Poor call centre service destroying telecoms’ brands

Ben Uzor Jr

The level of reliability and efficiency of customer contact centres as it relates to meeting the ever-growing needs of Nigeria’s telecommunications subscribers still remains at the lowest ebb of global standards after ten years of GSM revolution, analysts have said. According to brand experts, this has far reaching implications as large investments in brand building and positioning and product development are been negated by unsatisfactory call centre experience. But more importantly, this development is coming after four top telecoms networks in the country, MTN, Airtel, Etisalat and Globacom, were fined a cumulative N1.17 billion by the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for rendering poor quality of service to telecoms subscribers on their respective networks.

Kenneth Omeruo, a telecoms analyst, told BusinessDay that “subscribers climb the ladder of loyalty one step at a time. They do this from trial user to regular user to satisfied customer to an advocate of the brand who is more than willing to recommend. At each step of service experience, it is imperative to note that a call contact centre provides the magnetic pull in both directions.” There have been tales of woes from telecoms subscribers who often time spend 60 minutes waiting to talk to call centre agents while others don’t ever talk to human beings but machine in the name of Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The industry is awash with ineffective call centres that leave many telecoms subscribers in the dark, without a veritable platform to ventilate their grievances arising from failures in service delivery and to seek redress. More so, the claim by operators that their call centre service is 24 hours has been found deceitful. BusinessDay checks show that none of the operators’ call centres could be reached between 8p.m and 7a.m. This, according to industry watchers, has necessitated government intervention in the area of formulating and enforcing existing consumer protection laws in the industry.

The root cause, according to analysts, is that operators have failed to make significant investment in sufficient human capacity, innovative and relevant technologies to ensure that Nigeria’s telecoms subscribers enjoy best-in-class service from contact centres. Industry sources close to some of the networks told BusinessDay that improving customer call centres does not make the top list of telcos’ investment priority. However, analysts are worried that after ten years of the GSM revolution, which has seen telecoms operators, subsequent to the sector’s successful deregulation, raise the subscriber base from 400,000 active lines in 2001 to the current 101 million as at the end of April, 2012, they are still struggling to meet basic customer satisfactions indicators such as First Call Resolution (FCR).

Deolu Ogunbanjo, President of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), told BusinessDay in an interview that “the quality of customer contact centres in Nigeria’s telecoms market is not good enough. Mobile networks still have a lot of work to do in terms of improving service delivery. After paying the N1.17 billion fine, they did promise that quality of service will improve. NCC is working to ensure they meet the KPIs set for good quality of service. I also think they need to do more in terms of educating subscribers on how to access their respective customer care centres. Most times, subscribers do not know how to follow voice prompt or even choose preferred language options.” Victor Monday, an aggrieved subscriber on one of the leading networks, re-lived his experience with call centres in Nigeria. He had issues with the service of transferring airtime to a subscriber which was not delivered while the airtime was deducted. Monday told BusinessDay that “I put several calls to the call centre of the operator and all the three attendants could not offer explanation on what happened and how to revert the airtime that was deducted.”

Emeka Okafor, a post-paid customer on one of the big four GSM players, told BusinessDay that he had an issue of inappropriate billing, which has become prevalent in Nigeria’s telecoms market. “It started last week; I tried to make a phone call with my phone but I could not. I checked my account balance and there was nothing in my account. I was upset because I had ten thousand naira (N10, 000) there when I checked earlier. I called the call centre to speak to an agent. “I tried over five times before I got through only for the agent to put me on hold. After a lengthy period of waiting, he told me I owed N12, 000. “I was astonished. This is a line I hardly use to make calls. How did I incur the bill? The agent could not even give me a profile of how I incurred that bill. I felt like breaking that SIM card.”