Once again, I'm experiencing the frustrations of dealing with a customer service call centre where the concept of customer service seems to have passed them by. Having got myself past the ranting stage, I've had the chance to reflect on the lessons this consistently bad service can teach us.

It's irritating enough that my new-in-July mobile phone has developed a second fault that has rendered it unusable but the real exasperation comes from trying to deal with the processes that 3 Mobile has in place to provide what it seems to actually believe is 'customer service' but which is most certainly not built on the notion that it's good for a business to have happy customers.

I know - because I've checked with professional, helpful and sympathetic people at Customer Direct - that these processes will allow them to scrape past the basics laid down in consumer legislation and monitored by the Trading Standards Authority.  They do that - and no more.

The issue from a marketing point of view is that it isn't the role of the Trading Standards people to set exemplary standards of customer service, simply to make sure that consumers don't get horribly ripped off. So if your customer service processes and policies are designed solely to make sure that you can't be accused by disgruntled customers of breaking the law, you can't seriously expect those customers to become anything other than even more disgruntled.  After all, if they have been given a product that cannot be described as 'fit for its purpose', surely they are the ones that have been wronged - not the self-serving and heartless BigCo.

The lack of interest in serving customers effectively and actually solving their problems cuts right through the whole soul-destroying process. There is clearly no strategy that says the call centre handling customer complaints and problems should be properly briefed. If the basic diagnostic doesn't work (and it won't because a sensible consumer would already have been through much of it on the 3 Mobile web site before even considering girding their loins for the 'customer service' experience) then unhappy customers are likely to be directed to their local store.

This was the route I took to get my phone repaired (it has to develop three faults before a replacement will be offered) sooner rather than later as I was simply not prepared to indulge the 'customer service' set-up to the extent I did last time I had a similar problem. The store staff themselves were every bit as helpful as their systems allow and this is to their credit. But even at this level the system stinks. It's the last point at which the company could try to redeem itself but its attention to detail is applied in completely the wrong way.

Whilst I was expected to sign a piece of paper accepting responsibility for the condition of the loan phone I was given (not in itself an unreasonable thing to ask), I was not equipped with a manual for the phone - so how can I be sure that i won't inadvertently cause damage to it if I don't know how to use it properly?  That doesn't seem quite as reasonable. And, to cap that off, I was then asked to sign to say that I had taken possession of a phone, a charger - and a manual! I crossed that last piece out before signing. This attitude seems designed only to add frustration upon frustration, and to place any blame squarely on the shoulders of a customer whose only 'fault' is to try to get their hands on a phone that works and which is supposed to be part of the contract they're paying for.

And on the subject of paying... more mean-spirited, penny-pinching 'service'. During my conversation with 'customer services' I had to ask what they would do about the fact that I was paying for a contract whilst not receiving the service I had signed up for. I was told that upon receiving my repaired phone back I could contact them and they would give me a credit for the time that the phone had been away for repair. I then had to point out that the phone had been unusable for longer than that i.e. from the time it had broken not the time that it had been sent away. I got them to agree that this would be the period that credit would be issued for - but none of this was offered; I had to ask, firmly. And, even then, it seems that it is impossible for the company to confirm this agreement in writing.  Apparently I have to trust that it will be noted on their system. Trust?

The point of this is not for me to go back in ranting mode - it's to illustrate that the lack of concern for the customer's point of view is systemic.  It's not a case of an unfortunate glitch in an otherwise well-meaning system.  The whole thing is designed to protect the company from complaining customers being able to claim any breach of basic legislation.

None of which would be necessary if they provided a properly funtioning product in the first place, of course.

My losses from this experience so far include:

• The ability to use a phone for even the basics of making and taking calls - let alone the advanced functionaltiy which I chose that phone for - with the resultant impact on my ability to do business professionally;
• The cost of making phone calls from a different phone - including those lengthy calls to the customer service line (no, they didn't volunteer to call me back) - which I would normally have had comfortably covered by the cost of my contract;
• The amount of time taken out of my working day to deal with this situation and the fact that working time has to be made up for during what should be leisure time.

I can't say I'm happy about any of that but it would seem that 3 Mobile are not too unhappy about the costs that their 'customer service' policies cause them to incur.

• The time of people in the repairs, customer service call centre and store (I think it's safe to assume they don't do their jobs for the sheer love of it);
• Repairing, again, a handset that has already proved itself to be less than fit for its purpose;
• And, of course, the cost of lost sales from people who have decided against moving to 3 Mobile after having heard about my experience (at least six to my knowledge).

Lesson we can learn...

It's been shown that people who experience poor customer service are 8 times more likely to talk to others about their experience than those who receive good customer service. (To buck this trend a little, I'd mention that the guy on the Dell helpline took just 10 minutes to talk me through the problem I had with my new laptop and called me back a couple of days later to check that it was still OK - so this customer service thing can be done properly through the call centre set-up). So my basic rules for great customer service are:

1. Base your customer service policies on creating happy customers, not simply escaping the wrath of Trading Standards;
2. Make sure that every employee who has any kind of impact on customer service (which will be most if not all of them) understand that happy customers are important to your business;
3. Empower your employees to take decisions within suitable parameters that will keep customers happy;
4. Understand that unhappy customers will talk (and that the internet makes this so much more likely) so taking a small financial hit might save many lost sales;
5. Pay attention to detail throughout the whole of your customer experience; the smallest fault can aggravate a situation that could otherwise be turned round easily.