On Friday night, 贝 told me that he wasn't able to connect to the Internet. He has tried everything, including using different laptops, disconnect and reconnect to Celcom 3G multiple times, and even ping Celcom's DNS, but all to no avail. We suspected Celcom's server was down so we decided to call its customer service to check it out.
Since our Celcom mobile line subscription provides 250 minutes of free talk time (which we never used because we have our own mobile phone lines from Starhub in S'pore and Maxis from M'sia), we decided to make use of it by calling the customer service via our laptop. There were two customer service telephone numbers printed on the Celcom brochure. I called the first one twice and the calls were rejected. Then i called the second one twice too but the line was no longer in service!
I called the first number again and after several tries, it finally got through. I was first greeted by a machine operator. Yap, as usual, it was those "please press 1", "please press 2" kind of customer service again. I went through three menus and none of the number was for enquiry of 3G service, so i pressed "0" to talk to a customer service consultant.
I waited for a few minutes and was then greeted by a friendly guy. I told him that i wasn't able to connect to the Internet and asked him if Celcom 3G server was down. He first asked me for my Celcom mobile number and then put me on hold so that he could check it out for me. It was just less than 2 minutes before he was back on the line again. He told me that he has checked my mobile line and it was operating fine. He would now put me to technical support for my problem. Ok, i guess it's a standard protocol for them to check the line status first before handling over the problem to technical support. I'm fine with such arrangement and so far the customer service guy has been very polite.
So you may be thinking like what i was thinking then -- Celcom's customer service was not too bad. Well, it was... until this stage. I was put on hold for about 10 minutes and then the same guy told me that the technical support was very busy at the moment. He asked me to call back later. I was stunned and said ok without thinking. After i've disconnected the call, 贝 told me that i should have waited since we have 250 minutes of free talk time.
After about 5 minutes, I called again. I again went through the same machine-operated menus, was attended by the same customer service guy, was put on hold for the technical support, and was asked to call back later after waiting for about 10 minutes. Everything was just so "protocol" that it felt like deja vu. However, this time i told him that i wanna wait instead of calling back.
I waited and waited and waited and waited... Every 10 minutes or so, the same customer service guy would get on the line and this would repeat itself:
Customer service guy: "Hello Miss, thank you for waiting. Sorry that our technical support is still busy at the moment. Do you want to wait or call back later?"I was thinking to myself, ok, we have 250 minutes of free talk time. I could wait for 4 hours if you dared.
PinPin: "I would like to wait."
So i continued to wait and wait and wait and wait... After waited for about 30 minutes, that guy got on the line again:
Customer service guy: "Hello Miss, thank you for waiting. Sorry that our technical support is still busy at the moment. Do you want to wait or call back later?"I continued to wait and listened to Celcom's advertisement over the phone. Just when i started to wonder if i would really need to wait for 4 hours, i heard a different male voice on the line:
PinPin: "I would like to wait because i must connect to the Internet tonight. How many technical support persons do you have? Is it that you don't have enough people or else why do i have to wait for so long?"
Customer service guy: "Oh, we actually have 7 technical support, but there are many customers calling tonight."
PinPin: "Is it your server is down and that's why there are so many calls for technical support?"
Customer service guy: "Sorry Miss, i don't know. You would need to talk to the technical support for this."
PinPin: "Ok, then i'll wait."
Technical support guy: "Hi, how may i help you?"This whole conversation with the technical support guy lasted maybe only about 3 minutes the most.
PinPin: " Hi, i'm a 3G subscriber and i use it with a datacard in my laptop to connect to the Internet. I couldn't log on to the Internet since afternoon. I've tried using different computers, and disconnect and reconnect again, and also ping your DNS, but all cannot work. Is there any problem with your 3G service?"
Technical support guy:" We are actually having an upgrade of our server so the 3G service is not available. You should be able to connect tomorrow afternoon."
PinPin: "Huh, so you mean your server is down for upgrade and i can only use it tomorrow afternoon?"
Technical support guy: "Yes, Miss."
PinPin: "Then why you didn't inform us about this?"
Technical support guy: "Oh, sorry about that, Miss. Is that everything?"
PinPin: "By the way, if i need technical support, is the customer service number the only number i can call? Do you have a direct number?"
Technical support guy: "No, you would have to call the customer service number."
PinPin: "Ok, then that's all. Thank you."
Technical support guy: "Thank you."
When i disconnected the call, the call time was shown as 43 minutes and 24 seconds:
There you are, my 43 minutes of customer service experience with Celcom, with only 3 minutes attended by the technical support. What the f*ck?! As opposed to unforseeable server problems, I believe a server upgrade was planned and they would have known that the service would not be available for a period of time. Shouldn't they send a SMS or email to inform the subscribers? The least they could do was to post an announcement on their Web site about the unavailability of the service and we would then know about it when we checked their Web site via Blackberry.
The most ridiculous thing that i found about this whole experience was that i need to wait for so long for a technical support personnel to inform me about the service being unavailable. If this information was passed to the customer service consultants, it would have saved me at least 40 minutes of waiting. I don't see how technical is "3G server is down for upgrade so it's unavailable till tomorrow afternoon" that only technical support can relate this piece of information to the customers.
I wonder should i consider Celcom's customer service bad? After all, both the customer service and technical support guys sounded friendly and polite. I would attribute it more to bad communication between departments and it definitely has plenty of room for improvement.
