Telkom's restructuring is short-sighted

Telkom's lackadaisical attitude towards service delivery will only worsen after it loses yet more staff through retrenchments, and outsources some of its customer channel functions.

Instead of being a bright idea to improve efficiencies and get closer to the customer, its decision to outsource the inbound call centre and retrench 100 staff at 20 of its 90-odd Telkom Direct shops will have anything but the desired effect.

It is already impossible to get anything resembling service out of Telkom, for love, money, or trying really darn hard. It's as if the company has purposefully made it as difficult as possible for customers to deal with it, in the vain hope that complainers will stay away.

Problem is, Telkom needs people to want to deal with it, because its fixed-line penetration continues to fall, as does its voice revenue, and there is no way an increase in data or mobile services will help offset any of that decline. A trend I suspect we will see repeated again in mid-June at its year-end results.

With Telkom, the concept of service has become an oxymoron, because there just isn't any. No coverage, no helpful call centre agents, no one person who can solve your problems.

I feel confident saying this as a fact, because - you see - I've just been there. And, I'm not alone.

My recent experience left me never, ever wanting to deal with Telkom again. It should be simple: order a broadband deal online, and voila, connect to the Internet. Except that the modem and SIM arrived three weeks late, sans setup instructions (trust me, these were needed), and then there was no coverage. Cancelling turned into a worse task than I could ever have imagined as it took an online rep, three call centres and eventually a complaint on Twitter and Hellopeter.com to get the situation resolved.

Adding insult to injury, its billing systems are such a mess that I received an invoice - for the service I couldn't use - three weeks after I cancelled the contract.

I'm not the only one who just cannot get service out of Telkom: its records show my ex-husband has sex-changed into a female with a totally different name; a mammoth mistake that he is now trying to resolve. And that's what Telkom did to an existing, but maybe not for much longer, customer.

The ex has, so far, tried every trick in the book: opening a case of ID fraud, threatening to sue the hapless call centre agent, and taking his story online, to no avail.

Turn to Hellopeter and the complaints abound. Says one: "My ADSL service has been down since 22 December 2014. Had four technicians out to my house, all stating the issue was cable-related. No other feedback. No repairs. My fault ticket was closed last week saying the issue has been resolved, but I assure you, it has not been resolved. I logged [a] new fault today with hopes of getting some kind of support."

It's as if the company has purposefully made it as difficult as possible for customers to deal with it.

And another: "I am also supposed to pay for a week of no service and no feedback. It's poor service after I gave Telkom a fair chance."

Others complain about a lack of complaint resolution, billing, service delivery... the list is rather long.

It doesn't take a genius to work out what will happen to service delivery once Telkom closes 20 stores. Often, Telkom Direct stores are the only places customers can go to actually get help. But, according to Telkom, these shops are underperforming.

I've heard the only reason the shops are not performing up to budget is because their staff can't get stock. And stock is the purview of the warehouse, which is - you guessed it - to be outsourced too.

Oh boy!

Here's the thing, whatever ails Telkom and its inbuilt inability to provide service will not be fixed by restructuring and outsourcing key service functions. As it is, these units clearly don't talk to each other; a situation that will worsen with a greater distance between them.

What Telkom needs is to fix whatever systems it has, so the customer truly is first. It needs to do this so faults get fixed, orders delivered, questions answered and complaints resolved without the customer having to jump through hoops.

This is an immediate imperative if it is to survive in its current form, and not become some sort of wholesale open access network with just an enterprise-focused arm. Alas, I fear it may be too late already.

So, dear Telkom, that landline I asked about, more than three weeks ago, you can keep it. I went with another mobile provider. And didn't have to make a single call to do so.

Bye!