Telkom is doing a customer experience survey...

M

MrBEEP

Openweb Representative
Company Rep
Joined
Aug 11, 2005
Messages
5,112
Reaction score
4
I just received a call from an independant survey company asking me how my experiences with Telkom has been.

Obviosuly I told them they are WAY over priced, and care more for their shareholders than their customers. The lady said that is the only thing she has been hearing since she started!

My issue is that although surveys are a great way to find out what your customers think; what's the point of doing them if you don't care about your customers?? Or is a change about to happen?

Anyone else received a call?
 
Wow they really chose the wrong people to ask :D I reckon they should chat to MaD and rpm next ^_^

What are the chances of this survey being released as it is captured? I can see results of "Telkom is the kief. We love them" coming our way.
 
The stupid wankers could have merely asked this forum for a relevant result, instead of appointing a company to do the survey...
 
Do you know who the survey company is? I wonder if it's Markinor again...
 
That sounds right! Yes...I think it is
 
All companies care more for their shareholders than their customers. Or their employees for tha matter. The sole duty of the board of directors is to "maximise shareholder value". Thats how capitalism works. (or doesn't, depending on your political inclination).

I honestly can't say that I would do any different if I was on the board of Telkom. The fault lies not in Telkom, but that useless obnoxious arrogant, self important oxygen thief we jokingly call "the minister of communications". Giving a listed company (largely owned by foreigners) a basically unrestricted monopoly over vital nation resources is either grossly incompetent, criminally negligent. or willfully malicious. I personally would like to see her charged with treason.
 
Employees and shareholders are grouped under stakeholders. The stakeholder is supposedly the the all important entity, and the client, which supplies the company's revenue, unfortunately bites the short end of the stick. With Telkom, sitting on top of an almost perfect monopoly, the client can really be treated like crap, because they ( the client ) have to rely on Telkom for the services, no matter how crap they are getting treated. Government does really care either way, because ADSL isn't something that caters for the masses, the so-called ' poorest of the poor '. It is a luxury good / service, so ICASA can take their sweet time with studies into Telkom's impact into the economical development of SA, unharrased by government. And Telkom isn't forced to comply ( or give a crap about ) any findings Icasa comes up with.
 
Telkom will continue doing the surveys until the results are positive.

It's like: "The beatings will continue until morale improves"
 
just got my little survey.. asked me what I thought of telkom.. needless to say the poor lady on the other side probably wished she didn't ask me that..

I vented on her..
 
So until eventually the pool of respondents is reduced to senior management of Telkom? :D
 
They are wasting time doing a survey

I will tell them the statistics.

From a cross-section of a modest 1,000 random e-mails received from the Hellkom site, it is safe to say that at least 100% of Telkom customers think they are a rip-off and suck - and that's the way the people who mail in put it.
 
Heheheh

Poor Telkom. Just for once, why don't we lay off telkom and be nice to them. Realise that they're a high quality company that is after the public good and are struggling with a very tough market and an even tougher slander element.









BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
 
Telkom & Sentech Helpdesks Tops, Vodacom & MTN Poor
By Cara Christian, MyADSL, 4 October 2005

In a recent helpdesk survey performed by MyADSL, the Telkom and Sentech helpdesks came out tops while MTN and Vodacom’s service was disturbingly poor.

As part of a MyADSL Broadband Ratings Report the helpdesks from the various broadband providers were put to the test.
The time taken to reach a suitable consultant that could answer basic questions regarding their data services was recorded. The accuracy of the answers and the speed at which they were answered were also evaluated.
Telkom and Sentech’s consultants were reached within 30 seconds, and both of the consultants could provide fast and accurate answers.
An added bonus for Telkom subscribers is that their support service makes use of a free 0800 number which means that the caller incurs no costs.
The iBurst consultant was reached within 4 minutes 30 second, but this included an automated information session that could not be avoided.
The information from iBurst’s automated service was not correct which could mislead some customers. Once the consultant was on the other end of the line the answers were fast and accurate.
The most shocking service came from the two mobile providers.
It took over 6 minutes to reach the appropriate Vodacom consultant, and even then the information was not clear or accurate.
MTN was even worse. It took more than 22 minutes to reach a suitable consultant. The answers were better than from Vodacom’s side, but there is still room for improvement.
What is particularly worrisome is that the calls to MTN and Vodacom are charged at
R 1-88 per minute.
The result is that in this instance a simple data related enquiry to the MTN network cost the caller over R 40-00. Hardly what one could call affordable for the man-in-the-street.
While there have been many complaints regarding the Telkom, Sentech and WBS helpdesks in the past, their performance in this survey was good.
All three providers were not only top performers regarding time but the cost of the call is affordable making them true customer-centric services.
MTN and Vodacom do not fair as favourbly in the overall assessment of their service.
They were not only slow but there was the added aggravation of having to fork out a fistful of cash to get information about their offerings.
While helpdesk calls from phones using their network is free, all other calls are charged at exorbitant rates. They have no local-call option, and their response times were high.
Sadly, these services that are aimed at improving customer service and boosting the image of the company only serve to tarnish MTN’s and Vodacom’s reputation.
 
Telkom is a company like any other

Hi, guys

Here are some thoughts...

Telkom is a company like any other. It is very true that most companies care more about their shareholders and stock values than they do their customers. That's what makes them a company.
But a prudent company is thinking about long term return on investment, not just making a killing in the short term. At the moment, they're making a killing, but as soon as the customers have an alternative, Telkom will lose many of their customers and much of their revenue to that alternative. That's not going to make the shareholders very happy.

Here's another interesting thought: Telkom obviously has a Corporate Division, and a Retail/End User Division. The Corporate Division may be doing good things and doing very well. The problem is that divisions don't communicate with each other. Like most companies, big or small, the Retail/End User Division (Acting almost as a seperate entity from the corporation for the purposes of this) has targets it needs to meet on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly (etc) basis. And they will meet those targets, come hell or high water. There are two problems with this thinking:

1. Chasing monthly targets often means that you keep your eye off the big picture, as mentioned above. If targets aren't met this month, there's hell to pay. It's very tempting to NOT look at the performance of the company (Or Division) in the big picture.

2. Like any bereucracy (sp?), the wheels turn really slowly, when you have thousands of employees and hundreds of little departments. Nobody communicates with each other. The Corporate Division may be doing very well, but the Retail Division doesn't know what the Corporate Division is doing, and vice versa. Each are on their own mission.

Anyway, just a bit of a thought into what might possibly be happening here.
 
Last edited:
It's not just Telkom. Any corporate who finds themselves in a powerful position in regard to their consumers will screw them for profit. And it doesn't have to be a corporate. Whole industries can collude against the consumers. Look at our banking industry for example.

And this isn't a South African phenomenon. Right now, the American Music Labels / RIAA is having a huge bunfight with Apple and threatening to cut them off. They are demandeing that Apple :

1) Raise the price of iTunes music from the current 99c (They call it variable pricing, but it's really just a simple increase), and

2) give them a share in iPod revenues (because people play their music on iPods).

Fortuneately Steve is fighting them at the moment and basically has called them a bunch of greedy wankers.

Another example, Microsoft.

etc.

What we need is some government intervention. Or better yet get the government to stop intervening on Telkoms behalf. Why only two licenses? Why can't anyone who wants to provide internet access? How is all this regulation helping the consumer (As opposed to Telkom)???

Or maybe get a Minsiter of Communications who is at least capable of organising a pissup in a brewery.
 
I really cant wait until my company is a monster so i can milk my customers !!!
but for now I'll complain just like everyone else :D

I got the call as well about my ADSL I let them know that the service I received was excellent , the technicians where knowledgeable but their pricing structure need serious attention!
 
desertsnowman i don't know if many people would agree that the constant downtime experienced this year would qualify as excellent service, nor would the waiting time required from application date to installation date.
 
Highflyer_GP said:
desertsnowman i don't know if many people would agree that the constant downtime experienced this year would qualify as excellent service, nor would the waiting time required from application date to installation date.
Click to expand...

Ye I know that a lot of the country has had severe downtime.
but I have had nothing but good service and was un effected by the downtime. my installation went surprisingly smooth. I heard a lot of people complaining about how long it took them so I expected the worst when I applied. I actually made a post on my encounter
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=28074

and since have not had any problems. I was as honest as I could be from my own experience.
 
I got the same call, it was Markinor.

All questions were the 'On a scale of 1-5, 1 being very good ... and 5 being very bad, How would you rate...."

I seriously could have recorded myself saying 'Very Bad' and just replayed it every five seconds. Would have made things a lot easier for me and the guy doing the survey.

A reasonable number of the questions were of the 'What are the chances of you using another telcoms provided if you could' variety, which made me think the survey was tying to gauge how many customers Telkom would be losing to the SNO (when it finally arrives)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X