written communication with companies

[tomcathessen]

I like to use the companies website or email for enquiries and complains to have a documentation. My problem with these channels of communication in South Africa is, that in the majority of cases I don't get any response.

As a foreigner from Europe this is the normal way of communication. Can somebody enlighten me why this doesn't work? I am the king in collecting system generated case-numbers, but nothing else, for example with Telkom, Hisense, DStv, Hifi-Corperation to name a few. What is wrong with me?

 

[mister]

Lol... welcome to ZA.

Drives me nuts as well.

 

[DJ...]

This drives me up the wall. Companies in SA tend to have very poor communication channels with their customers for some reason. They underestimate the value of that touch point with their end user, potential customer, and/or competitor/partner...

 

[Arthur]

Address your correspondence to the CEO, by name.

 

[now05ster]

Lol... welcome to ZA.

Drives me nuts as well.

Plus one: lol and greetings and salutations to RSA. As to why this happens with a lot of companies here, I won't speculate.

Agree with Arthur's suggestion. There are companies that pay attention to social media, so Hello Peter and Facebook could work. I sometimes just ask my legal insurance provider to intervene if I get too frustrated. Hasn't happened many times though.

 

[satanboy]

I get the same response from morons in the company I work for. I just report the twats to their respective managers....and do you think it changes anything? No.

 

[xrapidx]

I don't know why SA companies have contact forms...then again, most of the SA companies are just as useless as their email addresses.

 

[atomcrusher]

Infuriating for me too. To have a communication channel such as e-mail, and web contact forms, and not exploit it is an opportunity that so may SA companies miss.

 

[HavocXphere]

Yeah - generally you need to be in someones face & make a lot of noise before anyone even considers helping.

 

[Fulcrum29]

We have a company policy only to communicate through a SPOC (service desk and ticketing) and email, there is a Forum, but it is geared to allow service/product group discussions. However, certain contracts (or agreements) and SLA’s do have dedicated telephone/cellular numbers and MSP based IM’s allocated to establish contact or generally allow priority escalation on the customer side. It really streamlines the communication with customers and enabling the goal to carry the correct message across the channel and in return provide appropriate correspondence.

The only real way to correctly assist a customer is to ask right questions, web forms are an adequate solution. On-premises meetings always have minutes and agendas, easily obtainable by each participating party. WebEx web conferencing allows us recordings, also available to each participant.

Miscommunication is a real vark steak to deal with, you know, he said you said.