I am getting calls around 3:50pm tp 4pm from VodafoneNZ 0800 number for the last 2 days and when I answer they hang up on me!!

What. the. hell.

Time for her to move providers too!
As an aside John, is her connection still actually working? Or have they switched that off already?

Why would they tell them to call Chorus to order fibre? That's not how it works.

quickymart:

Why would they tell them to call Chorus to order fibre? That's not how it works.

SteveC:

quickymart:

 

Why would they tell them to call Chorus to order fibre? That's not how it works.

 

Why can't Vodafone fix their customer service? JasonParis has been trying for a few years without success. It think it is great that Vodafone Aotearoa is largely Kiwi owned and have had no problems since changed to DOCSIS 3.1. When I have had minor issues, I've sent an email to the CEO's office, which has worked for me.
We are happy customers, but are worried about the sustainability of the appalling customer service others experience.

By fix do you mean never have any customers have any issues ever? I mean, really? Anyone with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of customers will have some misses. I work with ISP's pretty much most days, and I can say with absolute certainty that there have been significant improvements for VF in the past year. It's far from perfect, but I could also pick a dozen customers who have had frustrations with most if not all the other ISP's. 

I think Jason would admit things aren't perfect, but it's much better than it was. 

How many others ISP's CEO's regularly post their email address on a public forum to make themselves accessible to customers having issues? 

networkn:

How many others ISP's CEO's regularly post their email address on a public forum to make themselves accessible to customers having issues? 

After 25 years of being with iHug/BellSouth/Vodafone I may well be chucking the towel in soon.

I try my damndest to remain polite on the phone when speaking to helpdesk teams.

Jason Paris, if you're reading this, I think you've been rather disingenuous with your claims of moving help services back to a local helpdesk. It may be an intention, but I doubt VFNZ are there yet. Unless you've imported those folk that answered the phones off shore, as they certainly sound the same.....clueless and hard to communicate with. The common denominators are, failure to understand the client's concern and then complete ignorance of the services and specials that have been offered. I have in mind the Vodafone TV / Sky transfer. It's been a less than easy experience.

Hi team,

Thanks for all of the feedback - and agree with most of it. Yes we have made a lot of progress, but no - we are not where we need to be yet. I think it's worth a brief summary of our journey so far:

- Vodafone is the result of a series of acquisitions - Clear, Saturn, Telstra, Ihug, World exchange, Farmside etc and unfortunately the IT, systems and processes have not been adequately invested in for a number of years as the business was put up for sale/IPO

- In addition the Vodafone Group strategy was to focus on product and network differentiation vrs service differentiation - which meant that our service ambition was "just good enough to get by". This led to us off shoring the majority of our service teams.

- I joined two years ago and found a team of very capable and passionate New Zealanders who just wanted to help and look after our customers. They were just as frustrated as our customers with how we were showing up at times.

- Therefore the majority of my first year was focussed on an ownership change to bring Vodafone back closer to NZ and secure new owners who would invest in our new strategy, which has our existing customers and best in class customer service at it's core. Mission accomplished!

- Since then we have made a huge number of investments in our business to stabilise and modernise our legacy IT while bringing more NZ based service people into the business. Over $10m in service and tens of millions in IT. The results are excellent and we have our most stable IT in three years and our best ever service levels which sees us around the middle of the pack from an industry perspective (the currently published industry reports are using historical data)

- However we still have too many customer issues (the best service is no service!) and unfortunately 25% of our customer issues are not being resolved first time. So what are we doing about that?

1. Re-platforming our IT. We are in the process of migrating all of our customers to a modern, cloud enabled, digital end to end IT stack that will help us deliver best in NZ (if not world leading) telco products, services and experiences

2. Bringing more of our customer service teams back to NZ. Every business customer is now helped out of NZ and we are progressively bringing back more and more of our service to NZ, with the next phase being all of our complex tech support. The only teams that we will have based overseas after this point is general billing and enquiries - which we think will be resolved through IT fix above (so there is no point in bringing the roles back when we won't need them in 12 months)

There is a huge amount of additional work going on across many areas of the business, however these are the key initiatives related to service. I'm very confident in our plan however I'm sorry that this is taking longer than some of you would like - and really appreciate your loyalty, support and patience as we improve. As always, I'm here to help and love hearing from customers directly: Jason.paris@vodafone.com. It's the best way for me to understand the opportunities within the business.

Cheers

JP

Thanks Jason for giving us all a detailed update. For me this sort of information is a very important consideration when considering which telco to use going forward.

For me, I'd take an RSP who is actively trying, but not quite getting there, over one that has similar ratings who doesn't acknowledge there are issues and therefore don't do anything to fix it.

Vodafone NZ to roll out Amazon Connect in contact centres - just received this from Vodafone:

 

Vodafone NZ is the first telecommunications provider in New Zealand to team up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to implement Amazon Connect, an omnichannel cloud contact centre, to provide a personalised and enhanced customer experience.

 

Currently, Vodafone NZ’s contact centre receives approximately 1.7 million customer service calls per month. Implementing Amazon Connect will simplify its contact centre operations and analyse information to unlock insights to provide new and innovative ways to engage with customers. 

 

Amazon Connect will enable Vodafone NZ to use AWS artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services to automate interactions and improve customer service on the platform. It will also encompass voice and chat-based services to offer customers a personalised, intuitive experience, reduce wait times, and help solve customer issues faster. 

 

“We selected AWS to help us transform the customer experience in our contact centre. Amazon Connect offers best-in-class technology and will enhance our digital customer service across all interaction channels,” says Antony Welton, Customer Operations Director at Vodafone NZ.

 

“Customers can expect to see the technology progressively rolled out over the next 10 months and we’re confident they will benefit from a superior customer experience. This will complement our people-focused initiatives, such as the success of our X Squad and ongoing efforts to better equip our agents with the tools they need to further improve our customer experience.

 

“We’ve already seen a 35 per cent improvement in our ‘first time fix’ metric, meaning a customer’s problem is solved the first time they call us, as well as vastly improved customer satisfaction metrics, and we are confident this new technology platform will help us to lift our game even further.”

 

The announcement follows Vodafone NZ’s implementation of the Amazon Connect Chat functionality in May, which enables a single unified contact centre service for voice and chat.

 

“Vodafone NZ is a great example of how the cloud and machine learning technologies are transforming the way Kiwi organisations are improving their customer experience. Amazon Connect will provide Vodafone NZ with a scalable contact centre solution that can adjust to the changing needs of its customers in real-time and will enable Vodafone NZ to engage with their customers easily and naturally,” says Nick Walton, Managing Director for Commercial Sector at AWS in New Zealand.  

 

Now thats genuinely new and interesting. It's not based on Genisys, avaya, ININ or any of those 'classic' contact centre capabilities, but is an Amazon created product.

I wonder who domestic integration partner will be (bridging to phone world, connecting to their apps, doing legacy system to API development etc)