I’m temporarily handing over the blog for a Guest post from Netlink IT’s Office Manager – Sharon Howard.

Sharon has been with Netlink IT since January 2009 and has been hugely instrumental in helping reform our financial processes to see us through the difficult recession, manage our clients and suppliers, keep the office premises running smoothly and general act as what Karl Palachuk would refer to as our $200 miracle!

Sharon will be remaining with us as Office Manager during the merger with JamesCash.co.uk – as we announced last week – but judging by her blog post below, I can guess at one supplier we’re unlikely to be using post-merger…

I’ll hand things over to Sharon!

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It’s been a month since I arrived at QA-IQ’s Birmingham office for a course only to find it had been cancelled and I still haven’t heard back from our account manager…

When I started working for Netlink IT I was registered for ten training days via a Training License with QA-IQ to build up my skills with Microsoft Office Applications. The first few days went smoothly; I registered for my classes, received confirmation of my booking, went along and sat through my first four classes. Then the next three were cancelled due to low fill, which was fair enough as I was notified and I went along to the rearranged dates without a problem. Now I just had three days left to complete before our training license ran out in May. So in April I went along for my 8^th session only to arrive and find that my course had been cancelled yet our account manager had failed to inform me, this then happened again the following week. I was notified of a third cancellation and finally had my eight training day in may. Our account manager had apologised unreservedly for not informing me and assured us that he would inform me if there were further cancellations, our training license was extended to allow me to complete all the training and we were given one complimentary training day.

Now you would think after this QA would be more careful about keeping us informed of any changes or cancellations but no…

At the end of May it happened again, I arrived for a class only to find they had booked me in for a Microsoft Office 2003 course when I was supposed to be doing 2007, even though I had e-mailed before to check that the course was running. I had received no reply to my e-mail, and as no news is usually good news, I had to take it that no reply meant everything was okay, as surely given the past mistakes they would have replied if there was a problem!?

I finally managed to complete my ninth training day in June so just one left which was booked for 24^th August…

I travelled back early from my weekend away at V-Festival so I could get to my course on time on the morning of the 24^th. On arrival I found that yet again the course had been cancelled, but not only had it been cancelled but this time my place had never been booked by our account manager at all! I returned to our office to find an e-mail sent by our account manager at 9.55am on the 24^th August informing me the course was cancelled, a totally pointless message seeing the course was due to start at 9am! In addition the message went on to offer two alternative dates for the training, but one of these was not even for the right course!!

I replied politely with the following message:

“Unfortunately your message arrived too late to be of use, I had already gone to the centre to be turned away again, they also informed me that even though the course was cancelled I had never been booked on to it in the first place. We are obviously not happy that this has now happened several times with courses where we have not been informed that they were cancelled. Please can you advise me how many training days we have left to use as a result of the complimentary days offered due to the previous mix-ups and also can you provide me with full contact details for the Birmingham office so I can double check with them prior to attendance that courses are running.

As for the dates you have provided only the 30^th November is for Outlook 2007 Level 3, the other date being for Level 1, please can you book me in for the 30^th November in Birmingham and confirm this booking for me. Should the course be cancelled I would appreciate notification as early as possible so as to not waste any more time and expense travelling to attend courses that are not happening.”

To do date I have still not received a reply to this message…

So just a suggestion to anyone looking for training for Microsoft Office, I would recommend finding another training provider, while QA-IQ are one the largest providers of classroom based training this level of customer service is appalling! Personally I intend to opt for online training in future, this suits me better due to increased access and flexibility, and after all it wouldn’t cost so much in time or travel expenses if a course was cancelled.

To QA-IQ: Good Customer Service doesn’t cost the earth, or even significant effort. It is in your interests to retain your customers, so do something about this!

Having a standard pre-prepared e-mail to send out a week before a course either confirming or cancelling the date is easy to set up, and being providers of IT training you should know this anyway… or would you like me to come in and show you how its done?

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