The Democratic Alliance (DA) claims it waited over 26 hours for Telkom to fix a fault in its broadband connection. However, the telecommunications giant says it was fixed in 24 hours and 45 minutes.
"Telkom always endeavours to restore interrupted services as expeditiously as possible," says Lulu Letlape, group executive for corporate communications at Telkom. "The fault was reported on 3 October and cleared on 4 October," she adds.
According to the DA, Telkom exhibits "arrogance and incompetence that goes with being a monopoly" and says it is extremely frustrated with the problem.
The party also claims Telkom says neither the customer nor the fault call centre are allowed to speak to the technicians who deal with the problem. Telkom responds that the fault reporting call centre in question is an inbound facility and, as such, does not necessitate outgoing calling ability.
Letlape says logged faults will undergo primary and secondary levels of testing prior to the dispatching of a technician. "A technician will only be dispatched if the results of the testing warrant the same."
She notes that the dispatching of technicians is an automated process, and faults are systematically allocated to the available pool of technical personnel in attendance in an area. As such, the call centre agent, being the first point of contact with a customer, is unable to identify the technician at that stage of customer interaction.
Letlape adds that the duration from fault log to full restoration of service to normal levels is directly proportional to the technical complexity of a fault.
"While elementary faults are quickly resolved after initial testing, more complex faults require further diagnostics. Faults warranting technician attendance usually entail work on the physical layer of the network and will take longer to resolve."
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