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Welcome to Loyalty MagazineLoyalty Magazine reports on customer retention,loyalty schemes, rewards, affinity, CRM, call centre issues, direct and viral marketing, mobile and internet channels for both B2B and B2C enterprises. It covers all global markets and business sectors, including retail, financial services, travel and hotels, telecoms and electronic commerce. |
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Friday, 07 August 2009 09:34 |
 Vive la France – apart from the broadband
High speed internet, but only by letter.
There are 260,000 British people with second homes in France. Some areas, such as Chamonix in the Alps and Brittany in the north, have extensive expat English speaking communities. But until recently, the French made little concession to their foreign neighbours.
One is expected for example, to speak in French in shops and restaurants, no matter how bad your pigeon efforts, or how good their English. Which is perfectly reasonable, but very frustrating if you are trying to buy washers for a tap, or a part for a lawnmower.
And French supermarkets don’t allow expats to join their loyalty programmes. Carrefour, for example, asks for either a French payslip or proof that you receive social security benefits or a pension. Without these, there is no possibility of a loyalty card, even if you are a French homeowner.
Then there is the food issue. Until recently, it wasn’t possible to buy Marmite or Tetleys tea, breakfast cereal or Worcester Sauce. Now you may be wondering why on earth anyone would want to, given the quality and range of French food, but it is incredible what a craving one develops when these things are impossible to procure.
But the worst problem, and one that fills thousands of web pages from expats, is the issue of internet connection.
Broadband enables us to communicate. It gives us access to emails, web pages, Spotify and cheap phone calls. It is essential for anyone trying to work from abroad, and is becoming an essential part of life for most of us.
But when in France, you have to speak to the call centre person in French, and when dealing with complicated connection terms, this can be the most frustrating thing in the world.
Direct debit frustration
One expat friend, having got frustrated with France Telecom because they would only set up a direct debit to a French bank account, and only send invoices to a French address, decided to move to Italian provider Alice, which was prepared to bill a credit card. This was important, because the expat was out of France for months at a time, and was missing the bills. This led to him being frequently cut off, and having to wait ten days for reconnection.
But Alice, which has spent a fortune on marketing in France, was an altogether different ball game.
At first it was easy. The modem was bought from French retail giant Carrefour, and the connection was made, thanks to a couple of hours of assistance from a French neighbour to talk to the call centre – using her French mobile because non-French phones wouldn’t connect. But then nothing happened. The phone line was dead, and there was no broadband.
Every time he rang Alice, having persuaded the French neighbour to use his mobile phone again to make the call, the call centre person said it would be connected within 14 days. It never was.
The expat has finally given up, after a year in which he was paying the 29.90 euros a month via his French credit card, but getting no service.
He returned to France Telecom, having discovered that they now operate an English language call centre for their expat customers. This was information that is only possible to get from someone else in the know. It is not publicised.
The Alice problem persists for the expat. The French credit card company seems unwilling to stop the direct debit from his credit card, saying he needs to sort this out with Alice. Alice call centre staff refuse to talk to him, because he is no longer a customer. A nightmare.
But the expat is happy. Thoughtful France Telecom has devised a service which it calls Optimal Decouverte, devised particularly with second home owners in mind. You pay 39.90 euros when you are there, but a few days before you leave, you cancel the service, paying just 16 euros during the intervening months for line rental. 15 days before you return, you reconnect the service.
Because this is France, the service can’t be paid for via a credit card, and when you cancel, it has to be done by letter. Not mail, and not telephone. So the expat has to remember on the 15th of every month to ring the English-speaking call centre to see how much he owes and to pay the bill. The invoices can only be sent to a French address and if he is away from his second home, he won’t receive them.
The expat keeps the number of the France Telecom English speaking call centre in a very safe place, because it is not possible to access it via their web page. In fact it takes some persuasion, to get France Telecom to give it to you at all.
When the expat asked the call centre why it was so complicated, and why he can’t get his invoices emailed to him, the English speaking call centre person replied: “It is complicated because this is France.”
Of course it is, and it is the Frenchness of the place which is so attractive – most of the time.
*Loyalty would like to apologise to any reader who was offended by the use of a picture of a cliched Frenchman to illustrate this article.
It got us wondering how this image came about. A quick bit of research revealed that "Onion Johnny" was the nickname given to the farmers and agricultural laborers from the region near the town of Roscoff in Britanny who sold pink onions door-to-door around the UK from the 1920s through to the 1960s. Clad in striped shirt and beret, and riding a bicycle hung with onions, the Onion Johnny became the stereotypical image of the Frenchman in an era when few people travelled outside the UK. |
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