Telkom Customer Care Service - Portia

I have never been in the business of writing bad reviews about people, seeing how unemployment is so rife in South Africa and I would never want to be the reason someone is out of a job and not able to provide for their family. A bad day could be to blame, I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t want someone to experience what I experienced when I called Telkom today. Unfortunately, this experience was so bad that it motivated me to create an Hello Peter account to express my frustration.

I called Telkom’s Customer Care line and waited on the line for a call centre agent to attend to my call, eventually a lady responded by the name of “Portia”. Upon responding, she said that she could not hear me and said that I sound faraway, I removed my earphones and spoke directly into my phone’s microphone and asked whether the sound is better. Portia said that the sound was still poor and asked me to speak louder, I raised my voice and spoke as loud as I could and asked whether I am clear, she told me that she still could not hear me and that I must speak louder, I informed her that the problem could be on her end and asked her to check her headphones. You could have sworn that I had insulted her because she told me that her headphones are fine and that there is nothing wrong on her side - the problem is on my end because she’s spoken to people and they sounded fine. She fiddled around for a few seconds and then she could miraculously hear me afterwards. I asked whether the problem was with her headphones and she said “no, you still sound faint”.

The tone and attitude she gave me put me off and I didn’t have confidence that she would be able to satisfactorily attend to my enquiry, so I asked to be transferred to someone else because there’s no way someone could have such an attitude so early in the morning. She vehemently told me that she can’t transfer me to another consultant and that I must drop the call and phone again. I told her that I do not have the time to be on hold for so long again. With no other option, I told her about my enquiry and she transferred me to the Sales Department.

The sheer disrespect exhibited by Portia was absolutely disgusting and a contrast to the service that I received from another Consultant earlier in the week. Telkom, please get your house (including Portia) in line, maybe it’s time for a refresher training on good Customer Service 101.