Customer service bad, but improving: Telkom

To achieve that goal, Telkom needs the following five things, Armstrong said:

Superb customer experience
Broadband products that meet customer’s needs wherever they are
A great Internet service provider
Compelling content and value-added services
A revived brand.
Click to expand...
6) A dedicated TI call centre totally divorced from 10210 manned by personnel who understand the product they are marketing & supporting.
 
+ real-time billing system and enable the physical stores to fix billing errors.
 
I hope Brian is going to follow this thread... plenty of good suggestions are going to be raised (already 3 great ones above).
 
Where to start....

1. Contact points

IMHO most South Africans detest call centres and would prefer to deal with a human being, face-to-face.

Telkom had Client Service Branches (CSBs) all over the country, even in smaller towns. If you went to a CSB with a problem, it was resolved when you walked out the door. Obviously technical faults were not necessarily resolved but you were assured that your complaint or service request was logged and you were given a reference number.

These CSBs handled everything, from new applications to billing queries.

And then along came Thintana (the Yanks and Malaysians) and they were here for one purpose only.... to make money.

So cost cutting became the order of the day and one of the first areas to be culled were the CSBs and in came the detested Call Centres. Permanent staff was reduced radically and many of the Call Centres were populated with contract workers sourced from labour brokers. And the rot set in...

To this day, about 20 years later, the Call Centres are a mess. Every single refresher program or rejuvenation exercise has failed.

So what will it take to change it?

Some of the CSBs were retained and converted from a customer service branch to a sales channel and rebranded as Telkom Direct shops. More white elephants.... if 2 or 3 of these shops are profitable it would be a miracle.

And they are NOT customer friendly.... to the extent that the staff were even instructed to refuse account payments and to direct these customers to other companies shops to make their Telkom account payments. :wtf:

If you want to query your account or log a service request, you are shown a telephone placed on a table somewhere in the Telkom Direct store and told to contact the Call Centre. :wtf:

Then along comes 8ta and open even more "sales channel" shops!!! :wtf:

And now the 8ta brand is no more, viva Telkom Mobile, viva! :wtf:

But wait, now Telkom Mobile is also no more and has been absorbed into Telkom Retail. :wtf:

/tired

/look out for part two to follow later...
 
What's new?
They still force their telephone service onto us if we want ADSL internet.
We are still forced to pay them a ridiculous amount for an ADSL line even before we can select an ISP.
As long as the customer doesn't have freedom of choice, Telkom will drag feet.
 
Well said Mickey, imagine you go into a bank with a query and they point you to a telephone in the corner. :wtf:
 
Dan C said:
Well said Mickey, imagine you go into a bank with a query and they point you to a telephone in the corner. :wtf:
Click to expand...

That's happened to me before :D

Was enquiring about ABSA travel insurance, the broker "helping" couldn't answer any of my questions and pointed me to the phone.
 
MickZA said:
6) A dedicated TI call centre totally divorced from 10210 manned by personnel who understand the product they are marketing & supporting.
Click to expand...

Dan C said:
+ Online tools that actually work.
Click to expand...

^^ This please yes.

Today the kind lady at 10210 argued with me that my ADSL rental is the same for up to 10Mbs line as a 4Mbs line so I cannot complain when my line only syncs at around 4Mbs because anyway it is only an upgraded 384Kbs circuit that has been upgraded to 1Mbs, then 2Mbs, then 4Mbs and now 8Mbs... so anything above 384Kbs is free... and the amount I am quoting on my Telkom bill for the up to 10Mbs circuit is not what she is seeing on her system and all she can comment on is what is on her screen and not a piece of paper I am looking at anyway... and the exchange is not congested but she will drop my line speed when lots of people connect at the exchange and that is the way it works and even if a Telkom techie goes to the exchange I must pay for that call out and equipment repair.

/pfffft

I could not get a word in edge-ways and no matter what I said, she repeated the mantra above again, and again, and again.

A PM to TelkomZA sorted it out almost immediately.
 
TheRoDent said:
Telkom's line/DSL support service has been actually very good for about 5 years.
Click to expand...

Well if everything goes right, then I agree with you. I had only 2 issues in the past 7 years I had ADSL and they were sorted out quickly.

But the fundamental problems with DSL are

1) You don't have a clue what technology is available in your area. ( support staff can't tell you )
2) As I mentioned in my first post, the online tools are not working in most cases. (not even TiTracker can pick up my usage and my phone number is off the radar)
 
Dan C said:
But the fundamental problems with DSL are

1) You don't have a clue what technology is available in your area. ( support staff can't tell you )
2) As I mentioned in my first post, the online tools are not working in most cases. (not even TiTracker can pick up my usage and my phone number is off the radar)
Click to expand...

Yes, those are real issues. And they're actually just software, and systems issues. Telkom's actual physical support (lines, etc) has been phenomenal in my experience.

I always congratulate the copper techies, on issues resolved (which are actually quite hard) up to the point where my line syncs and they've done a good job. Those guys rock.

Telkom seems to have sorted that out in a good way, but the higher levels leave much to be desired.

But I don't care. As long as I have sync, I have options :)
 
I am sorry I heard this all before, a few months ago (too lazy to search now) an almost identical post was made on this forum.
 
Brian, just under 20 years ago, we in the ISP industry, begged and pleaded and offered suggestions on what telkom needed to do to grow a decent internet here in SA. The bonus was that everything was geared around us accepting and supporting your dominance and monopoly.
Fast forward to today... The identical issues still stand and your attitude and unwillingness to do the correct things, are still the same.

If it wasn't so horribly sad, it would be equally laughable.
 
TheRoDent said:
Yes, those are real issues. And they're actually just software, and systems issues. Telkom's actual physical support (lines, etc) has been phenomenal in my experience.

I always congratulate the copper techies, on issues resolved (which are actually quite hard) up to the point where my line syncs and they've done a good job. Those guys rock.

Telkom seems to have sorted that out in a good way, but the higher levels leave much to be desired.

But I don't care. As long as I have sync, I have options :)
Click to expand...

+10

I must also say that my experience of 10210 has shown a marked improvement, with a number of their staff going the extra mile.
 
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