The world has got used to a fast pace of change, yet the telecoms world seemed to sit back and watch. Businesses today are using products that seem to get smaller, faster and increase their functionality almost daily, but the business telecoms market hasn’t changed much at all during the past fifteen years. Virgin Media Business means to change that and aims to shake up the business telecoms market. By Mark Heraghty, Managing Director.
We’re in a good position because unlike many other telecoms companies, we actually own our Next Generation Network. What this means is that rather than playing catch up, we’re in a position where we can invest in bringing the Virgin core values such as great customer service, value for money, quality and innovation into the business telecoms market. Becoming Virgin Media Business is the next stage in our journey to shake up the market and bring the ‘Virgin Factor’ to a market in need of a credible alternative.
The aim of Virgin Media Business is to be the telecoms company that people want to do business with. To do that we’ve been listening to what you want, rather than the standard telecoms approach which is to start with products and then fit the customers in later.
The Virgin way
As Richard Branson said, “Virgin Media Business is all about our customers”. What I hope they’ll find is that we’re an organisation that delivers on its promises and has great customer service as well.
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One of the key things that our customers want in a telecoms business is local experienced people who can deliver a great service. So sales, support and service teams are all based locally and they really do understand the regional economic climate as well as the bigger national picture.
One of the key things that our customers want in a telecoms business is local experienced people who can deliver a great service. So sales, support and service teams are all based locally and they really do understand the regional economic climate as well as the bigger national picture.
Alongside this, all customers either have a dedicated account manager or a unique PIN number. This means that when they call through to customer support they speak to the people that they know. This avoids the customer having the tedium of being passed around the houses and having to start over each time they have a query. It’s about delivering the basics of business brilliantly.
Virgin is a brand that has built its reputation on customer service. So being a Virgin branded company naturally brings with it higher expectations from customers about the service they expect from us. All our customer service operations are based in the UK and we’ve made significant investments during the past three years.
Dedication
At Virgin Media Business we’ve got fantastic, dedicated people by the bucket load, and to ensure that they remain this way we’re constantly investing in them to ensure that they feel challenged and energised by their working environment. The end result is happy staff who are passionate about what they do and want to go above and beyond the call of duty.
Feedback
We’ve also launched an initiative where we provide customers with individual feedback surveys to give them a voice within our company and ensure we’re focusing investment where it really counts.
Telecoms is a fast-paced market and you can’t be caught napping. That’s why we’re continually investing across the business. During 2010 we’ll continue to up our game in security, data centre services and our market-leading super fast connectivity portfolio. As well as this we want to give customers more control over their telecoms requirements. For example we will be expanding the capability of our customer portal so that customers can submit orders, track queries, access on-line billing, and view how their network is performing.
Why we're ready
Someone asked me why we didn’t do this three years ago, the answer is this – in the past three years, we’ve invested heavily in our technology, processes and people. The end result is that we’re now ready to live up to the Virgin name.
