Efficient, friendly and effective vs. Efficient, friendly and ineffective

This post is a continuation on my themes of highlighting good and bad service and how businesses can use after sales service and care to hold onto their client resource. I am a MTN mobile subscriber and my wife is a Cell C subscriber (Nashua mobile the service provider).

I received some feedback today from some colleagues that my voice mail service appeared to not be working. I was a little annoyed but being pushed for time did not contact my service provider until late this afternoon.

When I called I got one of those automated answering service “push 1 for .. push 2 for…” I chose the option to get through to a real person. Call me old fashioned but I like to talk to real people. The operator who answered the phone was really switched on. After confirming all of my salient details he asked me what the issues was. I gave him the short version and he said hold on. Less than 20 seconds and he was back, it seems like to activated the divert option from your phone incorrectly. I have fixed this and it should all work. I turned off my phone dialed my mobile and presto through to my voicemail.

Well done MTN great call centre operator, shared a joke and left me really happy.

And now for something completely different.

My wife’s phone for some reason would not send text messages, but she could received and make calls and receive text messages. Her service provider is Nashua mobile, we called on their Canalwalk branch. The consultant, very friendly, called and fixed something with the call centre and said it should all work. Two days later still not working, we called Cell C, because Nashua said it was a Cell C problem. Interesting response as we pay Nashua mobile. Cell C, again really friendly and quick said nope not our issue it is definitely a Nashua mobile problem something about “capping”, really odd given we have a monthly debit order with a top up option in place. We called Nashua Mobile, again really friendly and this time he was “going to sort them out!” Well he did and after six days of not being able to send text messages, the problem seems to be have been sorted.

My issue: Nashua we pay for a service surely basic training is for the consultant to follow-up to see if the issue has been resolved? Cell C surely you have some sway over your providers in terms of checking that they follow-up to get things done. All we heard from you was that you cannot access the account as it “belongs” to Nashua mobile.

I know you have turned a profit well done on that but you really need to focus on getting your front office image corrected.