A lot
of ink and talk has gone into the nonexistence of the culture of customer
service in Ghana but it persists at all levels and in the majority of
institutions. I am personally tired of complaining and particularly disenchanted
with those who silently accommodate incompetence and mediocrity. I am also tired
of those who complain but are coy about calling out bad nuts for fear of being
labelled.
I don’t
think we can get any better if we let things be as they shouldn’t be unless we
don’t know or expect any better. When we do speak out, at least it gets the
conversation going even if we are wrong… and so I could be even now. The truth
is customer service is the easy label for so many things that are being done
wrong in organizations. So when a friend provided me with the personal email address
of the CEO of a major telecom company with which I had some beef, I did not
hesitate to do what I had to do.
This
post is the letter I sent to the CEO (which was also copied to the NationalCommunications Authority) and the follow ups. I must add that after many phone
calls from different officers of the company to apologize and pick up the
pieces so to speak- clearly motivated by the CEO - 3 senior officials from the
company paid me a visit at home yesterday. They wanted to review the experience
I had complained about and use is as a test case to improve their service. So
we had an interesting and frank conversation.
Here goes.
Understandably I have edited out identities;
Dear
Mr. (CEO),
I
consider myself one of the luckier disgruntled customers of your company to have
direct access to you by email; I consider you fortunate to be receiving
feedback from a very unimpressed customer of (company). I am not even sure if
calling myself a customer is accurate since the service I have paid for and
expected to be enjoying is yet to materialize. Not to mention the fact that I
have already had to deal with as many as about 6 individuals in the course of
an uncoordinated and illogical process who by the way are clueless as to what
their combined and central objective is. And it is this; to provide me with the
broadband internet service I requested. Simple. How tough is that for a
communications giant like (company)?
I
requested a broadband service for my home on August 22, received a notice of
the request a few days later and made payment for installation and a month’s
subscription on August 28. Interestingly I had wanted to pay many more months ahead
to save trouble but was told it was not allowed until the service was installed
and stable. That should have alerted me but I figured well it makes sense. I
was told I would get mail about an account number which I never got. What I got
was a text message on September 2 (5 days after the payment had been done) asking
me to go and make the payment.
A
couple of days later (name) calls. Because I asked, he told me he was just
scheduling my installation; he did not know (name) with whom I had been dealing
with and by his tone, couldn’t be bothered really. So anyway, we settled on
Saturday 6th by 9am. This was after I had indicated that the time frame he
gave; that is between 9am and 1pm was not practicable. I believe it’s
reasonable to have other things doing on a Saturday than to sit and wait for
someone to appear anytime within a 4hour window?
Come
Saturday, I get a call around 8am asking directions to my home. I had given this
already and the surveyor (officer number 3) had been there already but I simply
gave the directions once more and was told, once more that the location was
known. Oh did I say this makes it the fourth (company) person? In any case I
was thinking this was a good sign, a call this early means your people will
keep their time right? 11. 15am and there was no sign of the installation
person(s). I called the number on which (name) the scheduler phoned me on.
Guess what, (name) started calling out a number for me to call and enquire myself
what was going on. I stopped him right in his tracks and let him know (since he
did not) that it was his job to get whoever was to appear at my house for the
installation to do just that. He does not stop there, (name) asks me who it was
who called because he could not say who was scheduled for my installation. Okay,
he called me on (number); that should help. Mr. (CEO), seriously as a customer
what would you make of this? You schedule a person to do work and you turn
around and expect the customer to go fish for your charge?
Finally,
the much awaited installation guy appears. He looks displeasingly at me.
Clearly he is not enthused by the call from (name) to get to the woman who just
told him off. He told me the phone line on which he was to make the
installation had not been made available. Someone had not done something. He
also did not feel able to string his cable through the already installed phone
cables in the building so as to end them neatly and invisibly in the phone
socket built purposely for that. This socket by the way held a (company) line
until (company) failed to repair the damaged feed from their pole but that’s
another story. The alarming thing this man said also was that the internet
service from (company) in my area was not so stable and strong so it was better
for him to string a direct line to the split system. Frankly I found that
mildly insulting that he would expect me to take such a lame excuse for not
doing a more professional job. So there’s a cable running along my walls and
through a hole drilled in the wall which only an amateurish worker would be
pleased with.
And
yet all this was not enough. The installation person announces that the router
that was to be installed and which was provided when payment for the service
was done was faulty. I am no technical person and even if I was, I would have
thought that the (company) person who was in my house to install the device
would go back with it, report on the technical fault and return with a better
devise to complete the installation. To my surprise, the installation person
tells me that I have to take the device back to the (company) retail shop and
ask them to change it. I tried to reason with him that it did not make sense
because I could not even tell what was wrong with it. In any case how was I to
get them to return to the unfinished business of the installation? Well, he
told me that the people at retail shop would show me how to do it and that it
was easy! Really? I get a faulty device and I am asked to get a better one
within a month and install my damn internet?
On
Monday 8th, another officer all together calls in to ask about the
installation that was done in my house. I asked if he had received no
information about the “installation” and he said not exactly. All he knew was
that the installation was reported successful and he was calling in, I suppose
to get the “I am thrilled thank you” from me. Mr. (CEO) I am ordinarily a
person who prefers to speak in measured tones and give people as much room for
manoeuver as possible but honestly I don’t think I have any worse enough words
to describe this level of incompetence and sheer disrespect from (company).
Today
the 12th of September, my I.T. colleague spent half the day going
between my home and the (company) offices in (location). Even so, he made some
progress only because he spoke to some friends at your head office. He had spent time at the (company) offices a
couple of days back to get a new device and have it configured. Today he went
to install it in my house and guess what, the phone line that had in the
meantime been activated in my home was someone else’s line. Suffice it to say,
I still have no internet service and he tells me “the guys” say they will work
on the line tomorrow but he will have to call and give them a nudge.
If the
experience I have just narrated sounds surreal to you then perhaps you need to
wake up to the reality that you are presiding over it. If it doesn’t then
clearly this piece might as well make its way to my blog.
Please
enjoy your weekend.
(from
CEO)
Dear Mrs Osei, thank you for your mail and feedback.
I
will personally take care of it hoping to restore the situation and be more
efficient in delivering better customer
experience in the future.
Best,
(CEO)
Sent
from my smartphone powered by (company).
(From Director at NCA)
Hello
Wilma,
This
is to acknowledge that the NCA has received a copy of the complaint you
forwarded to the CEO of (company).
We
will be contacting (company) on your complaint and please do not hesitate to
contact us again if need be.
Our
Complaints Unit can be reached on:
Tel: 030-701-1419
E-mail: complaints@nca.org.gh
(from Assistant Manager Consumer
Affairs, NCA)
Dear
Vilma,
Feedback
from Vodafone, indicates that your complaint has been resolved.
Kindly
verify and confirm.
Regards,
PS. I
did reply to thank these officials for their receptiveness and intervention. I
am confident that if they are anything to go by, service in my country will be
looking up.
