Telkom! Get a proper customer care department

A disgruntled Telkom customer has asked fellow consumers to join him in demanding that Telkom “get a proper customer care department”.

The customer has launched a petition on Change.org, titled: TELKOM!!! Get a proper customer care department, in an effort to improve customer service at the company.

“We simply want Telkom to start responding to and resolving complaints that are logged with them. Plain and simple,” stated the petition.

“My reason for this petition is that I have dealt with more than 20 managers in different departments… but till today more than 2 months after logging the complaint, and a few hundred emails and calls to them which fell on deaf ears, [my] matter is unresolved,” stated the petition’s creator, Demand Change.

“I even logged a complaint with Icasa, who repeatedly asked Telkom for progress on my complaint.”

Telkom’s helpdesk problems

MyBroadband published an article in October 2015 about the difficulties it faced when trying to purchase business products from the company.

Telkom responded by admitting it was “not at the finish line” in terms of improving as a company.

It also announced at the time that it was launching Telkom Community – a website where customers could “interact with the company and share their experiences”.

“We know that we are not yet meeting the expectations of our customers but we are working hard at developing better systems and processes to manage and improve our customer engagement,” said Telkom in response to the petition.

“We face a number of legacy issues. An example of one such legacy issue is a situation where call centre agents have to work off multiple screens. This results in each agent having to duplicate work and keeping the customer on the line for a lot longer than should be necessary.”

Telkom said it was developing a unified system to improve this process, but was also trying to “shift customer behaviour to a more self-service environment”.

“However, such a behaviour shift will be dependent on trust, as people will only look to other options if they are confident they will actually receive a response.”

“This is where we need to do a lot of work, to help show our customers that they are the focus of our business.”

Telkom said its Community website has provided great insight into issues its customers experience, and has helped the company resolve common user problems.

The company encouraged users to explore the various fault-reporting options it has available. These include:

• If customers can access the Internet, log a fault on www.telkom.co.za
• Customers can SMS “SERVICE” and their number to 30591.
• Report problems using Telkom’s Android and iOS app, available for free.
• Customers may tweet Telkom @TelkomZA or post on the TelkomZA Facebook page.
• Residential customers can call 10210 for assistance, while business customers can contact 10217.

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