Telkom claims great support
Telkom recently claimed that 80% of the company’s support calls were answered with 20 seconds. This is in contrast with numerous reports from consumers claiming waits of over an hour to reach a support consultant when phoning a Telkom helpline.
Speaking on radio station 702, two disgruntled ADSL subscribers said that they waited between 15 minutes and 90 minutes to reach a Telkom support consultant. One complainant said that calls were often dropped while waiting for a prolonged period of time.
MyBroadband did a quick test to ascertain how long it takes to reach a Telkom consultant using their standard ADSL support line. After going through an automated support system we were informed that the waiting time was approximately 20 minutes to reach a consultant – a far cry from the claimed 20 seconds.
Another issue reported by some Telkom ADSL subscribers is the lack of proper auditing when it comes to resolving ADSL faults.
According to one ADSL subscriber she logged a fault with Telkom regarding her ADSL service and received a reference number. A few days later she received an SMS telling her that the fault has been resolved without ever having seen a technician and still sitting without an ADSL connection.
This is not an isolated incident as numerous ADSL subscribers have reported that they received confirmation that a fault had been resolved when the problem still existed.
And it may not be difficult to ascertain why unresolved cases are closed as resolved. Telkom’s understaffed technical department is under pressure to lower fault resolution times, but they often lack the necessary resources to meet these targets.
Without an accurate auditing system these targets can be artificially achieved by closing cases as resolved – even if they are not resolved – hence lowering the average fault resolution times.
The result is that yet another call has to be made to an already overloaded call centre – and another fault logged – unnecessarily clogging up a system which at the best of times struggles to cope with its load.
According to the company’s annual results the percentage of residential faults cleared within 24 hours decreased from 50% in 2007 to only 38% in 2008. The business market showed a similar downward trend moving from 66% to 50%.
Whilst these fault resolution figures are worrisome, of even more concern is the sheer volume of faults. Over the past year there were 476 faults per 1000 lines in the residential market and 575 faults per 1000 ADSL business lines. This should immediately get the warning bells ringing, signaling to Telkom management that this area of the business needs attention.
Telkom has now made a dedicated phone line available to resolve issue discussed during the show: 0801 313 131. This number was answered within seconds and may provide customers with a quicker way to resolve problems.
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