How Does Your Company Respond When Stuff Happens?

Stuff does happen. We should all carry out risk analysis and plan accordingly but inevitably stuff will happen. How well you respond may dictate your future success.
Yesterday at a round 4pm our taps stopped working. We checked stop-cocks and so on but without resolving things. We spoke to a neighbour only to find that she too had no water. We waited until, after a while, we contacted the water company (South-Eastern). Reaction – we know nothing (and, by inference, we do not much care either). We rand again 2 or 3 times before retiring to bed, bathless. Each time, we were met with laissex faire attitudes, the worst of which said there had been a leak down the road but it was fixed so we must have an airlock – which we should deal with ourselves. At 6am, my wife rang again and could elicit no evidence that the company even knew of a problem. She arand again at 8 and was promised a call back – which never came. Engineers were in the lane shortly after this, saying they had no idea what the problem was but at least they were trying to find out. At about 3pm, the water came on again.
These are the facts from the customer’s side. How should we think about the supplier?
The day before, my wife had had her wallet stolen. She reported the loss of her Oyster card to Transport for London. They were brilliant – friedly, sympathetic and helpful; and the replacement card has arrived already.
Compare and contrast the PR.