Horrendous Vodafone Customer service

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#2657417 16-Feb-2021 11:58

Interesting article. I've long thought that Vodafone bit off more than they could chew purchasing TCL - that basically confirms it.

floydbloke

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#2657428 16-Feb-2021 12:10

quickymart:

Interesting article. I've long thought that Vodafone bit off more than they could chew purchasing TCL - that basically confirms it.

My sceptical view remains that they only bought it because they wanted the RF spectrum and fibre backbone that TCL owned, and perhaps didn't quite realise what they let themselves in for when it came to managing networks for large enterprise customers.

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

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#2657432 16-Feb-2021 12:22

VodafoneNZ is dropping Siebel and going to a brand new stack / CRM platform

quickymart

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#2657587 16-Feb-2021 14:59

3000 products sounds about right. That would be a massive job to tidy up/consolidate that lot - I wouldn't want to do it. Way too much legacy stuff there.
I feel all their effort poured into the unsuccessful Sky merger would have been better spent on that task...would have made customer service a tonne easier.
Come to think of it, has anyone had any dealings with their call centre lately? Is it improved, or just as bad as outlined in this thread?

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#2657588 16-Feb-2021 15:02

DjShadow:

There is a really good story on newsroom about Vodafone's service woes and the challenges they face Failing The BBQ Test: A Cautionary Tale (newsroom.co.nz)

Paid for article... Take with a grain of salt, etc.

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#2657692 16-Feb-2021 17:27

quickymart:

...
Come to think of it, has anyone had any dealings with their call centre lately? Is it improved, or just as bad as outlined in this thread?

From recent interactions related to the T-Box to VTV changeover, I had 3 out of 3 poor interactions with offshore call support, and 3 out of 3 good interactions with the X-squad and technical support.

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#2657754 16-Feb-2021 19:20

@quickymart 3000 doesn’t take long to build up when one creates new plans with the same name when changing prices or adding benefits. Fairly common practice across telco and power companies - allows one to maximise margins for longer (or until the customer realises).

Of course price increases tend to be passed through ;)

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quickymart

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#2657802 16-Feb-2021 20:55

I know when I was there and it was TCL, you had Paradise, Clearnet, Netlink as the basic internet companies. Then you had to support all the legacy cable internet/TV services, as well as dialup and ADSL. Then all the Clear domain registry stuff, and Paradise...the list went on and on. Christ knows what a nightmare it would be like now.

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#2657890 16-Feb-2021 21:08

Any idea where the TCL Customer Service Flash interface came from @quickymart? It was pretty swish back in the day. Wasn't sad to see it go last year though! I do miss our four digit customer number (some Vodafone systems wouldn't accept it as a valid number).
I remember arranging with Shane Cole for Paradise to host a school web site. Five years latter (we had left the school) the teachers had forgotten the FTP password, so I phoned TCL. They denied that they were hosting the site. The problems started way back then.

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#2657891 16-Feb-2021 21:09

quickymart:

I know when I was there and it was TCL, you had Paradise, Clearnet, Netlink as the basic internet companies. Then you had to support all the legacy cable internet/TV services, as well as dialup and ADSL. Then all the Clear domain registry stuff, and Paradise...the list went on and on. Christ knows what a nightmare it would be like now.

I don't think it's as bad as it used to be; either through customer attrition or active work to remove duplication and 'specials' - remember Tempest? - it sounds like the task of moving people from blue to red systems has been happening.

Systems integration for orchestration, and customer service migration is an absolute pig of an exercise to go through; it's thankless, its massively detailed in nature, and you always annoy a huge part of the market. Inertia to change adds to the mix (just look at the t-box holdouts not liking VTV2, even though tbox was thoroughly paddled for being poor when it first launched).

Its easy to say 'why don't they', and fiendishly hard to do in practise. Add in staff who have no knowledge of the systems, analyses that are high level at best, poor documentation... on it goes.

Vodafone has completed some spectacular own goals, and the sponsored piece is glossing over the decisions made and the impact on staff and customers it had at the time and on the day... but unless you've done projects where you've had to migrate and correct data, move services between contact centres and countries and have to deal will multiple cultures, timezones and attitudes.... well, yeah

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quickymart

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#2657974 16-Feb-2021 23:15

SteveC: Any idea where the TCL Customer Service Flash interface came from @quickymart? It was pretty swish back in the day. Wasn't sad to see it go last year though! I do miss our four digit customer number (some Vodafone systems wouldn't accept it as a valid number).
I remember arranging with Shane Cole for Paradise to host a school web site. Five years latter (we had left the school) the teachers had forgotten the FTP password, so I phoned TCL. They denied that they were hosting the site. The problems started way back then.

I don't know, sorry... I (finally) left TCL in early 2005, although I did work for Shane back in 1999. Paradise was an amazing place to work - having come over from a large company (Telecom), I had an awesome time working with a small team that loved what they did and got the job done.

Telstra Saturn in early 2000 wasn't as good, but still okay. TCL (late 2001) was a horrible, brain-dead company to work for, and I almost skipped out of the building with glee when I left there, never to return.

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#2658011 17-Feb-2021 08:31

quickymart:

I know when I was there and it was TCL, you had Paradise, Clearnet, Netlink as the basic internet companies. Then you had to support all the legacy cable internet/TV services, as well as dialup and ADSL. Then all the Clear domain registry stuff, and Paradise...the list went on and on. Christ knows what a nightmare it would be like now.

When I started in 2018 we were definitely in Freddy Krueger territory! Our customers are still on the four (maybe 5) legacy IT stacks, but they have never been more stable. When you add our on shoring of customer service agents to the mix (all business teams are back in NZ, and half of consumer) - we genuinely have our best ever service results since records began (but we are still no way near where we need to be). So the strategy is to keep the current stacks running while we migrate our customers and products to a new cloud enabled, modern, digital stack over the next couple of years. Definitely easier said than done - but we are on track so far. As always - think of me as your personal account manager and drop me a line @jason.paris@vodafone.com if I can help.

Cheers

Jason Paris

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#2658026 17-Feb-2021 08:54

JasonParis:

... we migrate our customers and products to a new cloud enabled, modern, digital stack over the next couple of years. ...

Are the legacy systems paper based?😜

(sorry, just having a dig at how the word digital seems to have become so heavily used in marketing and manager speak in the last few years while digital technology has been around for decades)

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

JasonParis

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#2658036 17-Feb-2021 09:03

floydbloke:

JasonParis:

... we migrate our customers and products to a new cloud enabled, modern, digital stack over the next couple of years. ...

Are the legacy systems paper based?😜

(sorry, just having a dig at how the word digital seems to have become so heavily used in marketing and manager speak in the last few years while digital technology has been around for decades)

I'm sorry to say that in a few rare instances, our customer provisioning and change processes are paper based!

Jason Paris

cyberevolved

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#2660075 20-Feb-2021 12:54

quickymart:

3000 products sounds about right. That would be a massive job to tidy up/consolidate that lot - I wouldn't want to do it. Way too much legacy stuff there.
I feel all their effort poured into the unsuccessful Sky merger would have been better spent on that task...would have made customer service a tonne easier.
Come to think of it, has anyone had any dealings with their call centre lately? Is it improved, or just as bad as outlined in this thread?

My honest take of late?

I've been loyal to Vodafone for a number of years now. I've just moved home to a Chorus fibre enabled place in the "burbs". I've been very patient whilst various issues with my service relocation have been sorted. I currently have two tickets (that I know of) open with them. To get my point? Customer service at Vodafone is still a very hit and miss experience. If you call them - generally you will get through and be dealt with and are left feeling like they are going to actually do something.

Unfortunately I have been left hanging for over a week now. When told they would call me back it's consistently been at least a day late from when advised, and whilst there are tickets open, they are certainly no good at keeping you in the picture (not even via email!!). I've had to chase for updates all along the last 10 days since moving home. I am quite frankly at the limit of what my patience will currently allow.

What's my beef? speed... Fibre Max that's barely any better than Fibre 100.... They are determined to treat me like a novice user, and repeat the same old scripts about local modems, and laptops etc... which frustrates me, as I am an IT professional myself, and I know the drill.

I just don't agree in paying for a service which I don't receive, so I've made my formal complaint through their website, and I'll likely look at one of the new hyperfibre offerings in my area (Vodafone don't have this yet) since I am already in a Chorus hyperfibre spot apparently... the irony isn't lost on me... 2/4Gigs anyone?

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