Zombie service
The Bord na Mona brand is rooted in the foundations of the state. Sadly, their waste collection is a living dead service.
•• Initial set up ••
My partner set up an account with Bord na Móna: they found the experience of setting up a direct debit, so opted for pre-payment instead. In short, you make the most basic transaction (paying money to your business) hard.
Solution: fix the direct debit flow OR enable other ways of making payment.
•• Identifying the problem ••
My partner then put money into our account: we’ll say over a year ago, but we’re not entirely sure. Either way, it seems we burned through that money several months ago.
We weren’t alerted to this. Instead you stopped lifting our bins. In ‘real life’, this could be construed as passive aggressive behaviour, but in this instance, we’ll assume bog standard ineptitude.
Solution: employ a ‘five leaves left’ policy and invest in a basic CRM system that alerts customers. Let customers know where they are in the system by providing updates on account balance.
•• Trying to fix the problem ••
Once we discovered the problem regarding our account, we invested more money.
And yet again, our recycling bin was not lifted. But we’d paid up!? How confusing.
I tried remonstrating with one of your bin men who regarded me as an over excited nut.
And to make matters even more absurd, we were informed that our account had been ‘de-activated’.
I mean, I’m still not sure what this means but I assume it’s some kind of internal operational jargon that shouldn’t affect the customer.
… you know, a customer who is trying to pay your business?
Like … make your organisation profitable?
Or maybe simply exist?
•• Your customer support line ••
God how we tried. And we tried. And we tried. And we tried. When you call the Bord na Móna number, you are faced with the tree of death.
Would you like to talk to us about domestic? Would you like to talk to us about commercial? And if you are a domestic customer, do you want to pay a bill, sign up with a new account etc. etc.
Once you’ve survived that maze, you’re left hanging with that god awful Cisco music.
I later learned, a customer can be left waiting for up to an hour before speaking with a service agent. One neighbour told me they’d waited 50 minutes. 50 minutes!!!
Meanwhile, you intermittently advise victims that “we’re dealing with a high volume of enquiries” (I estimate 5) “perhaps you might like to visit ‘double-u double-u double-u dot bord na mona dot eye eee’.
•• The website ••
Is utterly functionless; your web form returned an error.
Unlike most contemporary services, that make things easy for customer, you don't support web chat.
It’s almost as if your entire customer support team is comprised of bog bodies.
Or perhaps Bord na Móna exists as some kind of virtual Crann Og?
A wattle and daub fortress surrounded by bog water, impervious to visitors or the odd (justified) attack?
•• Social Media ••
… is a dead end. You have comments switched off for many of your posts on Instagram. I tried messaging you on this channel but received an odious auto-response.
"Hi there! Thanks for your message. We appreciate you reaching out. If you have a query specifically for Bord na Móna Recycling, you can find contact details on the website: https://www.—————.ie/home/help-centre/contact-us/. Thank you."
At which point I'm seriously considering wheeling my bins down your Newbridge office and leaving them there.
Because now, I am in the seven rings of Bord na Moaning hell. No matter which way I turn, there’s no escape.
And so, with my feet firmly wedged in the mouldering soil, I try calling your secretary.
Their funeral must have been yesterday, because there's no response.
In fact, during my entire experience trying to be — really trying to be — a Bord na Móna customer, I never once detected a pulse. The beating heart that was once your organisation is no more.
And no one in the room is bothered finding the defibrillator. Because no one revives Zombies — they kill them.
The only person (thing) that would listen to me was your answering machine. This is roughly what I said —
1. You have a consumer service that is utterly inept: you are not delivering on your brand’s promise.
2. You are loading that ineptitude onto your customers: clouding them with internal jargon.
3. You are barricading yourselves from customer engagement: making it impossible for customers to remedy basic issues.
Out of a pure sense of duty, I tried emailing your CEO (Tom Donnellan), Head of Recycling (Cormac Manning), your Head of IT (Eddie O'Callaghan) and your head of operations (Anthony Brohan)
… but my email was rejected by your server. So here I am.
Actions you might like to take include —
• Invest in a CRM
• Employ a CMS messaging system
• Communicate via post (often overlooked these days)
Sort it out
1. september 2023
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