On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 13:22:46 +0000, JB wrote:

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:09:14 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote:

I suppose that one can always lie, and ancient granny can be tucked up
in bed because of the cold, away from the eyes of the fitter when he
shows up. However, it isn't really the point. They should
provision so that you get the service legitimately before lunchtime as
well.

I wonder if there is a market for a 'We are *******s, and don't care
about the elderly and sick' emergency service that gives priority to
no-one, and allocated the jobs in the strict order that the calls came
in.

It's not an issue of being *******s or not caring about the sick and
elderly. That's the job of the various public services for which we
pay outrageous sums and receive poor value for money, and also, of
course, the family.

An accident and emergency service related to healthcare may well have
to prioritise its resources but this is not the same thing at all.

BG, as far as this contract offering is concerned is not a charity,
neither is it a public service organisation. There is a place for
those, but not in the market of heating service contracts in the
modern world.

If it was successful it could leave BG with 100% priority cases, with
a bit of a dilemma as to what to do.

It's really very simple. They should provision appropriately for the
levels of service and the response times and offer services with
guaranteed response times.

I'll give you a simple example. I have a number of items of
networking equipment manufactured by Cisco. Some of them are
critical to my business and I can purchase a 4 hour support contract
for them; for others I can buy 8 hour a day, 5 day a week, next
business day support because that is good enough. The prices are
based on the product and the level of service.

I recently had occasion to use the 8x5xNBD support for a failed
wireless access point. I had already worked out that there was a
hardware problem with the radio section but it wouldn't have mattered.
I logged the call on Cisco's web site (could have been by phone or
email), received a phone call 20 minutes later and went through the
problem with the support person. OK, the questions were fairly
basic, but in 5 minutes, he had come to the same conclusion as I had
before I called. He actioned a replacement and it was in my hands
by 10am the following morning. All I had to do was to pack the
faulty part and return it using the pre-addressed label.

So it is perfectly possible to offer a service, actually at a fair
price, and to operate it correctly.

I suspect that BG fail at this through a lack of business expertise
and the wrong culture. The attitude that they are doing their
customers a favour, like the NHS seems to have, does not cut any ice
in the modern world.






JB

..andy

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