The state of customer service in SA…SHOCKING!

The standard of customer service in South Africa has dropped significantly in recent years.

We can all speculate as to the reasons why but my opinion is that the levels of service are directly linked to a combination of incompetence, laziness and a total lack of respect for existing customers.

What ever happened to “the customer is king”? And, if the customer IS king, why does nobody listen to them?

Case in point:

My wife traded her Kia Sportage in on a Peugeot 307 last November to help save some money on insurance and the cost of fuel.

(Ed’s note: The identity of the particular dealership and people we dealt with will be hidden, for now…)

Imagine our surprise when we received a speeding fine in the post in January for the same Kia we traded in, over a month before. R500 for doing 132km/h in a 100km/h zone…in COLESBERG!

Turns out that a company bought the vehicle but the change of ownership was not registered properly and the car was still registered in my wife’s name – making her legally liable for any fines incurred.

We approached the particular Peugeot dealership on the 7^th of January with a request that the used car manager sort this problem out as a matter of urgency.

After nearly three weeks of being pushed from pillar to post and not so much as even receiving a phone call or e-mail updating us on the situation, we literally had to escalate the issue to the dealership’s top management before anything was done.

At this stage we had two days to get the fine paid; or face being issued with a summons to appear in court and additional fines.

It’s paid, apparently. We have a copy of a deposit slip but I’m not holding my breath until we’ve re-faxed it to the traffic department ourselves..

I have lost count how many times I’ve lost my temper with a number of organisations in the last couple of years because of a lack of respect for proper customer service.

Banks, insurance companies, cellphone companies, auto dealerships, home appliance vendors and the infamous state departments all deserve to be sent straight back to first grade in “customer service school”.

All too often, it’s the irresistible need to sign up new customers or push sales to reach targets that result in customers being left dead and bloodied along the way in their mission to get any form of customer service.

The cellphone service providers are a prime example of where the sheer number of “new” customers is overwhelming these organisations’ ability to deliver acceptable levels of customer service.

You’re just a number to them, nothing else. And even after eight or ten years of loyalty, you’re still just a number to them. You still wait ten to thirty minutes to have your call answered and you experience an increase in the number of dropped calls.

But they’re all meeting customer number targets and earning their millions in bonuses.

I always thought that if you look after your current customers, you’re securing your business’s future and the new customers will come.

Maybe I missed something here

Corporate South Africa puts far too much greed-driven pressure on people to deliver results on unrealistic targets and it is these companies who are guilty of cutting costs in their customer service departments when this is where they really should be spending most of their money.

Cost cutting = incompetent staff = irritated customers. It’s THAT simple.

I just think it’s sad that you continually have to lose your temper and threaten all sorts of legal action and bad media coverage before anything gets done.

There’s nothing I disrespect more than a company that’s all willing to take my money for a product or service and then leave me in the dark when I need support.

South Africans also to blame

I also blame South Africans for being too soft and just accepting mediocre service. We don’t complain enough, which has resulted in us being forced to accept bad service by corporate South Africa.

We are at the mercy of service organisations, but this can quickly be turned around as and when people begin to put their feet down.

In an ideal world maybe. But change has to start somewhere.

A rise in Bike and scooter sales?

As more South Africans come to grips with the absolute chaos that is being caused by the lack of sufficient electricity capacity in the country and rolling blackouts, there is an increasingly strong case for people to ditch their cars in favour of bikes and scooters to avoid the traffic jams associated with what has become an everyday life – load-shedding.

They are by no means that safest mode of transport, given the terrible manner in which South Africans drive (particularly min-bus taxis and rich-kids in SUVs), but their fuel efficiency and their ability to weave in and out of stand-still traffic make then a very very attractive investment.

Heck, using them on the highway is also a possibility as many highways in SA tend to move at snail’s pace during rush hours.

The cost of fuel in South Africa nowadays is reason enough to spend most of your travelling time on a Bike or scooter. And at the price-point (between R7,000 and R15,000), even financing a scooter over 54 months will cost little over R150 – R300 per month – making it the perfect wheels for even the most cash-strapped South African.

For the more affluent amongst us, put it on your credit card and pay it off over 12 months, or finance it over 24/36 months (At around R400 per month) and you’ll avoid the wrath of the reserve bank minister when he decides to continue the interest rate carnage.

The bottom line is that South Africans are going to lose their minds if they have to sit in four hours of traffic a day and hopefully, with enough of them on the roads, there may be a more favourable environment for bikes and scooters to keep SA on the roads.

(Ed’s note: I for one am going to buy a scooter this week!)

The next BIG thing in telesales…

As the National Credit Act (NCA) finally offered some freedom to frustrated South Africans that were plagued by daily telemarketing calls offering all sorts of credit, a new scourge seems to be emerging – insurance.

Because the banks (or anyone for that matter) are no longer allowed to recklessly offer credit to every Tom, Dick and Harry, companies need other ways to con people out of their money and using scare tactics to sell any type of insurance seems to be it.

There was a time – culminating last year – when it seemed that you could get a credit card – or any form of credit for that matter – from nearly every shop/company/fish & chip shop in existence in South Africa.

Airlines, cosmetics stores, clothing retailers, grocery stores and even the cellular networks all launched their own brands of Visa or MasterCard credit cards – and, in a flurry, tried to sign up as many poor saps as possible before the NCA kicked in.

Now that they can’t do this anymore, it would seem that the next BIG thing in financial services is personal short-term insurance – and not any type of insurance, but accident, hijack and road insurance (hence the use of scare tactics).

Although it was a tough thing to do and it took a lot of threatening and complaints on Hello Peter I opted out of every single list that I was on but colleagues of mine who aren’t so lucky are now being targeted by these ruthless insurance companies.

I even overheard one of my colleagues saying that she was told by the telesales agent that “You could die in a hijacking tomorrow” after she had turned the offer down. Um. Yes, that’s ethical sales practice… wish she remembered the name of the company because I’d like to name and shame it.

The next time you get a phone call with that all-too-common “Mr. XYZ, we have great news for you. You have been pre-selected…BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!” – guaranteed it’s going to be someone trying to sell you some kind of insurance.

Hopefully the NCA will be amended soon to include the insurance industry and useless insurance products that duplicate what we already have through death & disability cover anyway (Ed’s note: check your policies! You may be paying for duplicate cover across multiple policies).

I fear that soon South Africa may be in the situation again where it’s not only credit cards and personal loans but also ridiculous insurance products that you can buy at the corner cafe too.

In the mean time, do yourself the favour and complain as much as you can about insurance telemarketing. Prices and interest rates are going up and the last thing you need is to commit to that extra R60 or R75 a month for something you really don’t need.

A new breed of Afro-pessimists…

There is a very strong possibilty that the events of this week in South Africa could produce a whole new generation of Afro-pessimists and possibly lead to an increase in the emmigration rate over the next ten years if things don’t get better.

Afro-pessimists are people who, as the name suggests, are pessimistic about Africa in every way. Afro-pessimists are generally the first to pack up their bags and leave the country for supposed “greener pastures” in the UK, New Zealand or Australia, or are the people who begrudgingly stay in the country because they are making too much money to leave.

South Africa is falling apart

From the alleged racist shooting in Skielik, to the eight straight days of power cuts by state-owned power utility, Eskom, and mounting septisism about the country’s leaders’ ability to make decisions and lead the country effectively, it’s easy to see how the population can become disillusioned very quickly.

We have our defence minister arrested for exceeding the speed limit of 120km/h on the highway – doing 189km/h, the national police commisioner arrested for alleged corruption, and the almost-certain future president of the country up on charges of corruption.

Add rising fuel prices, sharp growth in interest rates, ever-increasing inflation rates, shortages of everyday items like petrol, milk, headache tablets, beer, carbinated drinks and an economy that’s not showing the same levels of growth as a few years ago – it’s recipe for growing negative sentiment.

It’s sad because there are many people doing a lot of good things in this country and, despite their best efforts, there are a handful of people and institutions that managed to mess things up on a grand scale for the rest of us.

And I, for one, am one of those people who chooses to be positive about SA. But this cocktail of challenges makes it difficult to maintain a positive opinion and it wears your tolerance down after a while.

There’s no quick solution to this problem that we have in SA. Like any “new” democracy, we’re going to have teething problems but how much are people willing to put up with? How much is it going to take before people begin leaving the country or, even worse, taking things into their own hands.

Many people will choose to remain positive, but there will be an increase in the global Afro-pessimist population and there will be further justification to those people who left over the last thirteen years as to why they left in the first place.

Load-shedding explained….

I’ve spent days trying to figure out the meaning of the various “Brown stages” on Eskom’s website. I think I have figured it out and it may help you to determine if and when your area will be left in the dark.

When you log onto Eskom’s website there will be a Load Shedding warning on the front page telling you what “Stage” we are in. Today, for example, there was a 1500Mw shortage so we’re in Stage 1. When the shortfall goes higher, we move up stages from Stage 1 to Stage 2 and then Stage 3, where 3 is the worst shortage and will affect the highest number of areas.

When you do a search for your area on Eskom’s site, you’ll see various “Stages” listed for your area (for e.g.: Brown Stage 1A or 1B, Stage 2A or 2B or Stage 3A or 3B.)

(Ed’s note: Make sure you use Internet Explorer because the Eskom site is not support other browsers like Firefox or Netscape)

Depending on how they classify the consumption of your area, you may fall into one, two or all three of these stages. So, depending on the alert status of the day “Stage 1, Stage 2 or Stage 3”), you can tell if your area will be hit with load-shedding by matching up the alert stage of the day and your area’s stage number.

Complicated, I know, but here’s an example to illustrate it:

Today’s Alert is Stage 1 (i.e. 1500Mw of shortfall). So, any area that is listed with Brown Stage 1A or 1B will be hit with load-shedding today. 2A, 2B, 3A and 3B need not worry because the shortage does not affect these areas yet.

If the shortage goes higher and the stage is increased to 2, then areas that are listed as 2A and 2B will be hit. And the same goes if we’re on alert stage 3 and all those 3A and 3B areas are going to be down.

Roodepoort, for example, is only on stage 2A and 2B so it will only be hit as and when the shortfall goes higher than 2000Mw.

But Rivonia, for example, is listed under 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A and 3B, which means that the area is almost guaranteed of having a power failure at least once a day, no matter how low the shortage may be.

From what I can see, Eskom classifies the areas as follows:

• 1A & 1B – High electricity consumption, first to be disconnected
• 2A & 2B – Medium consumption
• 3A & 3B – Low consumption – last to be disconnected

The higher the shortfall, the more people suffer and the more likely small “dorpies” (or stage 3 areas) will be hit in addition to major (stage 1) centres.