Virgin Media braced for complaints

Virgin Media is expecting an increase in customer complaints as formerly disenchanted customers of NTL:Telewest test the newly rebranded company and its claims about improved customer service.

A senior Virgin executive admits many customers will have been making do with poor service to date, but may have greater expectations of the Virgin brand since they noticed the name on their digital TV start-up screen change three weeks ago.

Bryn Jones, director of business architecture at Virgin Mobile, said Virgin Trains witnessed a three-fold increase in complaints when it took over the running of two rail franchises in the UK -- the West Coast mainline and the Cross Country link.

He attributed this not to a dramatic dip in service quality but a greater expectation upon the Virgin brand from consumers.

And he said he is expecting to witness similar increases with Virgin Media. NTL customers in particular were bedevilled by famously bad service.

Jones added: "Under NTL they might have ignored bad service but the Virgin brand has set a higher bar."

Jones said Virgin demanded higher standards of customer service in particular than NTL had provided before it licensed its brand to the NTL:Telewest joint venture. Service-level agreements had to be met and extra customer-service agents employed, he said, speaking at this week's Gartner CRM Summit in London.

He added: "You've got to get resourcing right. Customers don't like waiting."

Around the time of the rebranding last November, customers and former customers of NTL certainly weren't confident things could ever improve at the cable giant.

One reader of CNET.co.uk's sister site silicon.com wrote at the time: "Whatever they are called they will still have the same awful customer service that drove me away from them."

She added: "If they spent as much on their customer service as on this rebranding and their PR, then they might be a half-decent organisation."