It was time to upgrade my phone - battery life was poor and it had begun spontaneously turning itself off. My old samsung owed me nothing, being about 3 1/2 years old.It was time to go blackberry, as I'm more needing to access email while out and about plus the occasional need to access the web on the road.
So I summoned my strength and walked into a large telstra shop and made the request of the first sales assistant that approached me.
Over the years, australian telcos have conditioned me to understand that nothing is easy or straightforward when it comes to telephony. I find this a depressing state of affairs but was prepared for the worst and Telstra certainly didn't disappoint on this occasion.
I have never lost or damaged a mobile phone. A condition which has led me to be in possession of an 8 year old sim card. This is where the trouble started. Attempting to port my number to a new sim card generated an insurmountable error.
The shop assistant was trying hard to assist and I do not blame her for any shortcomings in service, the screens she had to deal with were poorly designed and technical support didn't seem to be particularly supportive at the other end of the line.
After much putting on hold and futile retrying of the same action, "technical support" communicated an SLA of 72 hours for resolution through the unfortunate assistant.
72 hours for fixing a glitch in porting a number from one sim to another is pathetic in anyone's measure of service, surely. There was no redress, there was no escalation possible - it was like "1984" where the faceless government set the expectations and there is no comeback. I imagined the poor girl I was sitting with would encounter a next customer with quite a different temperament to mine, and wondered what the turnover expectancy of her role was. I took the news the only way I could - with depressed acceptance of the inevitable.
I had been served promptly when I entered the shop, but it was over an hour later when I left with a non-functioning blackberry and the deep conviction I would be back 72 hours later.
The magical thing that was supposed to happen in the ensuing 72 hours was that my old sim in my old phone was to stop working and my new sim in my bright shiny blackberry was spontaneously to burst forth like a butterfly from a moth's cocoon.
I had been served promptly when I entered the shop, but it was over an hour later when I left with a non-functioning blackberry and the deep conviction I would be back 72 hours later.
The magical thing that was supposed to happen in the ensuing 72 hours was that my old sim in my old phone was to stop working and my new sim in my bright shiny blackberry was spontaneously to burst forth like a butterfly from a moth's cocoon.
Cut to 72 hours later.......
Needless to say my new phone still did not work. I returned to telstra. It was lunchtime, there was a queue (20 mins), which didn't help, but I stoically endured that. After all, I believe in service and understand demand management can be difficult. When I did get served and explanations were made of the pre-existing condition, we proceed down the exact same faultfinding path the previous assistant had tried which culminated in the obvious call to the tech non-support and a lot of on hold time for the customer-facing guy.
An hour and more passes...... we get to the exact same impasse - I didn't even get to sit down in this telstra shop (my feet hurt) - possibly intentional to frustrate and move people on quickly. Apart from causing my feet pain and delay my return to work, this was not sufficient torture for me to give up on my quest to resolve the issue. But as per the previous telstra shop experience, nothing was to be gained in store. This time an SLA of 24 hours is communicated to me - presumably I've now managed to pass some escalation threshold and am entitled to better than the "standard" 72 hrs.
Needless to say my new phone still did not work. I returned to telstra. It was lunchtime, there was a queue (20 mins), which didn't help, but I stoically endured that. After all, I believe in service and understand demand management can be difficult. When I did get served and explanations were made of the pre-existing condition, we proceed down the exact same faultfinding path the previous assistant had tried which culminated in the obvious call to the tech non-support and a lot of on hold time for the customer-facing guy.
An hour and more passes...... we get to the exact same impasse - I didn't even get to sit down in this telstra shop (my feet hurt) - possibly intentional to frustrate and move people on quickly. Apart from causing my feet pain and delay my return to work, this was not sufficient torture for me to give up on my quest to resolve the issue. But as per the previous telstra shop experience, nothing was to be gained in store. This time an SLA of 24 hours is communicated to me - presumably I've now managed to pass some escalation threshold and am entitled to better than the "standard" 72 hrs.
I'm sure this is all going to end in tears, I have pity for the guy in front of me but am denied the satisfaction of ripping out the jugular of the 'tech support person' on the phone.
My customer response is one most certainly of anger that such pathetic service can pass for the norm, but am contained at not taking it out on the service guy in front of me because he has no ability to do anything at all - including escalation.
I ensure I am given my case number and a phone number that I may take it up with the invisible "tech support" myself when the next 24 hours expires. The shop assistant is just as relieved and happy to provide the info - I wonder where he is on the timeline to turning over in his thankless job.
Surprisingly a little less than 1 hour before the new SLA of 24 hours was up, the amazing transformation occurred! The cynic in me says the invisible tech non-support planned this timing but I don' think they could be that organised. The resolution was to my relief, however, because I really didn't want to have to do battle - I just want my phone to work and 4 days to get a sim card working is totally unacceptable.
I felt (in delusion) that my poor service experience should have been seriously unusual, and in an organisation that actually cared about their customers' experience I should have been furnished with some attempt at an apology - even if it was only lip service. No apology of any kind, or attempt to survey my experience, was forthcoming. If this is the service norm they are probably too terrified of the results of surveying the customer.
A week later, however, I did get a phone call from Telstra. Thankfully, for all concerned, it went to voicemail. Being human, the content of the call may have caused me to loose my composure. "As a premium telstra customer, you're entitled to a coaching package with your new service account to the value of $160"!
I ensure I am given my case number and a phone number that I may take it up with the invisible "tech support" myself when the next 24 hours expires. The shop assistant is just as relieved and happy to provide the info - I wonder where he is on the timeline to turning over in his thankless job.
Surprisingly a little less than 1 hour before the new SLA of 24 hours was up, the amazing transformation occurred! The cynic in me says the invisible tech non-support planned this timing but I don' think they could be that organised. The resolution was to my relief, however, because I really didn't want to have to do battle - I just want my phone to work and 4 days to get a sim card working is totally unacceptable.
I felt (in delusion) that my poor service experience should have been seriously unusual, and in an organisation that actually cared about their customers' experience I should have been furnished with some attempt at an apology - even if it was only lip service. No apology of any kind, or attempt to survey my experience, was forthcoming. If this is the service norm they are probably too terrified of the results of surveying the customer.
A week later, however, I did get a phone call from Telstra. Thankfully, for all concerned, it went to voicemail. Being human, the content of the call may have caused me to loose my composure. "As a premium telstra customer, you're entitled to a coaching package with your new service account to the value of $160"!
Being "premium" didn't help me when I waited 4 days to get my sim working but it does provide me some "value add" service that I don't need! Needless to say when I heard the message, I counted to 10, had a strong cup tea and ignored it.
So telstra did not disappoint my expectations of poor service - in this particular instance they exceeded them plenty. But rather than just telstra bashing, let's analyse what is awry in their service:
- there is a total disconnect between the front-line customer staff and the back-office technical support staff resulting in the guys on the floor left to fend for themselves as best they can with angry, disillusioned and disempowered customers
- Totally unacceptable SLA's, e.g., 72+ hours to fix a sim porting number problem!
- Attempting to offer value add services when they can't even get the basics right
To be fair, Telstra isn't the only telco to blame for the extremely poor standard of service. I've had just as poor experiences in procuring Optus products over the years.
But Australia is in a telco duopoly who own 80% of the market between them. There are other telcos but the nearest only has 10% market share (no prizes for knowing who that is) and the rest vie for the remaining share. This bottom 20% have little or no infrastructure of their own and are forced to onsell Telstra and Optus products and services. Somewhere between a rock and a hard place you might say.
Boys and girls, we are prisoners of whatever the top 2 telco's deem to be service. All I can say is thank god I update my phone only every 3 years or so.
My broadband may need attention before then though - heavy sigh. Maybe I'll have some valium before I attempt that one.
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