Customer Service Is An Issue, Still

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 8^th, 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 12^th 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.

When Comforting Turns Chilly

I certainly am not great with words of comfort. I find it easier to offer practical help. Say, help beat the crap out of an oppressor (no I really couldn’t); give money or material assistance if I have it to give; offer my opinion on some matter etc. 

That is why I commend, even admire those who struggle to find the right words to say to a person in distress, disappointed, grieving, or facing one life challenge or other. It can’t be easy. 

But sometimes intended words of comfort, assurance, hope and encouragement really suck. Why is this so? Because bad timing, insensitivity, even inappropriateness of the circumstances make them so even if by themselves they are harmless.

Consider that I meet an acquaintance who wanting to commiserate with me on the death of my dad, asks how old my father was. I say to her, 80 plus. And her response? “Oh that’s a ripe age (to die she means). Lucky you, your dad lived a full life”. Translated in my grief, “lucky that my dad died”? Well guess what, I made a mental note to return the compliment.

I was once sent a comic picture of a mouse that had escaped the trap that was apparently set for it. The caption was, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” I was in a cranky, mildly dejected state so I retorted that what doesn’t kill you could very well maim you! I clearly need to rethink my sense of humour I know. 

When a woman whose husband did that despicable thing, leaving her all scare-faced, potentially paralyzed for good and broke heard those same words on her hospital bed, she did not find much solace in them either. Why couldn’t she see the wisdom in those words?   

Now I know as a child of God, I must trust the saying, “when God brings you to it, he’ll take you through it”. It’s very reassuring - when you know it is God who did bring you to IT. 

A similar saying, “what God puts together let no man put asunder” is often used to support an aversion to divorce. And when it comes in the form; “what God puts together no man can put asunder”, it is meant to be a warning to relationship breakers or a guarantee that no matter the difficulties in a relationship, it will survive … if God willed it. But suppose He did not and often we know he didn’t, pretty much the same way we know the devil didn’t – so how comforting is that?  

I am tempted to say that when people are in doubt about what to say to another person, they should stay silent but then again, we are usually not in doubt are we?

Confronting Ebola

On social media friends related to a young woman were seeking information on ambulance services for the husband who needed immediate attention.  No one had answers. 
The young woman reportedly drove the husband to the nearest hospital but on arrival nurses refused to attend to her husband for fear of contracting ebola. 

Clearly traumatized this young woman, simply kept screaming for help until eventually a doctor came out ..... to pronounce the husband dead.  She was then asked to carry her corpse away. She did find the courage to do just that and found a health facility in one of Accra's suburbs that received the corpse.

This was August 13, 2014 and the young woman is now a widow with a soon to be one year old. But those are just the sorry details. Angry friends on the social media platform called the medical personnel who refused to attend to the dead man, "unpatriotic" Ghanians who were only interested in the benefits of their jobs. 

But were the medical personnel being unjustifiably insensitive or even "wicked" as they were called or were they plainly and legitimately afraid.

Some have suggested that the Ghana government's 3 month moratorium on international conferences and public gatherings is unnecessarily harsh.  I think the government's response is no different from that of the nurses and the doctor who would have nothing; or is rather are helpless when it comes to handling anything to do with ebola- real or potential.

 

In Search of a Pay Policy- Ghana’s SSPP

In 2010 Ghana introduced a new public sector pay policy, the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP) to resolve 4 key concerns that had hounded public pay policies in the past. As restated by President Mahama in an address to the National Forum on the SSPP in August 2013, these concerns include pay disparities within the public sector; the rising wage bill; multiple pay negotiations and finally the disconnect between pay and productivity. The SSPP unlike the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS) which preceded it hinges on a single base pay and applies across all public institutions without the opportunity to opt out; this means internal disparities experienced with the earlier regime are technically removed while multiple negotiations become redundant. Further a Public Service Performance Management Monitoring and Evaluation system is reported to be in the offing to address productivity issues. Thus it would seem safe, albeit simpleminded to conclude that once “implementation challenges” currently engaging workers and the government are resolved, the SSPP would indeed achieve its stated objectives. Regrettably the SSPP's composition and policy prescriptions are unlikely to make it the panacea for Ghana’s public pay policy blunders.      

Take for instance the consequences for pay administration and labour relations imposed by the different “pay” components within the policy. Beyond core pay the SSPP offers 4 categories of “benefits and allowances”. While category 1 is now consolidated in the base pay all other categories are made out as separate payments. In category 2 are allowances such as for tools and overtime; funeral grants, entertainment, medical allowances, motor cycles etc belong to category 3 and finally category 4 allowances “associated with top management positions” include free accommodation, unlimited use of fuel and free utilities. Off course some of these motivational incentives may be justified within our socioeconomic context but others are clearly a continuation of the status based reward system inherent in previous public sector pay regimes that encouraged nepotism rather than productivity and growth. This is not unrelated to issues of proportionality between pay in the public sector qua public sector and so-called “Article 71” officers who are exempted from the SSPP.  

The SSPP also provides for “market premiums and inducements”. Inducements are allowances paid to “jobholders who work in underserved or deprived areas as defined by the FWSC”. No guidelines for implementation of this component are available yet as far as is known. Market premiums on the other hand are incentives paid for scarce skills. They are not subject to pay negotiations and are determined by government discretion within the constraints of the national budget. The April 2013 government white paper on market premiums provides that a scarce skill “is one that is in short supply relative to the demand for it in the labour market within a defined period as determined by government”. 

Undoubtedly the periodic revision of critical skills and definition of underserved areas is going to be a challenging game of chess but wrangling between government and workers and within workers’ bodies over which professions or positions make or drop off the list is likely to create more agitation on the labour front than is anticipated. Again as a non-negotiable variable incentive it is questionable whether the strategy will achieve the specific objective of making the government a more competitive employer on the labour market.

A more trying question that arises however is whether a legitimate industrial action may be grounded on any of the pay components as they stand. The case of the Polytechnic Teachers’ Association of Ghana (POTAG) makes an interesting example. POTAG and recently the University Teachers’ Association of Ghana (UTAG) are fighting for the reversal of a new Ministry of Education policy to replace research allowance, paid directly to teachers, with a central research support fund. The strike has been in place for months, causing polytechnics in the country to shut down. POTAG argues that the allowance was negotiated as part of their conditions of service. Though a court has ruled that the POTAG strike is legal; it is uncertain whether the research allowance is to be considered part of the basic pay of teachers, an allowance, incentive payment or a “work resource” within the logic of the SSPP; nor is it clear how that should impact the labour regime.    

In March 2010 Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) warned in the GTUC Policy Bulletin Vol. 6 No. 1 that workers would accept the SSPP “only if it ensures fairness, transparency, consistency and logic in administration of the salary structure” and that the SSPP would suffer the fate of the GUSS otherwise. Perhaps that is a position that public sector pay administrators must revisit, as feverish efforts are being made to secure the survival and success of the policy.

akuyaafriyie@gmail.com