Looking at the Independent news story
http://news.independent.co.uk/busine...icle362442.ece regarding job cuts looks as though Telewest customers can kiss goodbye to their previously highly rated customer service as well.
Increase in outsourcing, which of course always does wonders for the quality of service.
I'm also speaking to a couple of people who are giving me some fairly entertaining stories about Telewest employees who would rather take redundancy than work for ntl (for real) and a Telewest bod complaining furiously about ntl's treatment of him and other staff so far.
Network engineers being rearranged from doing the preventative maintenance to becoming service techs, limits on time taken per service call being tightened up, more service calls booked a day.
CSRs being given more aggressive call handling targets, more strict management processes oh and of course the real gem that in a senior management organised morale boosting exercise as late as last week they were being told there were no plans to cut jobs...
So one company was repeatedly complimented on its' customer service and indeed service in general, the other repeatedly sledgehammered, and now the group has adopted the processes of the company that had the poorer service.
It's actually quite ironic really. The ntl methods probably cost less in the shorter term, however Telewest had higher customer penetration, lower churn and higher revenues considering their respective franchaise sizes and were more profitable.
Anyway I digress. If ntl have to wait until they get theri customer services sorted before Branson lets them use the Virgin name, well, I wouldn't count on seeing Virgin Cable any time soon. It's all about how much they can save, not what spending a little more might earn.
I'm aware that it's only some tech support that's in India, but it looks like it's just a matter of time before standard CS is at least in part on its' way.