Editor's Blog: All communications in one place

Focus on customer service? Heard of it...

All comms in one place? What is that place? I ask that somewhat awkward question because this week has seen some of the biggest names in UK business - especially the most interesting parts of business silicon.com cares about - setting out their stall.

Long before now I knew that yesterday would see three big announcements. Our correspondent Jo Best has been out in Amsterdam, covering an event that saw the top brass in BSkyB and Easynet talk about the strides they've made since the former bought the latter.

Clearly Sky's entry into the broadband market has been good for competition, along with players such as Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk (life's what you make it, indeed) and Orange (doesn't Freeserve seem like a long time ago?).

But all of them have been hit by accusations of poor customer care. Easynet always, as a business ISP, had a good reputation for customer care, so it'll be interesting to see what strides Sky will - can? - take.

So often these days it seems there is a choice made by large tech-centric companies between tech-as-answer and the human touch. An eBay or Google are great examples of the former. Ever tried really reaching a real person there? Their business models are built on millions of interactions which are essentially automated.

Even a Yahoo!, up against the might of Google, tries to make a play of involving a human touch more, and I'm inclined to favour that approach. But what do I know? Witness each company's share price last year.

So back to the argument here. Will a Sky - after the success of things such as Sky Digital and, we can only guess, Tivo- or Slingbox-style services accessible from browsers (think mobile browsers too, ultimately) - be inclined to take the Google route? I'd bet they would.

But then, next to Sky, take an arch competitor - in the blue corner, Rupert Murdoch (& Son)… in the red corner, Richard Branson.

As a customer, I had a mail shot a week or so ago. As a journalist, the press conference and later launch party took place yesterday. For what? Virgin Media.

Now I'm on that company's radar as a customer because I've been a long-time user of Telewest services. And all in all I've been pretty happy.

Virgin Media is basically the combination of four ventures - NTL, Telewest, Virgin Mobile and VirginNet - and the launch literature talks a lot, and I mean a lot, about great customer service. Interesting. Now at least two of those are known for good customer service - Telewest and Virgin Mobile - and at least one, isn't. Yes, NTL carried that reputation for some time.

Can even Branson, the man who took on running a train company, make sure the previous NTL business dusts itself down? (And remember, it was essentially NTL acting over a period of months as the senior partner in that four-way tie-up.)

I'll be watching closely, as a journalist and consumer.

I've so far mentioned three players. Beyond BSkyB and Virgin Media, Thursday saw BT put out a set of results. BT will clearly be a home entertainment player over coming years with its ability to provide IPTV services over DSL lines.

But I'd be tempted to look more at what it's not doing in the consumer space. BT Global Services unit (I talked about Deutsche Telekom's service push last week in this blog) is increasingly important. Which stands to reason. Large network plus IT contracts from all the rest of the world are potentially more lucrative than a choosy and decidedly undecided public in the UK.

So there will be three big players all trying to sell you entertainment and communications services. Beyond that, all I can say is give them hell over customer service. It really does matter, however they approach it.

Three post-scripts:

• Our reporter in Amsterdam covering the latest on the Easynet situation a year post-Sky buy was disappointed on Thursday morning as James Murdoch couldn't make it over from London "because of the snow". C'mon.
• I was disappointed last night - I turned up to the Virgin Media launch only to find a scrum at Leicester Square outside a venue I haven't revisited since a nasty incident as a teenager on a New Year's Eve over 20 years ago. I didn't go in and apparently missed a great night featuring Blondie and Steven Seagal, among others.
• If you're considering a smorgasbord offering of services from one provider - something, in Virgin Media's case, Branson insists on referring to as four-play, rather than quad-play - then be sure to read this first, by one of our eminent columnists from last December.