I’m one of your rather disgruntled & unsatisfied clients in the Cape Town CBD area. I’m paying R699 per month for a service which is NOT being delivered efficiently or effectively. The month of April was a nightmare with regular downtime’s & technical problems, our business suffered many hours of lost time and a lot of unnecessary frustration.

May, has been slightly better but still not what one would expect from a company who’s catch-phrase is… “expect everything AND more!” And today (Friday 23rd May 2009), on the financially crucial day of the end of the month, since midday, we’ve been unable to work for the entire afternoon. After speaking to an operator at your call centre, and being informed that “the technical problem should be resolved shortly”, we naively waited in anticipation the whole afternoon for the connection to come back again, hoping to continue with our work. It’s now approximately 17h40, there’s still no connection and I’m SEETHING to say the least.

Now instead of ranting and raving about how unhappy I am & being extremely negative, I’m going to offer you some constructive criticism, positive advice & some suggestions on how YOU, Neotel, can make MY experience as a “valued client” (as you so politely put it in an email a few weeks ago) a much more satisfying, bearable & worthwhile one.

Firstly; 

Besides the frustration of frequent technical problems, I’m rather dismayed to find that our latest invoice from your accounts department shows that for the month of April we’ve gone almost 4GB over our cap and now have to suffer the extra costs. This in a month where we experienced the worse downtime since we started using your services. How we managed to go 4GB over-cap when we were OFFline more than we were ONline I do not know.

Now, please could you explain to me WHY you STILL do not have a convenient way for customers to monitor their bandwidth usage? And also WHY was I not alerted or informed that we had gone over our prescribed cap? Or are you not really concerned with your “valued clients” needs & financial concerns, but are instead rather quite happy to pocket the extra profit without any effect on your conscience? Please remedy this as soon as possible. Even companies like, dare I say it, TELKOM & Vodacom have a simple service like this in place. I am not happy to spend my time & money wasted on the phone to your call-centre to get an operator to read out my usage stats constantly!

Then about the technical issues;

it’s quite obvious that much of the downtime we experience coincides with days where new cables are being laid in some part of town or some or other form of technical upgrade or repair is happening. 

Now, 

if only we, the “Valued Clients”, had some warning or a way of knowing that your guys on the ground were in a particular area working on the infrastructure on a particular day, and that we, the “valued-client”, could probably expect some possible downtime in our day at work and should prepare ourselves accordingly, then this would save hours of wasted time, frustrating phone-calls, lots of our money, not to mention your REPUTATION! 

But wait there’s more!! 

Imagine you could keep customers updated & informed of new & exciting developments in your company (like say, Oh I dunno.. your involvement with Seacom?), possibly causing existing clients to tell their friends what a great service Neotel is going to be and what amazing customer service you give (something which is currently lacking). This could lead to an exponential effect otherwise known as “word of mouth” or “referrals”, it’s generally a good thing for any company if it’s of a positive nature.

So, 

what would be a cost effective, efficient & instant way to communicate with your so called “valued clientele” without breaking the bank or someone’s brain??? Well besides the obvious choice of “emails”, a technology which I’m glad to see you are currently persistently making use of once a month around payday, would you be surprised if I told you there was another way you could enhance your customer service without spending an extra cent?

Well,

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of a little internet service called “Twitter.com”? If not then I fear for the future of Neotel and if you have heard of it then why on earth are you not using it yet? 

Now before you jump to uninformed conclusions and misguided assumptions just read what I have to say;

There are many different ways that people around the globe are currently using this thing called Twitter. Some use it purely for personal reasons and other’s for marketing purposes, but it seems that alot of “smart” companies around the world (mostly in 1st World countries) have embraced this wonderful new technology into their customer service strategy. Companies can instantly give their clients & customers bite-sized text updates on what’s going on within their business. Companies like CNN, The New York Times and even Oprah, have seen the value in it and are using it to their benefit. It’s a FREE service that anyone in the world can use, South African’s included. 

You can find this service at http://twitter.com (that’s Twitter’s “URL”, it’s basically a fancy way of saying “website address”). Alternatively you can go to another website called “Google”, Google is a “search engine” (http://www.google.co.za), when you get there type in the words “twitter for customer service”, then click on the button called “SEARCH” and I’m sure you’ll find many useful links to topics related to this wonderful new phenomenon called “Twitter”. 

Now I’m sure you’re a bunch of very busy people uninterested & unconcerned in developments in technology and the internet so, for your convenience, I’ve included a few links you can read below; simply hover your mouse pointer over the underlined text, click on it and, if you happen to actually be “connected” to the internet (unlike my office at this moment in time), the article will open up in your web browser automatically.

“Twitter for Customer Service” Links:

http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer-service/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_get_customer_service_via_twitter.php

http://www.searchengineguide.com/paul-jahn/using-twitter-for-customer-service.php

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2008/10/articles/social-networking-1/major-companies-using-twitter-for-customer-service/

If you’re still not quite sure of what I’m getting at please do contact me for a quote on a consultation for our services in Web PR, Digital Marketing & ORM (Online Reputation Management). We’d be MORE than happy to assist you in upgrading your web presence in the online community.

NOW… Neotel Customer Service Team… for my challenge…

For the sake of all South African consumers I’ve already posted this email to a publicly available blog (a “blog”, among other things, can also be seen as a medium for “citizen journalism”). I will be sharing the blog with a number of friends, colleagues and fellow internet users who will be able to share it with their friends, colleagues & connections, there’s a chance that those people might also share it with another friend or 3 and so on (I think you get the picture). They will also then be allowed to post comments and responses on the matter, and so will YOU. It may even be picked up by some form of traditional press & media and then you guys will have some serious explaining to do in the next Neotel board meeting.

My CHALLENGE to you, for now, is to do 2 things to save face here:

a.) Fix the unacceptable lack of a bandwidth-usage-monitor as soon as humanly possible

b.) Open up a Twitter account and use it properly within 24 hours of receiving this email (I’ll even set it up for you free of charge if you give me the go ahead), tell us what’s going on, tell us what’s coming and just simply keep us informed!

The reason I am making this public is so that you, NEOTEL, can be held ACCOUNTABLE for the actions you take after reading this. Not only that, but I also believe that you’ve actually got what it takes to act on this, I believe you’ve got the balls to show me and everyone else that you’re DIFFERENT.

Unlike the other corporate giants who are blissfully ignorant of losing customers, you are still a rather young company, and I’m sure that, for now, you’re pretty well backed financially, but your legacy is by no means an established one yet. Your destiny & reputation is still very much under your control as well as in your future customers’ hands.

Are you going to be just another Telkom, just another Vodacom, overpaid fat-cats who couldn’t care less about their clients needs? 

Or are you going to get up off your worn out office chairs and RISE to the damn CHALLENGE?!?!

Are you going to set yourselves APART from your competition and actually provide the customer service that all your “valued clients” DESERVE!?! 

Neotel.. oh Neotel… Can we “EXPECT EVERYTHING AND MORE”??

Well… here’s your chance to show us all what you’re really made of…

We look forward to your response.

Kind regards

Quentin C. Krog

http://twitter.com/quentinkrog