Complaints about a lack of customer service, sales support and general responsiveness have caused some of Cable & Wireless USA's new Internet customers to cancel their contracts and bolt to competing service providers.
For its part, Cable & Wireless admits there have been problems in the three months following its $1.7 billion purchase of MCI's Internet business, but executives say the company has been adding more new customers than it has been losing.
"Quite a few relationships between customers and sales reps were severed," says Tom Malone, president of commercial Internet and messaging services at the domestic subsidiary of Cable & Wireless plc. This, combined with the fact that MCI customer information was slow to arrive and not necessarily accurate when it came over to Cable & Wireless, created some lack of responsiveness, he says.
Although Cable & Wireless is hiring a myriad of employees in all areas to help handle the MCI customers, the company is still considered to be the nasty new stepmother to some former internetMCI users, such as Cincom Systems.
The software company, based in Cincinnati, was trying to contact its new Cable & Wireless sales representative to talk about expanding its Internet access bandwidth, but it just kept getting bounced around, says Bill Dyer, chief information officer at Cincom.
"It took us almost two weeks to get someone to talk to us about our account," Dyer says. "When I had to start working to get a hold of someone, it was time to switch," he explains.
Cincom is now in the process of inking a two-year deal with AT&T WorldNet, which is nearly doubling Cincom's Internet bandwidth but not its monthly bill, Dyer says. AT&T's lower prices and good customer service sealed the deal for Cincom, he adds.
Dyer is not alone. Other former MCI customers have complained about the lack of customer service responses, especially when they were having technical difficulties.
Employees at Linbeck Construction in Houston could not send e-mail for nearly four weeks to any Simple Mail Transfer Protocol mail servers because of a new antispam filter that Cable & Wireless set up, says Rich Gay, director of information systems at Linbeck.
But after Gay was informed about the antispam filter, he notified Cable & Wireless that the filter was interfering with his ability to e-mail servers and, therefore, hurting his business. He told Cable & Wireless that the problem needed to be resolved ASAP. Now, nearly one month later, Gay still has not heard from the service provider, but he's no longer waiting. Last week he canceled all of his company's Cable & Wireless dial-up accounts - which amounted to between $6,000 and $10,000 annually.
Complaints aside, Cable & Wireless has taken on a hefty task that could pay off in the long run. For example, handling MCI's 3,300 dedicated users, 66,000 dial-up business users, 250,000 dial-up consumers and 1,300 ISP customers is a lot to swallow, but it's not too difficult to digest, Malone says.
In the acquisition, MCI sent more than 45 sales representatives, but Cable & Wireless has acquired enough new accounts to keep 150 sales representatives busy, Malone says.
Therefore, Cable & Wireless has shifted some of its 550 sales representatives to handle the new Internet accounts. In addition to redirecting sales agents, Cable & Wireless is beefing up its customer service efforts.
"From September until now we have doubled the size of the customer service staff with 200 to 300 new people," Malone says. "In the short term, as you're training new employees they will make mistakes," he says.
Cable & Wireless says the majority of merger bumps are behind it, but the serviceprovider still has much work ahead, especially in the areas obilling and order entry. MCI is still handling all the billing and a large portion of the order entry for Cable & Wireless. Malone says both tasks will be shifted to Cable & Wireless within the next six to eight months.
Cable & Wireless has also committed to investing $500 million to $600 million on IP network upgrades domestically with new equipment, Malone says. And worldwide, Cable & Wireless expects to spend more than $1 billion on IP network upgrades.
While Cable & Wireless users can expect some glitches when a service provider migrates to a new billing system, for most customers the worst is over, says Johna Till Johnson, director at Meta Group, a Stamford, Conn., consulting firm.
Even though the road has been a little rocky for Cable & Wireless' MCI Internet customers, Malone says in the end, user will be happy. "Clients that stick with us through the transition bumps will be rewarded with a more robust network than they have ever had in the past," Malone says. n
RELATED LINKS
Justice Department approves MCI/WorldCom deal
Cable & Wireless buys 'Net business. Network World Fusion, 7/16/98.
Cable & Wireless nabs MCI's 'Net backbone for $625 million
Network World Fusion, 6/1/98.
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