Phone company culls whingeing customers
Last week, Sprint Nextel, a US wireless telecommunications firm, pulled the plug on 1 200 customers who between them had called its customer service centre 40 000 times in a month.
Sprint spokesperson Roni Singleton told Reuters that these customers were calling to a degree that "we felt was excessive".
She said in some cases they were calling customer care hundreds of times a month on the same issues even after they had been resolved.
Singleton said the company needed to "cull its customer base to improve services".
Sprint has 53 million customers and offers wireless, fixed-line and cellphone services. In a strongly worded letter, Sprint informed its customers that they should switch to other providers.
So desperate was it to rid itself of these customers, Sprint even cancelled the outstanding balances on their accounts so that they could be free to join other network providers.
Sprint's extreme measures have probably given its counterparts a lesson on how to deal with whingeing customers. However, local operators cannot afford to lose clients as their survival depends on them.
Fixed-line operator Telkom has previously silenced customers for non-payment, whereas cellphone network providers Vodacom, MTN and Cell C cut them off if their SIM cards have been inactive for 90 days.
Last year Vodacom removed 2.5 million SIM cards on its network because they were not generating revenues. According to Vodacom, users of these SIM cards spent less than R1 a month.
Telkom, which until recently had a monopoly in fixed-telephone services, is not one of South Africa's favourite companies.
It has previously received a barrage of complaints from customers that did little to change its behaviour because it was aware that consumers had no alternative.
But now that Neotel has entered the market, Telkom faces competition. It has been forced to adopt the "customer centricity strategy" to retain clients and opened an office to enhance service delivery.
But Neotel's impact is still non-existent as it will only rollout services in the fourth quarter.
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