Nestle Waters Johannesburg needs customer relationship coaching

Nestle Waters in Johannesburg needs help. It's abundantly clear that in order to get a job in their accounts department you must score zero on emotional intelligence and if possible, even lower on a customer relationship-marketing index.

My little business paid over R 1 000 in advance for Nestle bottled water. Because I've been out of commission following surgery, I probably didn't notice that I'd been billed some R 300 for the annual rental of their water cooler. They didn't pick up the phone to tell me that. They just discontinued the service - 'put the account on hold' is their sad euphemism for the same action. Whichever way you explain it, they cut off the water delivery. Yet, overall, I'm still in credit with them.

I queried the absence of deliveries with their customer service people. The guy put me through to their accounts department where one Vanashree told me our service had been put on hold due to non-payment. I told her to have her superior call me.

He did. He's an arrogant man named Francois Roos. He shouldn't be allowed to talk to customers because he doesn't know how to. Having told me to keep quiet while he explained 'their system' (remarkably I managed to) he then proceeded to butt-in non-stop when I attempted to point out that the semantic nonsense of 'account on hold' still means cessation of service. When I told him that halfway-decent business professionalism decrees phoning a client before messing with the relationship and their service, he said, 'We're too busy to phone 6 000 people.' Interesting. When Nestle Waters one day start losing market share, as they surely will with this sort of gauche behaviour, he will have been a significant contributor to the fall-off.

He actually had the gall to laugh at me when I threatened to escalate the issue within Nestle and said, 'You do what you want.' Having worked as an Ogilvy advertising executive on Nestle's brand business many years ago, I was of the impression that they once were gentlemen. The Nestle water experience I've just had leaves no doubt that those days are gone.

I've put in two calls this afternoon for someone at Nestle Head Office in Johannesburg to call me back. Nuthin' - they're probably too busy cutting off water deliveries on the instruction of the anal customer-toxic accounts department.

Fortunately for Nestle I prefer the taste of their bottled water over most others. Otherwise I'd tell 'em to come collect their water cooler. Nasty people to do business with.

Clive Simpkins is a Change Architect and Strategist. http://www.clivesimpkins.com