Confident that their Customer Care Attendants ooze product knowledge from head to toe, Etisalat uncannily calls them 'Geeks.' Well...it turns out that may not necessarily ring true. On the contrary, Etisalat should perhaps consider undertaking a massive clear-out of its Customer Service Attendants.
My brother recently purchased one of their SIM cards for his newly acquired blackberry phone. Two frustrating weeks into loading the phone with his Sim card, with numerous fruitless trips and calls to both their service and call centres, his data services remained inoperable. All the attendants he spoke or met with simply did not have a clue what the problem was. At every turn, he would get fobbed off with the excuse that it was a network problem and that he should remain patient.
He was on the verge of pulling out the sim and ripping it up, when he instinctively decided to give it one more go. Luckily he got through to a Call Centre Agent, a certain Mr Arinze, who sorted out the supposedly insoluble problem within minutes. What was the problem? The Agent enquired from my brother whether or not the phone was branded to which my brother answered in the affirmative. He then instructed him to go into the phone's settings and check the TTIP-IP settings. He did and discovered that it was set on T-Mobile rather than Etisalat. The Agent further instructed that my brother remove T-Mobile and type in Etisalat, after which the phone was to be switched off and turned back on within moments. To my brother's amazement and delight, all data services immediately kicked into life. Within minutes, problem solved.
The Agent requested that my brother give the names of the agents he had spoken with, but my brother declined on the basis that he did not want anyone losing their job on his account. I disagreed! I think he should he have given those names if indeed he knew them. It is typical of Nigerians to condone or accept mediocrity. My take is rather simple; if you don't know the job, you don't deserve to keep it. At the end of the day, who is getting short-changed? We the customers! His refusal in my opinion amounted to misplaced sentiments. If after all the product knowledge training those agents obviously received, they are not able to solve problems, why on earth are they working as customer service agents or attendants?
Incidentally I have an Etisalat line as well as an Etisalat modem; and I have to confess that I find the network far more reliable than others out there, especially MTN. Nonetheless, it is evident that the telecommunications provider should go back to the drawing board and work out viable solutions to ending the proliferation of customer service agents or attendants whom are simply ill-equipped to offer the quality of service that a telecoms giant like Etisalat can and should consistently deliver.
WURA RATINGS: ***
