Online support: Who sucks and who doesn’t

Rudolph Muller

February 23, 2012

14 Comments

We put Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Virgin Mobile and Neotel’s online support systems to the test

Telkom and Vodacom came out tops in a recent MyBroadband survey which set out to test the online support channels of South Africa’s largest telecoms operators.

MyBroadband sent all the operators a simple request for information on slow broadband speeds, asking them for feedback on how to address the issue. The operators were asked to respond via e-mail (and hence not telephonically).

Here are the results.

Telkom (support e-mail sent on 11:35 on 21 February 2012)
Telkom immediately responded with an automated e-mail message confirming receipt of the e-mail and providing me with a reference number.
At 12:14 (hence only 40 minutes after the initial e-mail was sent) Telkom officially responded to the e-mail and provided the details needed to resolve the issue.

Vodacom (web support form completed 11:23 on 21 February 2012)
Vodacom immediately replied with an automated e-mail with the message “We are looking into your query and one of our consultants will contact you within 24 hours”. The e-mail also contained a reference number.
At 14:57 (3 hours 29 minutes after the initial e-mail) Vodacom officially responded with all the details to solve the problem.

MTN (web support form completed 11:28 on 21 February 2012)
MTN’s online support system does not have an auto-response system, and the company also did not respond to the online support request by the time of publication.

Cell C (web support form completed 11:31 on 21 February 2012)
Cell C responded immediately via an automated e-mail saying “We have received your query. One of our support staff will contact you shortly if necessary.” This is however where it stopped and there was no feedback from Cell C by the time of publication.

Virgin Mobile (web support form completed 11:41 on 21 February 2012)
Virgin Mobile immediately responded via an automated system, saying “Thank you for contacting Virgin Mobile SA Technical Support Team. We are eager to assist you and will be calling you in the next 4 hours.”
There was unfortunately no feedback from Virgin Mobile within the promised 4 hours, and by the time of publication the company still had not responded to the online support request.

Neotel (website was down and therefore no online support was available)
During the time of testing the Neotel website was down. It was therefore not possible to test Neotel’s online support.

*Please note that MyBroadband only tracked e-mail responses (we asked specifically to be contacted via e-mail), and there may have been calls directed at the numbers provided in the emails.

Email support test
Company	Auto responder	Official response	Time to resolve issue
Telkom	Yes	Yes	40 minutes
Vodacom	Yes	Yes	3 hours 29 minutes
Cell C	Yes	No	Not solved
Virgin Mobile	Yes	No	Not solved
MTN	No	No	Not solved
Neotel	Website down	Website down	Website down