Customers seem to be their last priority
I have had the most spectacularly frustrating experience with M1 yesterday. The experiences were both in-store and online. M1 describes itself as the leading, the most vibrant and dynamic telco company in Singapore. Quite how these statements are qualified is questionable, especially given the appalling, or rather the non-existent customer service I experienced at the IMM branch. All customer-service related issues are now fielded by two gatekeepers at the front of the store, controlling which customers are allowed to be served by the staff inside. While my father and I were queuing up to have our fate decided, I saw that most customers ahead of us were turned away and told to go online to resolve their telephone issues themselves. I learned that all issues, except the purchase of a phone and plan, were being redirected online or to the call centre. While the two gatekeepers were inundated by bewildered customers queuing up to get answers, help, and support, several staff members seated at their stations in the store were free. Problem no.1. We were there to change my mother’s expired mobile phone contract to another plan. My mother is 87 years old and is not mobile i.e. she requires a wheelchair. She therefore did not come with us and my father and I - her caregivers - had brought with us her NRIC, along with the phone bill and her handset. We were told by the gatekeeper that our issue could not be addressed at the store and we were, like those before us, told to resolve it online. When I pushed to be served by someone in the store, the gatekeeper then checked the system and found out that they could indeed serve us at the counter. As she began to enter our details in order to retrieve a queue number, she realized that the customer was my mother. I explained to her the situation and she could clearly see my mother’s age on her NRIC, but she promptly changed her mind and told us we had to complete the task online, or my mother had to show up in person. Problem no. 2. I replied that it was unreasonable to ask an elderly handicapped person to be present for changing a phone plan, especially given that we could present her NRIC, phone bill and handset. We asked to see the manager. The gatekeeper went to the back office and emerged 20 seconds later, citing the manager’s words - we had to complete the task online. The manager himself/herself did not emerge. Clearly to the manager, our patronage and customer satisfaction was not a priority and not worth the effort. Big Problem no. 3. Problem no. 4 is that an email address to customer service could not be found anywhere on the M1 website to which I can send this feedback. Clearly you would rather your customers air their grievances online and in public. Have you visited your Facebook page recently? The above infuriating experience aside, we came home to proceed with handling the issues online ourselves. Along with changing my mother’s phone plan, we also wanted to do a swap via the FoneCare plan. I went onto the website to do so, and my efforts were curtailed when the result was a message saying they were out of stock of that particular mobile phone. I gave up on this, and decided to change my mother’s phone plan via the app, the task that my father and I had wanted assistance with when we went to the M1 store in IMM. I arrived at the stage where I could select the option to re-contract, and the window that appeared showed 'Ooops! We can't find that page.' Half a day spent, zero result, plenty of unnecessary frustration. When can customers start charging companies for all the time wasted? What I needed done were basic, simple procedures that could and should have taken all of an hour by a customer service rep. Instead, a trip to the M1 store and online attempts yielded nothing. I will be terminating all our M1 accounts. And there will be no recourse. M1's senior management team have utterly distanced themselves from their customers. Well done.