Vodafone on Fairgo, claim to have spoken to womans husband post-mortem.

Forums › Vodafone New Zealand › Vodafone on Fairgo, claim to have spoken to womans husband post-mortem.

surfisup1000

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# 254292 5-Aug-2019 17:13

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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12255781

Vodafone's chief executive has apologised to a widow who had to fight to get the telco to stop billing her dead husband.

At one point, a Vodafone helpdesk staffer even claimed to have received a call from her dead husband.

This is pretty bad. I'm putting it down to simple incompetence, although it almost seems like malice.

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# 2290390 5-Aug-2019 17:15

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It's on Fair Go tonight as I understand Jason was on holiday when it was first on Fair Go

Good on Jason for fronting up this evening as well

dejadeadnz

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# 2290588 5-Aug-2019 22:38

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There's a bizarre culture at Vodafone (as an illustrative example you only have to look at how, back a few years ago, a few users clearly identified as VF staffers on here were known to interact quite stupidly with users who raised complaints or were even spamming other threads about other telcos, to the extent that the admin actually banned some from posting on other telcos' subforums on here) where some of their people believe that they can never do wrong. Jason Paris has said the right things and done the right things but getting a really stuffed up culture fundamentally turned around won't be easy. I remember around a year ago where I had to repeatedly ring up VF and demand that they get their outbound sales staff to stop ringing my mobile number during the day but not leaving messages. Do you know what one of the staffers said to me? "If you don't want to answer sales calls, just ignore them!".

Edit: typos - the perils of trying to do too many things at once.

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# 2290594 5-Aug-2019 22:49

dejadeadnz:

I remember around a year ago where I had to repeatedly ring up VF and demand that they stop their outbound sales staff to stop ringing my mobile number during the day but not leaving messages. Do you know how one of the staffers said to me? "If you don't want to answer sales calls, just ignore them!".

So that's how you do it?

they keep coming back to me every few months... offer the same really bad deal compared to my existing prepay, i always politely ask them please do not call again.

I've always put it down to the trigger that seemed to start them all. Dropping my VF plan right down to basics - It's just for calling and sms when i'm around home...

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dejadeadnz

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# 2290595 5-Aug-2019 22:59

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I didn't really mention the borderline shouting match I had to engage in with another staff member. But the calls have finally stopped. When I complained about it on Facebook, the clown on their social media team just ignored my question about why VF persisted with this annoying sale tactic despite there being easily locatable complaints on Facebook about the exact same behaviour having been made two years prior and just said that they would tell their call centre to stop calling if I would PM them my number. The culture of VF, as I have personally experienced it before the current CEO came on board, was to never acknowledge fault and never learn from its mistakes.

richms

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# 2290613 5-Aug-2019 23:34

I havent had any calls from their sales people for quite some time. I assume after you tell them to "p... off you scamming piece of s....." enough times they put you on a list not to call anymore. Or they are back to calling from blocked numbers so they never make it to ringing now.

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Stu1

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# 2290654 6-Aug-2019 07:15

The sales people are only part of the problem, the capability of their contact centres is terrible even the new one won't let a call be escalated, bringing back the call center and support to NZ would make a massive improvement

floydbloke

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# 2290686 6-Aug-2019 08:36

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Agree with the above sentiments. In my view VF NZ needs to do the following:

bring the contact centre back in house, in NZ
consolidate, or at least integrate, billing, provisioning and fault management systems/platforms
review processes, procedures and agent's scripts in parallel (and stop treating the customer as though they're all dunces. if the customer has requested some sort of change to their services and a few days later things stop working it's most likely that you VF, has done something at your end, don't put the poor customer through the pain of modem resets, swapouts, etc.)
this would give staff the tools and systems to get an accurate,complete view, and will help drive the culture shift to one of taking some ownership

Wet finger in the air I reckon it would take about $20M to put this in place if you want to get it right. Jason and the new owners need to decide whether they want to invest that sort of coin in delivering quality customer service and restoring NZ's faith in the Vodafone brand...or carry on with case-by-case pain, band-aids and apologies.

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." - Stephen Hawking

FineWine

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# 2290812 6-Aug-2019 11:08

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floydbloke:

consolidate, or at least integrate, billing, provisioning and fault management systems/platforms

Agree ❗️

We discussed this last night after the Fair Go program. We decided that VF's entire customer handling software needs to be integrated and centralised from front desk bricks & mortar through to Call Centre. It should not take a 'Bereavement Team" to handle a billing name change or cancellation that's just PR BS icing. I mean you front up to a VF shop/Kiosk with your photo ID and a Death Certificate - DONE. Jez they sign you up in 2 seconds flat, why can't they do a name change or cancellation in less than that.

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BlinkyBill

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# 2290819 6-Aug-2019 11:21

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20 years ago I consulted at Vodafone Australia, who were trying to replace legacy billing systems with a new one. My job was to figure out why it wasn’t working. They spent several 100 million dollars and failed. $20m to remediate Vodafone NZ is 10x understated - my wet finger is $200m.

BlinkyBill

hio77

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# 2290822 6-Aug-2019 11:22

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floydbloke:

Agree with the above sentiments. In my view VF NZ needs to do the following:

bring the contact centre back in house, in NZ

The one thing i have never understood about this argument is simply the why?

Obviously Vodafone use different offshore resources to Spark, but having spent a fair bit of time with ours over my time here. I'd have to say they are identical to onshore.

It's the processes and support models setup around them that make the difference.

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BlinkyBill

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# 2290825 6-Aug-2019 11:27

Vodafone are transitioning out some poor performing offshore call centre suppliers, to better quality offshore call centre providers. This in a bid to improve the customer experience.

BlinkyBill

floydbloke

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# 2290832 6-Aug-2019 11:43

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hio77:

floydbloke:

Agree with the above sentiments. In my view VF NZ needs to do the following:

bring the contact centre back in house, in NZ

The one thing i have never understood about this argument is simply the why?

Obviously Vodafone use different offshore resources to Spark, but having spent a fair bit of time with ours over my time here. I'd have to say they are identical to onshore.

It's the processes and support models setup around them that make the difference.

Fair point. I guess it's perception.

I've not had to ring them of late but certainly a few years ago, when I believe it was Phillipines based, the sound quality was just atrocious and we had trouble understanding each other. Frustration sets in quickly.

Recently, from speaking to people around me who are suffering poor VF service, is the feeling of being fobbed off. Agents simply give assurances to try and finish the call and there is no follow through, no acknowledging emails, no records kept (evident by having to repeat yourself next time you call). This could be symptomatic of poor process and wrong KPIs. However, I can't help but feel, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that this would be nowhere near as bad if customer talked to agents who are close to the rest of the VFNZ organisation and have subscribed to the newly fixed customer-friendly culture.

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." - Stephen Hawking

Oblivian

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# 2290844 6-Aug-2019 11:52

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floydbloke:

Recently, from speaking to people around me who are suffering poor VF service, is the feeling of being fobbed off. Agents simply give assurances to try and finish the call and there is no follow through, no acknowledging emails, no records kept (evident by having to repeat yourself next time you call). This could be symptomatic of poor process and wrong KPIs. However, I can't help but feel, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that this would be nowhere near as bad if customer talked to agents who are close to the rest of the VFNZ organisation and have subscribed to the newly fixed customer-friendly culture.

Max Call volume and low time targets vs low volume, long duration 1st time resolution. Is the name of the game when it comes to answering the phone by someone real. Think we'll find it's the case with most Industry/services like this across the board.

hio77

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# 2290847 6-Aug-2019 11:53

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floydbloke:

Fair point. I guess it's perception.

I've not had to ring them of late but certainly a few years ago, when I believe it was Phillipines based, the sound quality was just atrocious and we had trouble understanding each other. Frustration sets in quickly.

Recently, from speaking to people around me who are suffering poor VF service, is the feeling of being fobbed off. Agents simply give assurances to try and finish the call and there is no follow through, no acknowledging emails, no records kept (evident by having to repeat yourself next time you call). This could be symptomatic of poor process and wrong KPIs. However, I can't help but feel, and I don't think I'm alone in this, that this would be nowhere near as bad if customer talked to agents who are close to the rest of the VFNZ organisation and have subscribed to the newly fixed customer-friendly culture.

Right, that's a fair viewpoint to have.

It does sound KPI, Target or expectation related. Something that can change Depending on how the business swings it.

I can't speak for the moves vodafone take, or spark for that matter.

i used to have quite a dim view of offshore based resources, but that's because i was often cleaning up things that went wrong. Truth be told, i do the same for onshore resources too.

It's the really sh!tty experiences we remember, not the great ones..

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floydbloke

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# 2290853 6-Aug-2019 12:01

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hio77:

...

It does sound KPI, Target or expectation related. Something that can change Depending on how the business swings it.

..

How about instead of

bring the contact centre back in house, in NZ

we settle on:

fix the contact centre's attitude and approach from its current to one of being customer-centric and focussed on resolving the customer's query/request.

😃

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." - Stephen Hawking

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