Here's the content of my most recent email to Eskom (the national mostly-monopoly electricity supplier in SA) in the wake of a 48-hour clusterfuck power-outage. Four times, their halfwit technicians closed the trouble-ticket, claiming that "power was restored". Four times they were wrong.
The final straw was when I phoned at 2:30 in the morning (Hey! I was awake; there was still no power; I figured I'd see whether we could get the incompetent technician out here in the middle of the night in the rain.) and they (1st attempt) put the phone down on me, (2nd attempt) tried putting me on hold forever until I gave up and when finally (3rd attempt) answered the phone were clearly uninterested in actually doing anything that might disrupt their beauty-sleep.
Only one guy, Marius, was brilliant:
What kind of trouble-ticket system allows a technician to close the ticket without closing the loop by checking with the customer?
My whingeing about the matter (the unresolved ticket referred to in my email to Ms Andrew) has now been bounced to Nico van der Merwe, Eskom's Man In George; a man in uniquely the wrong place to do anything about anything. Its been almost a week and I still haven't heard from him.
Watch This Space.
The final straw was when I phoned at 2:30 in the morning (Hey! I was awake; there was still no power; I figured I'd see whether we could get the incompetent technician out here in the middle of the night in the rain.) and they (1st attempt) put the phone down on me, (2nd attempt) tried putting me on hold forever until I gave up and when finally (3rd attempt) answered the phone were clearly uninterested in actually doing anything that might disrupt their beauty-sleep.
Only one guy, Marius, was brilliant:
Dear Ms Andrew,
During a 48-hour power failure last week, I had a most dismal, disgusting, atrocious customer service experience at the hands of Eskom, its systems and representatives, resulting in no less than FIVE tickets -- four to resolve the actual technical problem (the fact that it took that many attempts shrieks to me of incompetence) and one other, still unresolved to my satisfaction.
In the course of events, I had __numerous__ promises from people that they would get back to me to let me know what was happening.
Didn't happen!
With ONE bright exception: Marius (surname unknown). Not only did he take the actions he promised, not only did he ACTUALLY GET BACK TO ME as promised, __in addition__, he followed-up 24-hours later to check with me whether the problem had, indeed, been resolved. This is going above and beyond expectation!
This is the true meaning of Customer Service, and should serve as a shining example to ALL Eskom's otherwise-completely-useless customer-"service" agents. It is really very simple stuff: do what you promise to do! Nothing more. Nothing less. Marius was the ONLY person I dealt with who took that simple principle to heart and acted on it.
Please let's have Marius running Eskom's entire Customer Service operation! It would seem that nobody else has a clue how to do so effectively.
My whingeing about the matter (the unresolved ticket referred to in my email to Ms Andrew) has now been bounced to Nico van der Merwe, Eskom's Man In George; a man in uniquely the wrong place to do anything about anything. Its been almost a week and I still haven't heard from him.
Watch This Space.
