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AND click… I had the phone slammed down in my ear – by a Telkom call centre staffer.
I’d spent a total of around four hours on the phone to Telkom trying to sort out my ADSL, which was down. But it was Cell C who primed me for the incident with Telkom.
It is hoogs annoying to discover that your lifeline dongle – the one you have mainly for times when your ADSL goes down – is not connecting either, on a day when you have two crucial deadlines to meet, at that.
So I called Cell C. I got a consultant who sounded as though she was trying to eat the phone. The distortion of her voice made it well-nigh impossible to figure out what she was saying, but I tried, I really did. By this time I’d already had two-and-a-half hours of Telkom’s call centre, so I was feeling rather pale.
At some point a smidgeon of my frustration and anger burst its bounds. The young consultant promptly told me to get a glass of water and “calm down, lady”. Throttling would be too good for her.
The first question that arose in this debacle was this: why on earth does Telkom have just the one number for everything? It may be jolly convenient for them, but it is beyond irritating for the customer (you know, that poor creature who used to be king, who now has his nose up against the metaphorical glass begging for their attention).
Every time the customer wants to know what’s up with their fault, they have to negotiate the long and winding road of “press one”, “press three”, “please enter your ten-digit number” (and why, I ask, since the ‘consultant’ always promptly asks you to repeat it once you get through to them).
Second question: why don’t you have more of these ‘consultants’? I have NEVER gone through to one promptly, and on Friday the 13th, the day of horror, I had to wait 15 minutes and 20 minutes in my last two calls respectively.
That’s once I’d gone through the preliminaries (which take, I can tell you, almost exactly three minutes up to the point where they tell you: “All our operators are busy.”). In my second last call, when the Telkom staff member asked me to give my ID number yet again, I did, I confess, spit it out in goose-stepping tones.
When the staffer told me to calm down, I said, understandably, I think: “I am sick of being told to calm down…!” It was at this point that the phone was put down in my ear.
Why don't they keep track of queries?
Third question: why don’t you keep decent records of calls? Every single time I called I was required to go through a prolonged piece of business: try this, try that, reset the modem… At first I pointed out that I’d done this before, but over the course of the 11 days I was without ADSL, I realised this did me no good, so I patiently did as I was told.
And finally, we’d reach a point where a slightly taken aback voice would say: “That didn’t work? We’ll have to ask a technician to call you.”
“Yes,” I’d respond. “I know. Now, can you tell me why I have not had a call from a technician yet?”
And then one day, I got that call. It was ten to eight at night; I was returning from a meeting. The delicious shock when I realised it was, indeed, a Telkom technician was quite thrilling.
“OK, I see your modem is off; can you switch it on, please?” he said.
“I’m in the car – I’m not at my desk right now,” I explained.
“Oh!” The amazed tone made me feel a little guilty. “Well… ummm… when will you be at your desk?”
“Early tomorrow,” I replied. We set a time for nine o’clock, and he disappeared out of my life, never to be heard from again.
During the Long Wait, I managed to log a fault with Cell C – at least, I think I did, because I received a crisp SMS with a ‘case number’, and I can’t think who else that could have been from. However, I never heard another whisper from them, so perhaps that case number will drift around in the ether forever, looking for a problem to attach itself to.
I also dashed out and bought a Vodacom dongle and loaded it with a gig of data. When it wouldn’t connect within four hours, I phoned and was assured it would do so within 24. It didn’t, but by then I was under such work pressure that I had simply become a permanent fixture in a nearby coffee shop with Wi-Fi.
So it was days before I went back to Vodacom to find out what had happened. An hour later I got an answer: “We’ve tracked it down. I’m afraid we loaded it onto the wrong number.”
Yer gotta laff, dontcha?
And then, on a day when I was ill and in my pyjamas (of course), the dogs told me someone was at the gate. Yes, a Telkom technician, unannounced, doing his good deed for the day.
It took him less than three minutes to sort out the problem… and that leads to one last question: why are Telkom’s technicians so much more helpful than their call centre staff?
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
I’d spent a total of around four hours on the phone to Telkom trying to sort out my ADSL, which was down. But it was Cell C who primed me for the incident with Telkom.
It is hoogs annoying to discover that your lifeline dongle – the one you have mainly for times when your ADSL goes down – is not connecting either, on a day when you have two crucial deadlines to meet, at that.
So I called Cell C. I got a consultant who sounded as though she was trying to eat the phone. The distortion of her voice made it well-nigh impossible to figure out what she was saying, but I tried, I really did. By this time I’d already had two-and-a-half hours of Telkom’s call centre, so I was feeling rather pale.
At some point a smidgeon of my frustration and anger burst its bounds. The young consultant promptly told me to get a glass of water and “calm down, lady”. Throttling would be too good for her.
The first question that arose in this debacle was this: why on earth does Telkom have just the one number for everything? It may be jolly convenient for them, but it is beyond irritating for the customer (you know, that poor creature who used to be king, who now has his nose up against the metaphorical glass begging for their attention).
Every time the customer wants to know what’s up with their fault, they have to negotiate the long and winding road of “press one”, “press three”, “please enter your ten-digit number” (and why, I ask, since the ‘consultant’ always promptly asks you to repeat it once you get through to them).
Second question: why don’t you have more of these ‘consultants’? I have NEVER gone through to one promptly, and on Friday the 13th, the day of horror, I had to wait 15 minutes and 20 minutes in my last two calls respectively.
That’s once I’d gone through the preliminaries (which take, I can tell you, almost exactly three minutes up to the point where they tell you: “All our operators are busy.”). In my second last call, when the Telkom staff member asked me to give my ID number yet again, I did, I confess, spit it out in goose-stepping tones.
When the staffer told me to calm down, I said, understandably, I think: “I am sick of being told to calm down…!” It was at this point that the phone was put down in my ear.
Why don't they keep track of queries?
Third question: why don’t you keep decent records of calls? Every single time I called I was required to go through a prolonged piece of business: try this, try that, reset the modem… At first I pointed out that I’d done this before, but over the course of the 11 days I was without ADSL, I realised this did me no good, so I patiently did as I was told.
And finally, we’d reach a point where a slightly taken aback voice would say: “That didn’t work? We’ll have to ask a technician to call you.”
“Yes,” I’d respond. “I know. Now, can you tell me why I have not had a call from a technician yet?”
And then one day, I got that call. It was ten to eight at night; I was returning from a meeting. The delicious shock when I realised it was, indeed, a Telkom technician was quite thrilling.
“OK, I see your modem is off; can you switch it on, please?” he said.
“I’m in the car – I’m not at my desk right now,” I explained.
“Oh!” The amazed tone made me feel a little guilty. “Well… ummm… when will you be at your desk?”
“Early tomorrow,” I replied. We set a time for nine o’clock, and he disappeared out of my life, never to be heard from again.
During the Long Wait, I managed to log a fault with Cell C – at least, I think I did, because I received a crisp SMS with a ‘case number’, and I can’t think who else that could have been from. However, I never heard another whisper from them, so perhaps that case number will drift around in the ether forever, looking for a problem to attach itself to.
I also dashed out and bought a Vodacom dongle and loaded it with a gig of data. When it wouldn’t connect within four hours, I phoned and was assured it would do so within 24. It didn’t, but by then I was under such work pressure that I had simply become a permanent fixture in a nearby coffee shop with Wi-Fi.
So it was days before I went back to Vodacom to find out what had happened. An hour later I got an answer: “We’ve tracked it down. I’m afraid we loaded it onto the wrong number.”
Yer gotta laff, dontcha?
And then, on a day when I was ill and in my pyjamas (of course), the dogs told me someone was at the gate. Yes, a Telkom technician, unannounced, doing his good deed for the day.
It took him less than three minutes to sort out the problem… and that leads to one last question: why are Telkom’s technicians so much more helpful than their call centre staff?
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
