Foxtel has admitted that they have had database issues when they migrated a new customer service database over to handle new Foxtel services, however they do claim that no records are missing. However they have said that tey have had to bring in over 100 staff to handle what they describe as “Customer Call Storms”.
They have also admitted that they were forced into a 4 day database close down due to a “Call Storm” that resulted in them having to bring in 100 additional staff to handle calls. These calls were not processed unless there was an emergency or urgent need for action.
They have also failed to explain why the Managing Director of Vital Software in Melbourne, Roger Bushell was told 4 times that a Foxtel technician would attend his new home to install a cable service but failed to turn up.
Bushell the Chief Executive of a database Company said “Foxtel technicians or their contractors failed to turn up on 4 separate occasions despite being told that they would attend between certain given times. On one occasion I phoned them to question why they had not turned up. The call centre operator told me after consulting their database that no technician was scheduled to attend my home. When I got home that night there was note from a technician who had arrived late to do the installation”.
“There has to be a database problem. If they could not find your record (meaning me) on their database there has to be missing records”.
Guy Main a senior executive at Foxtel said “We have had teething problems but we have not lost any records”.
When asked why my record could not be found during a 90 minute phone call he said “I do not know I will investigate this. Some records may have fallen through the cracks but they are in isolation. It does not mean that they were lost but not accessible by the call centre operator.”
He added “Migrating a large database like Foxtel was not an easy task. We had to do our own migration as the new Telstra database was not ready. This one is separate to the new Telstra database which is still under development”.
“As a result of migration we had a call storm when we had to take the database down for 4 days. We bought in 100 staff to handle call manually. We could not action the call but we were able to talk to customers. This is why we bought in 100 extra staff. We are now on the backend of this problem and last night we had a 20 fold decrease in demand on our call centre”.
He added “If a consumer had a serious problem we had a set up to manually process a call”.
For original Foxtel Lose Customer Records story go to
