Not every single person might agree, but I honestly think Etisalat customer care is nothing short of amazing. I formed this opinion from my first encounter with them over the phone.
Where telcos are concerned, I’m really not in the habit of calling customer care. The line will often ring for hours. After which a machine might then announce that there are no agents available to attend to you. You might finally get through, only to speak with some clueless support person who keeps spitting out canned answers and eventually cannot solve your problem. In general, telco customer support sucks.
On this occasion though, 8k was involved, so I made a half-hearted attempt. And I was roundly, pleasantly disappointed. After choosing to speak to a customer care agent, the line had hardly rung for 30 seconds before I was connected to Etisalat staff. Five minutes later, my problem was solved. It was with surprise that I caught myself sub-consciously humming the Etisalat theme song after I’d hung up. That’s how impressed I was. I’m still smacking my face for not recording the conversation. And did I mention that this happened sometime around 10pm?
So far, I’ve only had good things to say about Etisalat’s services. Blazing Internet. Great customer support on the phone. And now they’ve also gone so far as to create a dedicated Twitter account ALSO for support. Dedicated as in different from the official Etisalat Nigeria Twitter account. As far as I can tell, some of the guys who constituted the original Etisalat Geek Force have been re-deployed to manage it.
At this rate, I fear that I’m well on my way to becoming unrepentant, placard carrying Etisalat voltron. But I’ll go ahead to tell you exactly why 0809ja_support isn’t your run-of-the-mill Twitter support account.
1. They provide actual technical support across the whole gamut — SIM swaps, data problems SMS issues, BlackBerry palaver and more — right there on Twitter.
2. The account is as human as it gets. Precisely three humans run it — Jane, Mike and Stan — and they say who they are when they are answering queries. This is great because; a. customers like talking to humans, not some faceless Twitter account. And because you know what they look like, from the background picture on the Twitter page, the imaginative ones like me will probably visualise them attending to their issue; b. Etisalat is probably using this as a performance and accountability metric for the support personnel, ensuring that they are always at their best when they attend to customer issues. See what I mean from the following tweets –
@mohmed4chase Hi Mohammed, Stan here. Calls to UK landlines on Easy Life 3.0 are charged at 20kb/sec.
— etisalat_9ja support (@0809ja_support) December 24, 2012
@Prince_Bukar Hi Jane here, kindly dial *399# to check the expiration of your blackberry service.
— etisalat_9ja support (@0809ja_support) December 24, 2012
@goodmanuel Hi Mike here, The SMS alert has been deactivated. Kindly revert if issue persists.
— etisalat_9ja support (@0809ja_support) December 24, 2012
3. They’ve created dedicated hashtags for support queries, and the list is fairly exhaustive — overscratched cards, SIM swaps, SMS, recharge activation, data, BlackBerry and phone calls. The hashtags not only helps them to immediately understand and quickly resolve the customer’s complaint — over time, they’ll also be able to archive and mine those requests to gain insight into the nature of/most common/least common issues that their subscribers face.
For issues regarding Sim swap requests/issues, kindly tweet at us using #SIMSWAP for prompt resolution.
— etisalat_9ja support (@0809ja_support) December 24, 2012
4. They are online from 8am – 8pm, Monday through Sunday. That’s longer than any physical support center you can find. Now when I want a quick response, all I have to do is tweet within that timeframe. And even if I tweet when they are offline, I’m sure they’ll get back to me when they do come back on.
Frankly, I’m impressed. I’ve been gushing over these guys since I started, yeah, but those who know me know that I don’t impress that easily. These guys aren’t running their social as an afterthought. They’re serious. The support account hasn’t been around for more than a few weeks though (created 11th December), so I’m gonna be watching to see how long they can keep it up. Find 0809ja_support on Twitter here.
Got any interesting stories to share about your interactions with telco customer support? Online or offline? The comments await you.
PS: I’ve just been made aware that MTN Nigeria also has a dedicated Twitter support account — @MTN180. It’s been around for close to seven months and seems to be doing a good job too. Thanks, Oyin.
