How can Telkom improve?

Telkom needs to get with the times!

It's support channels really suck.

If Afrihost, a 3rd party reseller, can allow you to perform a port reset on your line, through the online Client Zone and smartphone app, then why can't Telkom allow it, the actual provider/wholesaler of the ADSL line?

Telkom's ADSL Checker is also grossly inaccurate. This needs to be fixed.

Telkom also needs to start innovating, and providing intelligent systems that will allow you to manage your own ADSL line online, submit and track support tickets, and do other innovative things, without the need to phone the support number.

I was also going to mention Telkom's poor Usage Tracker and Topup Portal, but then realised that this is actually TelkomInternet, the ISP, which is slightly different. Also, I haven't seen the inside of those 2 portals in years, so I'm not sure if anything has changed since then.

I won't forget to mention the monotonous but obligatory call for:
- Naked ADSL. I don't need or want a fixed voice service.
- Reduced IPC rates for ISPs, so that end-users can benefit from lower prices
- Bitstream access for ISPs, so that ISPs can innovate further, have more control and flexilbility, and hopefully reduce costs.
- Reduction in ADSL line rental costs

Telkom also needs to become more interactive in the social media space. We want and need:
- a presence on the MyBroadband forums
- a presence on Facebook and Twitter

Not just a presence, but an active presence, with active engagement with the public on these social media channels.

To sum it up, my message to Telkom: It's the frikken 21st Century, 2012 (almost 2013!), yet we're still sitting with ancient systems, ancient pricing, ancient products and technologies, inaccurate information, and poor online channels. Get with the times already! We're falling way behind, and not just behind the rest of the first world, but behind the rest of Africa.

In the mid to late 90's, I was actually proud of Telkom. South Africa had some of the best telecoms infrastructure in the world, and some of the cheapest telecoms services. I used to boast about Telkom. I'd like to do that again, the way I boast about Cell C, and FNB. Instead, I am now quite embarrased of and furious with Telkom. We are now amongst the least innovative and most expensive in the world.

EDIT: I've decided to convert my post into a blog post: How Telkom can improve and make me a happier customer
 
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I think the staff could use more training, both in store and over the phone.
The monthly statement are a big mess and lacking in branding and design.
I'd like to see a device that doubles up as a modem/router and telephone!
 
A little bit of extra support would really not hurt. When my line was with telkom I struggled to get anything fixed. The technicians doesn't even know what ping means. After moving my line to another SP my problems became apparent to the guy I explained to and it was solved the day after.

In recent months I have gotten calls back from telkom which is nice. But please your call centre is not up to standard.
 
Improve line infrastructure - living in Atholl and the line often needs to be reset due to lots of noise.
 
Telkom Feedback

Which new products would you like to see?

Unbundled ADSL and affordable alternatives for the home market such as WiMax for areas where Telkom does not want to roll-out new MSANS and the exchange cannot support ADSL speeds faster than 384k

Are there areas where Telkom can improve its support?

Telkoms technicians needs to be a bit more punctual. Overall however, the experience from the technicians have been good. The sales consultants at the stores and via telephonic channels are a mixed bag - some I have dealt with know the product offerings well and others don't. A constant review and evaluations of sales consultants needs to be looked at.

Can they make it easier for you to buy their products?

Products are easy enough to register for and purchase.

Where do you think the company is losing ground against its competitors?

Telkom is loosing by not providing proper broadband to households. Many are switching over to cellphone solutions as Telkom fails to deliver decent 4MBit ADSL in many areas. Copper theft is also a big issue (not directly in Telkoms hands) that affects loosing fixed line customers.

Comment

Personally 4Mbit ADSL is pretty much a requirement for having a home office or being able to work at home. As a business owner, in todays IT world, not having good connectivity at home is debilitating as it means that I cannot do extra work from home. My current exchange (Panorama, Cape Town) is overloaded and I barely get 2MBit - after having to fight with the sales consultant as they did not want to give me anything faster than 384k. Please see to all exchanges that are overloaded and roll out your MSANS to these areas first before going ahead with 40Mbit ADSL
 
* Better educate support center staff, get them to realise that they could be less informed than the client calling in regarding an issue
* Have a choice of radio stations to relay to the phone as opposed to the same tune that's been playing since 1997 or earlier that has become very warbly from overuse
* Get call center staff to only give absolute concrete information - a "we're uncertain at this time as to when x will be completed/is expected to be done" is better than being told that something important will be finished or done next week, then it only gets done three months or later down the line
* More transparent pricing of services, specifically DSL services, so that clients know what the constituents of their services are
* More realistic pricing model going from 1mbps to 2mbps, and from 2mbps to 4mbps - current pricing model doesn't make sense in the least, kind of forces people to choose either 1mbps or 4mbps
* Pricing that's based on the sync profile someone is assigned. We pay R425 a month for 4mbps where there are people that are getting 10mbps at exactly the same price. Similarly there are people paying R400 a month for 4mbps, but are getting 3mbps, and their only other option is to downgrade to 2mbps? Why.
* More accurate, reliable information on when areas are going to be upgraded or have maintenance work done to them that may cause outtages
* A method of client-side screening for congestion and/or network faults so that those using the services can tell for themselves whether an issue they're experiencing with slow speeds is related to the Telkom network or if the issue lies elsewhere, so that clients can better do their already-better job of identifying and reporting faults than the current Telkom hardware and software seems to be capable of
* Lower fences around exchanges. Climbing over the one around the exchange here in Napier to bliksem it with a hammer sometimes ends with a tear in my jean pant and a bruise on my boude. Better yet, give us a little gate we can go through when we need to donder the thing to get it working again


New Products I'd like to see
Rollout of services that don't prioritize affluent suburbs over densely populated areas just because they seem like the clients more likely to adopt services. This means not rolling out things like 40bmps in only the areas with the richest folk - did it ever occur to you guys that the only reason you don't have a great client-base in a particular area is because those people can get better services from your competitors?

Support stuff
Highlighted above. Lower fences or little gates.

Can they make it easier for us to buy their products
Having pricing models that seem reasonable and realistic would be a start towards making it 'easier' to buy their products. Otherwise having accounting staff that aren't blithering idiots that will disconnect all your services entirely when you ask them to perform a simple upgrade or downgrade of your DSL service would be grand.

Where do I think Telkom is losing ground against competitors
Value for money. Yes, ADSL is still the most cost-effective means of being connected where massive volumes of data usage are concerned. No, their speeds are not the greatest, let alone 'world class' as they like to advertise. These days you can get better value for money out of 3G than you can out of Telkom's ADSL offerings - hell, there are even a good amount of people in the SA gaming community that prefer using 3G for their gaming these days.
 
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Split the call and ADSL line rental. Subscribers should have a choice between the two. Together with this, Telkom can add an incentive for customers to use them as an ADSL service provider eg. if you take out line and ADSL rental, the data package will be reduced.
 
Install adsl by default on gated communities and complexes.
 
my first one, as with many others, unbundle voice and data lines.
my second one being issues with billing and then the customer support to fix it. I have had 3 different occasions where ive been over charged on my data line then speaking to the 12 odd different departments to try and sort it out didnt make things much better. So better customer service over the phone would be appreciated.
 
We need naked ADSL firstly.

Ensuring customers get the speeds they are paying for - rather upgrade all existing exchanges to handle more customers before upgrading a small percentage of customers to higher speeds.

An entire online system would be ideal.

Broadband and IPTV bundles as they have overseas.
 
For me, Telkom has one main issue: billing.

Their billing system is a mess: multiple systems are poorly integrated together and as a result, the only way I can pay my bill is by going into a physical store. They need to sort out their online system and make it easy to update ones details, pay bills and manage services. At the moment, any of those things are impossible for me to do.

Of course there are other, more general issues that I face with them: lack of feedback and follow-ups on support calls, generally poor line quality, being forced to pay for analogue line rental when all I use is ADSL.
 
Firstly they can upgrade exchanges in areas with a high number of DSL users.
These exchanges get so congested in the afternoon / night that it is impossible to do gaming, streaming... well anything really.
Also they can change that "To-do-di-do" song when you wait for a call centre agent, I've been driven quite insane by it.
Lastly - that thing where fault calls automatically closes themselves is really annoying, they should fix that.
 
I'm with the others who've said "No more products please... lets just get the current ones in some kind of acceptable state."

Since we're taking the opportunity to dump complaint and horror stories, as an example of why I think Support is Telkom's biggest failure at the moment...

1) The scenario: My house has terrible wiring. This isn't helped by the terrible way that the Telkom tech 'glued' the wiring when he installed ADSL for me... the cable came away from where he'd fixed it, and subsequently got damaged. So, I decide to ask for a Telkom tech to come out and fix the wiring. I'm happy to pay callout fees or whatever, I just want the wiring on the property to be as good as possible.
So, being as how the Telkom phone-in is abominable, I decide to use the online fault-reporting thing. I fill in the form, submit the report, and get the SMS. So far so good.
The support desk, or the technician, I'm not sure which, phones the landline. This is during working hours... I'm obviously at work. They talk to someone else at the house (I'm the owner of the line, and my cell number was on the form). The person they spoke to assumed (not unreasonably) that Telkom was finally responding to a much older fault report, and say that it's ok. Call immediately closed.
Ok, fair enough, misunderstanding/communication error. My bad. I enter a new call, and alert everyone at the house, tell them to talk to me. This time, the technician doesn't bother calling, just checks the line from the exchange, closes the call.
Third time's the charm, I think. Enter a third call. This time I actually get a phonecall on the cell. I explain the request to the support desk person. She seems horribly confused, but finally assures me that the technician would visit. I warn everyone at home, expect Telkom.
The technician again checks the line from the exchange, finds that it's 'working', closes the call.
I still have bad wiring in the house. I gave up.

2) The Scenario: ADSL upgrade. Telkom are upgrading all 384k owners to 1 Mb.
This is awesome. I know I'm already paying a high price for a low-quality offering, but I don't mind... I understand we're a distributed population and a relatively low-tech society in a 3rd-world country, but hey... I have broadband. Still, it'd be nice if I'd heard the news from Telkom, rather than a third party site (ie, this one). You'd think they'd trumpet a positive event, considering their relentless bad PR.
Still, the upgrade is delayed slightly... that's fine. It finally starts in October, and I'm excited. I use the checkadsl site, yes my connection is apparently upgraded. I'm still synching at 384 though.
So, I brace myself, gather my courage, gird my loins, take a drink and phone the Telkom helpdesk.
After a lengthy wait... yes, big surprise... we get through. We've selected the options to get through to ADSL tech support (based on the recommendations I've found on forums online), so we're a little concerned when the woman we speak to seems to have absolutely no idea what we're talking about. She panics, and routes us through to Billing.
We finally convince Billing to put us back to the techies, who stonewall us with the 'wait six weeks' canned response.

So, mid November. I'm not holding my breath. *sighs*

TL;DR version: Telkom needs to hire people with a clue. Alternatively, we need a second customer-level line provider. Watch Telkom lean-up when that happens.
 
- To date whenever I had an issue with Telkom and phoned the call centre the support was sufficient. It is the holding on to get to a person that's very annoying.
- Unbundling voice and data. A lot of companies are now using VOIP exchanges (VOX) , mine included, and don't want to pay for the voice part of the line.
- Telkom need to get their house in order. The company is too bloated and it won't be long before they too have to beg for a bailout from government, like SAA. Sort things out at the top and rest will follow.
 
Essentially, Telkom needs to think LIKE a user rather than thinking FOR its users.

What we want is a connection that is:
(1) reliable
(2) fast (minimum acceptable: to stream video, e.g. YouTube, without buggering - oops Freudian typo - buffering)
(3) Responsive support (e.g. have a separate SMS number and helpdesk for ADSL)
(4) Preferably low-cost, but we understand roll-outs, upgrades and good staff are not cheap.

In short, the service provider should be "invisible" to the customer (apart from the monthly payment) it should "just work"
 
Stability needs improvement. Every time the rain comes, or there is a strong wind my line goes downhill. Other then that I'm not effected by the need to have unbundled dsl (Must be one of the few people who use a landline).
Your customer support needs a great improvement. Problems can be either fixed, if there is a good operator, or just cause further frustration by uneducated stuff.
 
I would advise telkom on better customer service call center. A bit better training of the stuff maybe. They were not very helpful and kept giving me misleading information.
 
1. Yes, Telkom should start by giving a damn.
2. Unbundle voice and data
3. Stop holding the whole country to ransom with it's extortionist prices. Thanks to Telkom and it's patrons in Government, the internet highway in this country is a dirt track. Telkom has the power to do a lot for this country, instead it's just a handbrake, a tree in the road. Everyone's just trying to find a way around Telkom.
4. Respond to Hellopeter.co.za complaints.
 
Telkom ADSL is really frustrating. You buy a service but they dictate where you can use or what downloader you must choose. If you use a Torrent downloader, they throttle you that you get hardly any download speed. Other ISP will give you 100k but Telkom about 5k.
I am sure the Consumer Protection Act does not allow this. You pay for 2meg but they dont allow you full access. Surely as a customer I am entitled to use as I see fit.

They play BIG BROTHER so they can make sure their business clients have bandwidth.
 
For capped accounts, distinguish between local and international traffic and cap us accordingly - stop blended metering.

We have a 20GB cap (with a 30GB local cap), but we get capped (internationally) as soon as we use 20GB blended data, which really doesn't seem fair, especially considering that 80% of our traffic is local.

This leaves us without international connectivity for the remainder of the month.
Basically, we're not getting what we pay for.
 
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