Horrendous Vodafone Customer service

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#2437895 14-Mar-2020 12:22

That's an idea - could Vodafone do live chat, a la Spark? Surely it's just an addition to their website? (note I'm not an HTML developer, so not 100% sure).

networkn

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#2437903 14-Mar-2020 12:50

I'd also like to see live chat.

cyril7

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#2437904 14-Mar-2020 12:54

Hi, agree about live chat, in the past few months when I have had to deal with Spark their online chat is very easy to deal with and things just got sorted, I way prefer that than having to talk to someone on the end of a poor voice line speaking with a thick accent and air of dis interest.

Cyril

alasta

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#2437916 14-Mar-2020 13:05

For those who want live chat, you might want to have a go at contacting them via Twitter. I found the staff on that platform really good during my recent interaction with them.

pipja

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#2437919 14-Mar-2020 13:10

cyril7:

Hi, agree about live chat, in the past few months when I have had to deal with Spark their online chat is very easy to deal with and things just got sorted, I way prefer that than having to talk to someone on the end of a poor voice line speaking with a thick accent and air of dis interest.

Cyril

You can also get a transcript of Spark's Live Chat so you can have proof if any issues arise.

SteveC

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#2437952 14-Mar-2020 14:27

@JasonParis:

... big snip ... Until then please feel free to think of me as your personal account manager: Jason.paris@vodafone.com

In think this trumps live chat or Twitter - given my experience is that emails to Jason do get a good response. It is all about the right channel for each customer. My mate who likes talking with people would rather phone. He wasted an hour or two bogged down with CSRs, but when I said to try again and ask for the Customer Retention Team ... customer instantly retained.
Live chat and Twitter have their place, but we are a geeky echo chamber - I'm not sure what the majority of customers want.

matisyahu

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#2438343 14-Mar-2020 23:58

Yabanize:
matisyahu:

There needs investment in improving the online experience as well - moving from one plan to the next shouldn't require a phone call, it should be all doable online along with choosing a new number (you can do this with Skinny), a single place where all ones services that one has are accessible from a single location etc. (is there any word on what is happening with the new billing system and the new front end?). The call centre should be the last line of defence aka "the excrement has hit the fan and I need to speak to someone" rather than "the website is still 10 years behind the competition thus requiring me to phone about something that the competition enables me to deal with online myself".

Skinny was built from the ground up for this, If customers can do everything themselves, they don't have to call = money saved on customer service.

But it would be nice to see more "self service" on more traditional providers like Vodafone and Spark too.

Vodafone has some epic services that are awesome when they work (which is most of the time with Fibre etc) so hopefully less people need customer service, but when they do (or a billing issue etc) it's not great

Which is why they need to keep moving forward instead of just buying up companies and failing to integrate them properly or building a system and not investing into it by upgrading and enhancing it. It has been 16 months since Jason took over as CEO and nothing has happened to address the problem - at this point after 16 months there should be at the point of beta testing (maybe a public bet with a selected number of early adopters trying it out) and talking about the future direction, time table in terms of it going live for all new customers along with the time table with migrating existing customers over to the new system. It is the thing that frustrates me with New Zealand businesses, there never seems to be any sense of urgency - it's always as though we're living through reruns of 'Gliding On'.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

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quickymart

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#2438367 15-Mar-2020 08:05

To be fair, he did move the customer service call centre from one provider to another, although the results (my personal experience) haven't been particularly outstanding.

While I take my hat off to him saying people can e-mail him with their problems (and he is very good in that regard), as a CEO I'm sure he's a busy man with a lot of other things to take care of at the same time. I guess my point is if the call centre did their job properly he wouldn't need to have end customers contacting him at all.

antonknee

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#2438655 15-Mar-2020 16:40

With respect to JP my guess is that his focus had really been on the Infratil/Brookfield buyout... I imagine that took a significant amount of management bandwidth. Prior to that I can imagine a lot still coming down the pipe from the UK in terms of overall direction.

We have seen some good product innovation since from the VF team. One would hope though that they continue to use their newfound nimbleness and agility to work on things like customer service as well.

Another vote for live chat here too.

pipja

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#2441521 19-Mar-2020 16:56

Let me tell you guys my latest tale.

/rant-on

On Feb 26th, I called Vodafone Sales, spoke to an Indian rep and requested an upgrade (from Fibre200 to FibreMax) to my Fibre plan which is nearing its end of contract term. They said they will put that into effect immediately.

Between Feb 26th and today, I've been spot speed-testing my connection against Vodafone's Auckland server every couple of days. Every time the speed is the same, no changes whatsoever. MyVodafone also says I'm still on Fibre200.

Then today I rang them up again, and another Indian rep said "your plan is still Fibre200 and there's no order placed". So I thought: it's the same pile of sh*t service from Vodafone again, isn't it?

I told the Indian guy to dig up all the account notes, and he said "Oh, in Siebel (CRM), I could see that your account plan was updated to FibreMax on Feb 26th, but I don't know why other systems still say Fibre200. Please hold while I check this out for you." Twenty minutes on-hold later he came back and said: "The order was stuck in the back-end. I have submitted the order again and hopefully it should be resolved in the next 24 hours."

Every time it's "quality" Customer Service. The competence level is incomprehensible for a technology service company like Vodafone. And I've been on the receiving end on at least 3 occasions already.

I better not be billed for an entire month of FibreMax which I did not get (although I'm 90% confident that the billing system will charge me for it).

/rant-off

pipja

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#2442284 20-Mar-2020 16:12

Update:

"Ref A/C no. xxxxxx093 Hi <pipja>, Chorus are trying to transfer your fibre to Vodafone but it looks like the details we have for your current provider are wrong. <bla bla bla>"

So I call them and they have my OLD address on the upgrade order. Of course I moved out of there a long time ago.

So yeah, this is it, cancelling the upgrade, time to change ISP. Enough of this bull sh*t.

quickymart

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#2442483 20-Mar-2020 21:24

What made you decide to move to Vodafone, just out of interest? Price?

rushtoe

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#2443312 21-Mar-2020 19:00

quickymart:

That's an idea - could Vodafone do live chat, a la Spark? Surely it's just an addition to their website? (note I'm not an HTML developer, so not 100% sure).

@quickymart @networkn @cyril7

We have been doing Live Chat since 2018.

Live chat can be accessed through our Help and Support pages and more recently via our chatbot TOBi. if TOBi doesn't know the answer yet, a Live Chat agent is ready to help. We have thousands of customers who use & enjoy this service every month.

Check it out here:

https://www.vodafone.co.nz/help/?initializechat=bot&initquestion=src%3Dtxt

If you have any feedback or comments about our Live Chat service please don't hesitate to send me a DM