iBurst’s turnaround plan

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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MyBroadband recently reported that numerous iBurst subscribers are complaining online about the broadband provider’s sliding service levels, billing problems, unfair account suspensions and poor telephonic support.  iBurst has confirmed these problems, but said that it has systems in place to address all of the concerns from consumers. 

“Towards the end of 2009 iBurst made two important business system moves, which will in the long-term deliver better value to our customers and the business, but right now are causing much frustration,” iBurst explained.  “The first was the switch to our new billing system, which resulted in a number of customers being incorrectly billed. The second was moving our call centre offsite. “
 
According to iBurst these two actions combined have created customer dissatisfaction, and iBurst experienced a massive increase in calls to the centre by customers with billing issues.  “The result is irate customers unable to get through to a call centre that is struggling to deal with the volumes,” said iBurst.
 
What is iBurst doing about it?

iBurst said that it is actively addressing all the consumer concerns, and that call centre capacity was increased by 60% during January to reduce response times, and will continue to be increased until response time is satisfactory.
 
“The billing engine is being worked on day and night. iBurst is committed to getting this right as soon as possible. We have also allocated more staff in the back office to help resolve queries,” the company pointed out.
 
iBurst added that the subscribers who were suspended due to incorrect billing are back online. “It was a very small percentage of our customer base, but this is still unacceptable. iBurst will be communicating with these customers to ensure they are up and reconnected to their satisfaction.”
 
iBurst has also added another channel through which customers can resolve their problems.  “Please go to the online help page (look for the “Happy With Us? Not?” link on the home page) and create a query, which will generate an automatic reference number and confirmation email.”  The direct link to the iBurst support page is:  http://www.iburst.co.za/default.aspx?link=help_online

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