Astro Customer Service and IVR - Engineered to piss people off : Part 1

I have been working with a mass market consumer facing service for the past 12 year. So believe me, when i complain, and take actions or guide people based on how to raise complaints and make claims, i know a thing or 2 about what i am doing / talking about.

Bear in mind this is coming from the perspective a user who has technical issues .. Being someone with technical issues, you are already coming from a negative state compared to someone who wanted to add a channel or something.

Astro just updated their customer service Interactive Voice Response in August and it has by far one of the worst user experiences i have ever had the joy of experiencing. For people with technical problems with their Astro subscription i can go to the extent of saying it was specifically designed to piss people off. So let’s go thru the process...

One of the First things the IVR asks when you call in to the customer service is your account number. NOW .. Bear in mind, the account number is not something you normally have lying around. You need to go look for it. Before August we had the option of giving our IC number to the tech rep (a little more on this later). But now it’s a REQUIREMENT. NO ACCOUNT NUMBER, NO WAY THE CALL IS GOING ANY FURTHER. Now, if you don’t have it on your and take your time to search for it, there is a possibility the IVR will timeout and you need to call in again. There is also the possibility that you wrongly keyed in the number and will have to do it again. I would like to state now that TM Unifi has a similar process. But they  are doing 2 things better. The first is they ask for the more common PHONE NUMBER instead. There is a higher tendency for you to remember this. I'll get to the second item later. But the bottom line is, you are probably in a "meh" mood to begin with when you want to call on a technical problem. Keying in a 10 digit number you normally don't remember doesn't help improve your emotional state.

Speaking of improving your emotional state, when done, of course, you need to re-listen to your number and confirm. But what happens after starts to push me in a further negative direction. Now at the time of calling, it was the 30th of December. My bill cycle ends on the 27th. 3 days. I haven't even received by bill yet. But the IVR TELLS ME I OWE ASTRO RM150++ . Do you think i don't know my responsibility to pay my bill? Have i received my bill? Isn't the a time frame that CLEARLY has not lapsed for me to pay my bill? Did they consider this? Of course not! I OWE ASTRO.. And before i talk to the technical reps they find it important for me to know that. This really pushes my buttons. If they wanted to do that they could at least only play that stupid "you owe us" crap if i lapsed my payment. But NO.. They make it a point to tell you they owe them .. Regardless the reason you are calling.

Then they hit you with a huge amount of promotion and upselling crap. Technical assistance is the 3rd! option. YUP... upselling, changing packages high priority.. Service not function low priority. And even then, they put you thru another set of menus.. is this a follow-up or new complaint or what ever! TOTALLY UNNECESSARY aside from a statistical perspective, which by the way they could still get those statistics thru other means anyway. Then they put you thru more info’s/ instructions and confirmations before you finally get the privilege to be in queue to talk to an operator. Of course that not before the IVR tells you to be in front o the TV. WTF?!

The whole process takes around 3-5 minutes just to get you to the operator depending on the information you have, or if you had to repeat the menu to get the best option and also on the operator queue length. At which point if you were not angry that your service wasn't functioning, you probably were starting to get angry.

When the operator finally picks up guess what one of the first 3 questions is ? CAN I HAVE YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER??? For me that’s my breaking point. Anything else i say after that goes thru a rude downfall. What was the whole purpose of keying in the account number at the beginning of the call if it was never transferred to the call center operator? They could have greeted me by saying "Hello.. Can i assist you in regards to Mr Ben's account" . Instead the basically are saying "Who the fuck are you". This is the second thing TM does correctly. The info is properly passed. By the time i talk to the call center operator, they know who i am or at least who's account i am calling about. Of course for Astro i have to give them all the info again.. this time verbally. I might need to repeat the info a few times if they don't hear me.. then wait for them to load the info and ask more questions..

Then finally after what feels like a lifelong survey you have been forced to do, we finally get to trouble shooting.. By now i am already pissed off with Astro. Just for making me jump through hoops to complain about disruption for a service i pay for (even if i do allegedly owe them) which normally ends with them saying you need a technician to come to your house for further checking.

But more about that in part 2............(Click Here)