I am an entrepreneur and rely extensively on my mobile phones and gsm services to get messages across. Like many Nigerians, because of the inherent flaws in the mobile telephony services provided by our gsm telephone companies (and dare I say the failure of robust regulation), I use 3 networks – MTN, ZAIN & ETISALAT. Zain for my telephone service, MTN, primarily for my blackberry service, and Etisalat for my mobile internet service. Whilst there are many problems associated with the services provided to me – dropped calls, lengthy delays of sms, frequent disruption of internet service, slow connections etc, this article does not seek to discuss these problems. Instead, I focus on the failure of their customer service response when confronted with these problems.

ZAIN – “Go to the Shop”

I have used my Zain line the longest – a little over three years and in that time, I have had several problems with the network. At the beginning, as a post-paid customer, I had access to a dedicated customer service line. This meant that when I had problems, I could call the customer care line and get through rather quickly. It also meant that I had a professional team dedicated to resolving my problems. As far as I can remember, my problems, under this system were often resolved promptly and efficiently.

Recently however, the dedicated line for customer care has been scrapped (without warning, I may add). This has meant that my issues could only be dealt with by the general customer care line. This, of itself is not a bad thing. One would expect that when a company has to make this decision for whatever reason, there would be a careful analysis of the additional volume of calls that would be made to the line as a result of the combination of pre-and post paid customers, and that additional training would be given to the customer care agents. My experience with Zain customer care does not show that such careful analysis and training was done. It is virtually impossible to get through to the customer care line and indeed sometimes when I eventually get through, the IVR tells you “all our agents are busy” – please try later! As you can imagine, this can be incredibly frustrating when you have a pressing problem.

When I eventually get through to customer care, I am appalled by the level of service offered. There is no culture of “ownership” of customer problems. The agents are always happy to pass this on to their back-office (who are not customer facing) and none of the frontline agents take the responsibility or initiative to call you back to find out if your problem has been resolved. Another problem is that there appears to be no record of previous calls made. This means that each time you call to complain about the same issue, you have to repeat yourself over and over and over again!

What really gets ones goat is the constant refrain – “where are you calling from?” Once you get that, you know that it is an opportunity for the agent to refer you to the Zain shop closest to you. I am absolutely positive that this is the fulcrum of their training – Always refer the customer to the Zain shop so as to reduce your call handle time!!! There seems to be no appreciation of the fact that perhaps going to the shop is inconvenient or that one needs an immediate solution to the problem.

It is not as if the service is better when you get to the shops. I frequently receive text messages from Zain offering one discount or the other. I recently visited a shop and asked the agent about one of the offers I had received. I explained this offer to him, I thought very clearly, but he insisted that I showed him the text message with the offer. I found this appalling. It said to me that the company does not work in a joined-up fashion. The team that sends the offers does not inform the customer facing teams of whatever offers they may have made.

I do not really blame the agents. They are victims of the system within which they operate. The management has failed them, just as they have failed us the customer. My experience of the Zain customer service has been at best disgraceful!

MTN – Apologetic but fail to provide meaningful solutions

I am a blackberry junkie. I rely heavily on my instant email access which means I can respond to my clients' needs without going to the office or putting my laptop on. This is critical to my business. Additionally, I use the internet a lot for instant fact checking on Google and Wikipedia (this has put an end to many arguments), work related research and latest football news. Therefore any failure on my blackberry service is sorely felt and I need the service restored as quickly as possible.

I must say that I have had to call MTN customer care far less often than Zain customer care. This may be because MTN provides a better service or just simply because I use them primarily for the blackberry service. Be that as it may, the failures of their customer service are similar.

Let me start with the opening lines – “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening, My name is *** how can I help you?” Just as you are about to launch into your rant about the problem you have, you are interrupted with “what is your name and where are you calling from?” I must say that I find this very annoying. If you have asked me how you can help me it might be better to wait for me to finish first! I have no real objections to giving my name and details but I find the system terribly inefficient. If you need to have the name, a more effective opening would be - “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening, My name is ***, May I take your name and where you are calling from? After the name and details are given THEN ask how you can help.

The annoying introductory stages are compounded by what seems to be a poor level of training from staff. Let me say this first – the customer service agents I have experienced have been very polite and always seem apologetic for whatever problems you are experiencing. I can firmly say however that they do not understand the blackberry service. Any frequent user of the blackberry service would tell you that for you to be able to use data services, your phone must display GPRS or EDGE. If the phone only displays GSM, you can only use the voice or sms service. Therefore when I call in to complain that I cannot get emails – it is foolish to ask me “what error message do you get?” The obvious answer is NONE!!! The fact that I have not received emails for over 72 hours (I usually receive at least 30 a day) coupled with my permanent GSM indicator suggests that THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR DATA SERVICE!

There is also a problem with taking ownership of the customer’s problem. It is always easy to pass it to the back office. No one from the front desk has ever called me to ask if the problem has been resolved even after I was promised a call back. Worse still, I have to repeat myself each time because the notes of my previous call were not taken or the current agent has not bothered to look it up. MTN – I don’t want your apologies – please just fix my problem and quickly too if it is not too much to ask!

Etisalat – Friendly but clueless

My experience with Etisalat is still very short and I have not yet had the pleasure of speaking with their customer service line – “all agents are busy”. I have however visited their shops – three of them – in Lagos and Abuja. In all the shops their agents have been very friendly, welcoming, and quick to attend to you. They, however, do not seem to understand their own data service or maybe the system keeps failing them.

I recently purchased a usb data modem from Etisalat (this is after I had been vexed by a Zain customer care agent who failed to supply me with the information I needed which would have enabled me to buy the Zain version). As advertised, there are a number of internet bundles which you may purchase and entitle you to a specific data consumption level on a monthly basis. As a test run, I decided to go for the 100mb bundle, which requires you to buy N1000 credit. The first thing I was not told was that you are only required to input the pin number and should not input the usual preface of *222* or the *** suffix. So after several failed tries, I went back to the shop and was finally advised correctly. My second issue was with the bundle activation – I was told that each time I exhausted my old bundle and wanted to get a new package, I would have to call customer care or come in to the shop. This is a terribly inefficient system. Having used a Zain data service before and I must commend them for the speed and efficiency of their data service, I know that it is much better to have a USSD (I don’t know what this means) code, which you input into the user interface of the modem. The Etisalat modem also has this option but they have chosen for some reason to bypass it.

Let me just explain a little about the bundle package – pardon me if it seems simplistic – I am no techie. You can either buy your internet service on a pay as you use service, which is chargeable per kilobyte downloaded or on the bundle service which entitles you to a maximum data consumption depending on how much you pay. For a heavy data user, it is better and cheaper to go for the bundle option. After being assured that my modem and sim had been activated for the 100mb bundle, I started running my test. The service was incredibly slow and within two hours, my internet use was exhausted. After checking how much data I had used (less than 2 mb) it was clear to me that my 100 mb bundle had not been activated. On my trip to Abuja, I visited the customer care shop and they were again very helpful and told me a mistake was made in Lagos, and assured me that it had been corrected. Sucker that I am, I bought their line and decided to purchase another bundle... I don’t need to complete the story.

The use of a Pseudonym

As you can guess my real name is not Otito Koro. In Yoruba language it means the truth is bitter. I dislike anonymous writings as much as anyone else, but I am constrained to adopt a pseudonym because it would be unfair to my business partners. It is however a thin veil, as those that know me would recognise my rantings.

Otito Koro lives in Lagos.

Robot  # 1 | 24.09.2009 07:03

...Read the full article.

netotse  # 2 | 25.09.2009 07:32

you should be grateful you dont use globacom!