Telia, Customer Service | Races against Telia Customer Service:

Ali Alaei and a number of other Telia customers complain that customer service is difficult to reach by phone.

He’s been a Get customer for several years, but problems arose after Telia bought Get.

– It has happened several times to call and stand at least 30-45 minutes in line, but now the record has been broken. I waited 54 minutes and seven seconds before I gave up on Monday, because I hadn’t turned up yet, he told Netavizen.

Alaei has both TV and internet from Telia. Before Get turned to Telia, it usually took three to four minutes to get an answer from customer service over the phone. Now he thinks it’s completely hopeless.

– It was a nightmare after Telia took over. He says I am angry that it is taking so long to reach customer service.

When he stood in line for the first time for 54 minutes on Monday this week, he tried again a quarter of an hour later. Then he waited more than half an hour, but even then he did not arrive.

– People have other things to do than standing in line for a long time to get it, Alaoui notes.

– I can’t wait for the binding period to expire

He himself has a lockout period for a few more months, but if it continues as it is now, he doubts he will continue as a Telia customer.

– I’m looking forward to the binding period ending, he says.

They should increase staff if that is the problem, because they should be available for customer service – without having to wait long on the phone to arrive.

Alai says he prefers to speak to customer service over the phone, and therefore has not tried to reach them on other platforms. Mostly Alaei has been satisfied with the services provided by Get/Telia, but says he has had problems with the new Telia fund several times. The customer explains that the box is very slow, and often the picture is cut off or the picture and sound do not match.

– The only way to get the box working normally again is to pull the plug and wait about ten seconds before plugging it back in. But he says it only seems like an hour, a day, or maybe a week before problems arise again.

He says he received a new chest, without helping either. Alai tells Netavisen that when he tried to call Telia on Wednesday morning, he finally got through after only a few minutes.

Number of complaints

However, not only Alaei is not satisfied with waiting for help. A quick scroll through Telia’s Facebook page shows that there are many unhappy customers who are complaining that they have to stand in line for a long time to get help.

I have neither the energy nor the time to sit on the phone for a whole day to communicate with you. Someone wrote, I’ve now waited over 20 minutes.

– I’m not standing next to me, and I’ve been queuing up the phone for 45 minutes now without being asked to call. I don’t know my queue either. This is not a pleasant customer experience, as another wrote, writing that he gave up after such a long time.

– What is the expected waiting time to contact you? Standing in line for 20 minutes now, he writes third.

A fourth asks why Telia isn’t doing anything with customer service, after 20 minutes in the phone queue.

– Either people have too many to complain about having a waiting list, or you have too few people to do the job. Both are bad publicity for you. You write I hope someone else will contact me and give me an offer of better services.

I understand the frustration

Telia has come under criticism, and Daniel Barhom, CIO at Telia Norway, told Nettavisen that they are constantly working to create the best customer experiences.

There is nothing we want more than satisfying TV and broadband customers. In this case, we can’t help but deeply regret the difficulty of getting customer service from us. That’s not how it should be, and we understand customer frustration very well, he says.

Barhoum says they value committed customers, not least because they have the opportunity to connect with them directly via social media and other channels.

“Recently, we’ve unfortunately had a number of unwanted incidents in our stable network, which, among other things, have led to longer response times for our customer service, and we apologize,” he says.

He also points out that the past year and a half with epidemics and many epidemics in home offices, also creates challenges.

– It also stresses our skilled staff when wait times in certain periods are longer than usual, and customers get frustrated when they arrive, so we don’t want to feel that way.

Trying to increase the number of employees

Barhoum points out that the photo is not black and white either.

Our average customer service response time in September was six minutes. At the same time, we’re working full-time to reduce response time even further, and our goal is to respond to customer inquiries as quickly as possible — whether it’s by phone, email, or chat, he says.

However, Telia is facing recruitment challenges, and more employees are now leaving as the community opens up.

Many of our employees who worked with us during the pandemic are now returning to their original jobs, he says and points out:

Today, she is calling for her replacement as a result of intense competition in the labor market. This is why we are working hard these days to recruit new employees for our Telia Customer Center.

He also notes that in addition to working to reduce response time, they have implemented a number of measures to deal with customers more proactively, identifying and fixing the reasons why a customer is calling when something isn’t working. At the same time, they will upgrade end-user equipment for TV and broadband customers.

As for the problems that Alawi has with the TV box, it should work as usual, according to Barhoum – who is commenting on the issue in general and not the case of Alawi.

– We are constantly upgrading the box to ensure a better user experience. We will contact the customer directly to further investigate what might be wrong in this case, he says.