in? Side note: they’d really want to make sure to do a super-duper security check on all those reps making housecalls… can you say, “legal liability”?

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