Poor Customer Service - discuss

amoouses

Dear All,

It's not my preference to rubbish anybody, including Swisscom in public.

But to succintly state the facts. Since July 2014 we have experienced an intermittently failing Intenet Connection

There still is an issue and so in parallel I began to investigate use of a Backup Internet connection.

In a previous post I related how after considerable phoning I was assured that the 3G/LTE Backup connection at the back of the Fibre router was not possible.

Before receiving this bad news I'd already ordered some extra hardware so that today I've been testing it. And YES, I have it working. I'll post the technical details presently.

The point here is to state that whist asking Swisscom about this facility I've experienced

giving an opinion, based on a hunch, not in any sense a fact

Dropping the call

Putting you back to the switchboard

Saying that you will transfer me, but really putting back to the switchboard

Not owning the problem i.e. find out the person to help, or the answer, and calling me back

What Swisscom said about Backup Internet

a) There is no such facility

b) Fibre group said -> Mobile Responsibility

c) Mobile Group said -> Fibre group responsibility

d) Mobile Group (luco Bernardi ) Said Feature not working reliably and is withdrawn

So what do I conclude?

1. Mobile group and Fibre Group dont talk to each other

2. People are fobbing me off with vague answers and won't own the problem

3. Technically, within groups handing off calls to other groups never seems to work ( you usually get dumped at switchboard, in no case were my problem details transferred to next party)

I've tried to be polite and patient when speaking to the call centre and technical groups, but this seems not to be working.

Does anybody have any comments on how to effect action at the Swisscom end? I still have the original unreliability problem unresolved.

(BTW: we already wrote a complaint letter to Swisscom, no response so far)

Regards Agata Majzel and Marcus Bennett.

iansp

amoouses wrote:

giving an opinion, based on a hunch, not in any sense a fact

That's fair comment and it's the number one complaint I have about Swisscom support. The underlying service level is actually very good in my opinion.

I find that the some of the support staff are massively over confident in their skill levels and make some really quite ridiculous statements at times. I understand how this occurs, these are complex technologies and require an extensive technical background to genuinely understand and this is, in industry terms, is a very junior role. At the same time, no doubt, the support staff are dealing with a lot of extremely basic questions where they're able to add a lot of value.

Personally, I've no real expectation of high technical knowledge levels, I think it's not realistic. But I would like the support staff to be a lot better at recognising the limits of their knowledge and acknowledging that and I'd like them to defer to their more senior skilled colleagues a lot quicker.

This isn't just a issue for Swisscom, many technology companies have the same issue, I have some quite surreal dialogue with our website hosting provider for example. But, Swisscom could do way better and it's really undermining good engineering on the network in general.

amoouses

Ian,

Thanks for your reply. Of course your comments make sense and whilst I too am normally guilty of low expectations (so you too spent 30+ years in the Engineering and electronics?) and relativism (other Providers are worse)..

I suppose what sticks in the throat is that to my mind we pay a lot for our Swisscom product.

As such I sort of expect better than average customer service. Also, when I report a problem I've done extensive research, speak to the support centre calmly, and do everything I can to be a model prepared customer.

Overall though I don't feel that my/our efforts are being reciprocated by Swisscom. Lack of communication, wrong communication, indifference bordering on being unhelpful seem to be responses that I have received despite my sincere efforts.

Obviously I'm hoping that these posts can improve matters. But nothing magical happened just yet. Hmm.