Customers not so serviced

SA and service excellence is not often heard in the same sentence. Readers of my article published last week covering the Orange Index Awards made this abundantly clear.

Reader comments posted to the story show there is a definite discrepancy between what can be termed as good service and what could simply be considered the best of a bad bunch.

Telecoms has a notoriously bad reputation when it comes to customer satisfaction. This year alone, there have been countless reports of bad service and worse service delivery. The most prominent example that springs to mind is the spate of network troubles the operators experienced during the winter months.

Even kind colleagues that read the story on MTN's victory at the Orange Index awards have lamented their service troubles with the mobile operator.

One colleague told me he had renewed five cell contracts with MTN in February, but only received three of the new handsets in August. Readers also had horror stories, from the inability of a simple SIM swap, to sweeping statements like “they are 100% useless”.

Being a subscriber of a different network, I have had little reason to engage with MTN, but I can certainly say my current mobile operator would not receive a glowing service report from me either.

The results certainly make the award look like MTN can be ranked the best of the bad; however, there is one more discrepancy that needs to be assessed.

Candice Jones, telecoms editor, ITWeb

After the awards ceremony last week, I admit, I was tempted to switch over to MTN, since I am not happy with my current service. Now that I have seen the flood of complaints, I am not so sure I'll make the move.

It also made me look a little closer at the Orange Index awards, which are considered particularly prestigious in the service industry, with many of the winners using the award as a basis for advertising campaigns.

The Orange Index has been running for nine years, and covers a variety of topics through the customer survey. Ask Afrika, the company that conducts the benchmark, looks at a company's value chain, customer loyalty, consumer confidence, and other aspects of customer satisfaction.

The methodology seems sound, with the company conducting hundreds of thousands of individual interviews to arrive at the results. Ask Afrika says it made 482 200 random telephone calls this year alone.

The overall scores are then lumped into the various industries, from retail to telecoms, and an industry award is handed out.

At the top of this year's awards were our friends from Woolworths, scoring a decent rating of 73. Santam, another of the industry winners, also scored high on the service chain, at 71.

So while these companies scored in the 70s, the telecoms guys ranged between the early teens and the late 60s. MTN's rating was 67. Vodacom was not far off, with a score of 66, and Cell C rated at 60.

Telkom and Virgin Mobile didn't fair as well, with Telkom's customer service rated at 54 and Virgin Mobile sinking the ship at a traumatic 18.

The results certainly make the award look like MTN can be ranked the best of the bad; however, there is one more discrepancy that needs to be assessed.

While there seems to be a competent bunch of people at Ask Afrika doing the research, MTN was this year's highlighted sponsor of the awards. In and of itself, it says very little, other than MTN helped pay for the ceremony - however, it does raise questions around the validity of the company's award.

This brings me to a truism that I use to keep myself motivated daily. “If mediocrity is awarded, mediocrity continues.” Very few South Africans are happy to speak out when the service at a restaurant is poor, or when they don't receive the product they ordered.

We are a very complacent people, less inclined to confrontation than many - unless of course we are on Joburg streets. I wonder if that complacency tainted the scores received by Ask Afrika, since I am not particularly happy with Woolworths' service either.

Over dinner discussions this weekend, friends said the award should not have been given out, if indeed it is a matter of the best of the worst. While most of the telecoms companies did not score the lowest on the list, customers are certainly not happy with the service they receive from the operators.

I am inclined to agree. I am a pianist and every year watch the Chopin awards in anticipation. You see, for the last six years, no pianist has won the outright award, because none have been good enough. Those pianists go back to work for next year, fine-tuning trills and working on timing and improving their performance.

Will it be the same for the Orange Index winners? Will they go back and fine-tune customer service in the attempt to win the award? I somehow doubt it.

And until we, as South Africans, demand the service levels we pay for, it will remain that way.

* ITWeb is investigating how the awards are processed and will keep readers posted.