HELPLINE services play a vital role in providing support to customers. Many commercial organisations have placed helpline on their front-desk to handle customers, both in-person and telephonically.

Regrettably, most customer service representatives at the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) deal with the customers like a robot and are unable to resolve inquiries efficiently over the phone. They are accustomed to registering and handling PTCL line faults only, but are unable to understand any other kind of queries, and, therefore, fail to resolve issues to the satisfaction of the complainant.

The PTCL staff providing email support is equally inept. They first acknowledge the inquiry with a system-generated answer in a stereotypical manner, then call the customer without having any understanding of the query. In case a customer receives a reply through email, it is usually ambiguous, marking the token number of the query as ‘attended and resolved’ without actually resolving the issue.

As a PTCL subscriber, I failed to get an answer to my simple query from the PTCL customer care unit both by e-mail and over the telephonic 1218 services over three months. I had to go to the telephone exchange to meet a senior officer for getting the required information and guidance. Needless to say, this behaviour causes great inconvenience to the customers.

The telecommunication company must provide professional training to its customer support team to improve their communication, listening and problem-solving skills. It should ensure that they are familiar with the frequently asked questions before placing them at the frontline.

A. Malik
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2020