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Thursday 17 April 2008

Karoo ignoring users (part 2)

Karoo have one of the worst Customer Service operations one will ever have the misfortune to encounter. The information given out by the Karoo Customer Service desk via telephone or email hits the lowest common denominator in that the information given out is aimed squarely at those customers with little knowledge of how their computers work and even less knowledge of how their ADSL works. This is compounded by the addition into the equation of routers which to the customers, who sit in the above category, IS the Internet. So when their Internet does not work they automatically assume their router is to blame. This idea is backed up by Karoo Customer Services as their script gets the caller to 1) check their settings. 2) reboot the router 3) reset the router to defaults which leads to 4) setting up the router. Anything beyond this point is alien terroritory for both that level of customer and Customer Services themselves.

One of the things that was attempted to sort out was Customer Services. Indeed those who fend off, one cannot call it answering, Karoo customers while eating their sandwiches, drinking coffee ("to keep their minds active") and simultaneously answer the telephone, are supposedly currently going through retraining in an effort to create a 3 or 4 tier service so that if tier 1 cannot sort a problem they pass the problem to tier 2 and so on ntil tier 4 passes it to a Technical Adviser and with the most stubborn of technical issues a real technician that actually works on the technical side of the operation. There is also supposedly going to be a direct line that by-pases the tier 1 through 4 phase and goes direct to a technician for those with more idea of how things really work.

Now, while this sounds good in written form there are grave doubts that in practice is will work. It really should not be difficult to provide such a system but Karoo's track record with Customer Services is not good. Not good in presentation and not good in providing either. While they say they are going to provide such a service it is highly unlikely we shall ever see such a service. Why? Well, they are known to cut corners in Customer Service and any revamp of it will cost money and that is something Karoo and especially its mothership, KCom, are not known to like.

I said earlier that the staff are currently under retraining, since they stopped talking to us, that is as much as we now know. Before communicaions where stopped we know they actually started working on this but what that training actually is, compared to what we suggested it should be and what they said they was going to do, can be and probably is totally different. Us lot who have more than a modicum of knowledge can but hope they achieve their stated aims, for once.

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