Listening to you: a conversation with Rogers ombudsman
By: calendar iconMay 16th, 2011 a 3:01pm

Don MoffattIn July 2009, Rogers established the Office of the Ombudsman.  Our ombudsman, Don Moffatt, investigates and attempts to resolve customer complaints and problems. While the vast majority of customer service inquiries are resolved by our front line employees , the Office of the Ombudsman is in place to review customer inquiries when a satisfactory resolution cannot be reached with Customer Care or the Office of the President, Rogers highest level of support for customer escalations. Recently, I sat down with Don to get a better understanding of what Rogers is doing to improve the customer experience.  Here are the highlights from our conversation.

What’s the story behind the Ombudsman’s office?

The Ombudsman’s Office was created in July 2009 as an impartial avenue of appeal and review for Rogers customers.  My office is unaffiliated with the customer service organization at Rogers. I review all sides of an issue and make sure customers are treated fairly. To me, fair means fair for the customer and fair for Rogers.

What is a typical day like for you?

Each day, I personally review all of the escalations that come through the Office of the Ombudsman.

I work with the Office of the President to determine their role in a customer inquiry.  If the Office of the President has already been engaged, we ensure the customer inquiry is a priority for them and we establish a commitment that the Office of the President will get back to them. If the issue has not previously been escalated to the Office of the President, we advise the customer that we’ve engaged them to help resolve the issue.

If the customer is still not satisfied with the resolution after engaging with the Office of the President, I advise them to come to me so we can further investigate.

And what would you do at that point?

We seek the customer’s consent to access their records.

Then I ask the customer for their side of the issue. Next, I ask Rogers for their side of the issue. Then, I sit down and review the material and provide a recommendation in writing or over the phone. I would say that in 95% of the cases, we’re able to get the issue resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.

Do you look at customer inquiries as customer feedback? What’s next?

Yes. Absolutely. In the Ombudsman’s Office, I really have two mandates. The first is to provide an independent review of issues on behalf of customers. Secondly – and as importantly in my view -  is identifying the root  cause of issues. Often the issue relates to policies or processes that aren’t customer or employee friendly. Once we identify the cause, we work with the various departments within Rogers to recommend and implement policy and process changes. In 2010, there were actually 17 policies and procedures that were changed at Rogers as a result of cases that had come into the Office of the Ombudsman. I’ll give you an example. A customer was having trouble sending text messages to China in Chinese characters. They were able to receive Chinese character messages from China and they were able to send and receive Chinese text messages within Canada but when they originated a text message to China, in Chinese characters, it wasn’t going through. So we spent a lot of time investigating the root cause of the issue and traced the source to a new software upgrade involving one our partners. This was a case that took a lot of time, but we were able to resolve it – not only for him, but for many others that were experiencing a similar issue.

What are some of the key changes that Rogers has made to make it easier for customers to do business with us?

We’ve been making important changes to customer experience.  For example, we found that there were some system-related errors with order confirmation. The system that was supposed to send an email confirmation to customers confirming exactly what they had just purchased and agreed to was not functioning properly. We found the issues, investigated them with the business and got those resolved.

We’ve also implemented things like a data alert tool that alerts customers when they’ve reached 80 and 100 percent of their data use, 1 and 2 year contract terms and a variety of self-serve tools available through MyRogers.

Why the Ombudsman’s Office? What do you enjoy most about your job?

The most satisfying thing about being the Ombudsman is helping people resolve issues. In the majority of the cases I get involved in, there is an opportunity to help customers and I enjoy that portion of the job immensely.

Miranda MacDonald is a regular contributor to RedBoard

VN:F [1.9.13_1145]
Rating: 2.8/5 (10 votes cast)
Listening to you: a conversation with Rogers ombudsman, 2.8 out of 5 based on 10 ratings
category iconCategories:
Customer experience, People
tag iconTags:
, , , , , , , ,

share this

Jump to Comment Form
  1. jaydon says: May 16th, 2011 a 4:28pm

    Is the 80% and 100% data alert tool Don mentions near the end of the article available for mobile data? If so, how do I set it up?

    Thanks

  2. Chris says: May 16th, 2011 a 5:50pm

    Can we get Don’s office reading the Rogers Community Forums? Often things turn up there that I’m sure he or his office could help out with.

    • RogersMiranda says: May 17th, 2011 a 1:02pm

      Hey Chris,

      Thanks for the suggestion. While the community forums are designed for customers to help each other find answers to technical questions, we do have moderators assisting and escalating concerns where appropriate.

      But the same process applies here in the forums as it would elsewhere. If a customer has an issue, they must call a customer representative first and as I mentioned in the intro of this post, the vast majority of customer service inquiries are resolved by our front line employees.

  3. Alph says: May 16th, 2011 a 10:38pm

    uh-huh. At the end of the day, who signs your paycheque?

  4. Diane says: May 17th, 2011 a 11:30am

    Don Moffatt?

    Do you mean Donald E. Moffatt — the guy who heads up Rogers’ Customer Billing and Service department?

  5. Diane says: May 18th, 2011 a 9:46am

    Then I wonder how Don can fulfill his two mandates as stated above.

    As a Rogers employee, Don is not in a very good position to “provide an *independent* review of issues on *behalf of customers*.”

    And as the individual (formerly? currently?) in charge of those Rogers’ functions which are at the centre of most complaints – Customer Service and Billing – Don is unlikely to be identifying himself as “the root cause of issues”.

    • RogersMiranda says: May 18th, 2011 a 10:25am

      Hi Diane,

      I see where you’re going here, but Don’s ultimate goal is to bring a fair and reasonable resolution to the customer. He doesn’t close a file until the customer has deemed the resolution to be fair. The office works at arms’ length from the call centers and Rogers is required to respond to the Ombudsman’s inquiries/suggestions.

      • Diane says: May 19th, 2011 a 9:41am

        Excellent answer, RogersMiranda. Thank you!

        Will Don also be looking at customer complaints regarding pricing, bandwidth caps, thottling?

  6. Lynda says: May 30th, 2011 a 3:42pm

    I had an issue last month. Called customer service first, wasted 90 mintes on the call trying to get my pkgs sorted out. It was escalted to the Office of the President where it “sat” for 2 weeks. Finally I got fed up and asked for the contact information for the Ombudsman and lo and behold my issue was fixed – I would have preferred to have communicated with the Ombudsman early on so that he would know of the less than wonderful service being offered by both customer service and the Office of the President

    • RogersMiranda says: May 30th, 2011 a 4:08pm

      Hi Lynda,

      Sorry to hear that about your experience but I do appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback here. We take this kind of feedback very seriously. It’s important that we hear about things like this so we can help make changes in the future.