Weird situation, I just finish talking with someone over at Tonfön, and later in the day, someone over at TCC that I believe the differentiating factor between their services will be Customer Service, and guess what ? I get to test the theory immediately.

It's the beginning of the month so it's time to make sure all those bills are paid off, just incase someone decides to go around disconnecting stuff. I first visit TCC to pay my regular telephone bill, and then afterwards visit Shoreline Communications/Tonfon to pay for my electricity bill, and my 'cable' television.

TCC Cashier greets me, I ask if he can check my telephone number and the outstanding amount. Wow, not so much, so I ask him if I can pay, and then he asks me for the phone number again (a reconfirmation?) before starting the receipting process. I suggest he talks to the programmers and get them to fix that stupid situation (i.e. seems stupid to not allow someone to go directly from an account outstanding bill to a payment screen.) He smiles and before I can walk out the door one of the receptionists asks me aside to explain an issue with one of my other phone accounts.

She hands me a form where I can initiate solution to the problem, and that's finished. Proactive customers service, great!!!

I am then at the Shoreline office to make those bill payments. I queue as is the normal case anywhere. I ask the girl at the counter whether she can check my account and she quickly finds both of them on the computer (one for each separate building at home.) [Note, they have the query to payment mechanism discussed earlier for TCC.] She makes the receipt and I'm due a few coins change so I ask her if she can put the whole lot on the account and she quickly punches it all through. Good stuff, we're rolling.

Now, I have to go to another counter where they are using a computer connected to the same network, to take payments for the Television Service. It's a bit stupid, and even more so since the counters are one step apart from each other, but anyhow we go through this every month so let's continue.

• Problem #1. The Queue has risen to THREE and there's still no one at the "OPEN" counter, nor anyone trying to inform us why there's no one at the counter (although there's about five employees wandering around like idiots.) [Note: other employees walking around look like idiots when you yourself have to stand around looking like an idiot queuing to an empty counter.]
• Problem #2. I have to physically pause someone's work to ask them to go find someone to serve us. [She was behind a 'closed' counter counting money, although she seemed to get up from her desk every two minutes to wander around before coming back to recount that money. Looking busy people, busy doing nothing.]
• Problem #3. She promptly looks around, tapping her chin until she sees someone who is responsible for counter and then tells me, oh, that's the girl in charge get her. [Her statement. I am not taking ownership of this problem, I really am being bothered by your intrusion into my specialised work of counting this money until the notes are worn.]
• Problem #4. Now, I have to chase this other Shoreline/Tonfon employee and ask her whether she can come to the counter and take our money (where else but in Tonga do you have to go ask for someone to take your money ?) The acknowledgement I get is some sort of nod.
• Problem #5. It seems obvious that this girl was dealing with a friends problem, unrelated to her primary task. Well and good, common enough thing for Tonga. Now, she has to make sure we realise that she is doing us a favour by taking our money.

Ki hono kaungame'a: "Ki'i tali ange hena kau ha'u ki he kaume'a ko 'eni 'oku si'i 'enau katakii."

To her friend: "Wait there a second while I deal with these impatient people.

Well and good Tonfön TV.

Truth be known ? The only reason I'm still paying for your Tonfon television is because I doubt I'd be in the country long enough to make the investment in the competition's Sky TV, Satellite Television, practical.

Tonfön's Television Service is haemorrhaging, from a nice bill that was reaching $70.00 they've dropped subscription fees to $50 while adding 2 extra channels. The people who were paying have moved along to a better service. If the switching cost for me wasn't so high, trust me I wouldn't waste your time paying for your service.

It sure doesn't help to get rude, crappy service as mentioned above. You are definitely helping me with my decision for next month's service.

Visit bTonga

The Internet Service Problem.

As mentioned to TCC staff, Tonfön have one major advantage over TCC when it comes to Internet or Data Traffic. Tonfön literally lives and dies on having the Internet service as efficient as possible. There's a certain level of mediocrity that can exist @ Tonfön's service, but any serious problems with Tonfön's internet facilities immediately causes problems for their bread and butter Voice/Mobile Phone Service.

For Tonfön, Data must work and must work well. For TCC, where voice is carried over a different circuit and local/international equipment, Data can be abysmal and it has no real effect on the bread and butter voice service. There is likely to be abundant subscriptions to the dialup to make the Internet Service profitable already, making it efficient has limited value to IT employees.

Up to now, Tonfön's superior data infrastructure with admittedly better staff has helped Tonfon provide a much more stable and efficient data product to broadband customers.

With a mass market roll out of lower rate/cost 'broadband' internet services, TCC are doing two things to disrupt the current data ecosystem.

1. Enabling services for more customers increasing options for existing and future broadband customers.

2. Stability and Service quality is now no longer possible with a small team. Quality Service now requires not only good infrastructure at the service provision point, but good service at a number of different customer points.

Both Tonfön and TCC have been horrible when it comes to providing decent service at the customer endpoint, as a customer for both services we were able to get away with things purely because we knew a little more than both on what to do with their equipment on our end. One brilliant example of horrible service by Tonfön? When we subscribed to the Internet service we were charged and paid for the installation of our antennae and cabling to our cable box/router. When the installers came in, they were instructed to pull a line from a nearby antennae operated by another company. In the evening when they shutdown their computers and equipment, we'd lose our Internet Service, brilliant work Tonfön (sic). One brilliant example of horrible service by TCC ? Their DSL modems were hardware speed limited to the speed you paid for, but there was a lot of traffic that was spilling between the different customers on their DSL systems that should not. Essentially, you get limited to 64K and then TCC fills half of your bandwidth wth traffic from their other customers not directed to your servers and should have been filtered by TCC's misconfigured equipment but your complaints fall on deaf ears and you have to live with paying for 64K and getting effective service of 22K or similar.

With their DataAnywhere service, TCC have shot out of the gate with an innovative approach by outsourcing customer end point servicing using Saia Fonua's Dataline Systems. If they can train and monitor the service process, TCC can easily improve endpoint service significantly.

The Tonfön Service Response ?

TCC have made a great move by pushing out the same service portfolio that Tonfon had intended to release, now they sit and worry about Tonfon's response. I told them that Tonfon can hit much lower which is only going to be good (at least price wise) for the Tonga public.

But, if I were Tonfon I'd get the friggin customer service working properly before fighting on price. What's the whole point of arguing over pennies if (as with the Tonfon TV issue) all you end up doing is pushing your customers away with shoddy customer service. Tonfon have lost a number of their good field installers, essentially because they couldn't survive on the pay (as if anyone is paying installers TOP$5,000 a year or some such amount to do client installs.) Now, you have 3 x underpaid, underskilled installers running around doing revisiting a customers installation problem 5 to 10 times a year, the same work that one well trained, higher paid employee could have done once and left a customer feeling eminently satisfied and excited about your service.

The solution to our customer service crapola from TCC and Tonfön ? Who ever pays the decent package to get good people and keep them will get the happy customers, and the happy customers pay on time and invest more in their infrastructure increasing their dependence and lining your pockets. If you pay peanuts, don't expect anything but monkeys.

Side Note:

It used to really annoy me that you'd get a power bill from the Tonga Electric Powerboard for $XX.91 and the person would give you back $0.05 seniti change or no change at all, knowing he had no change of coins but not crediting the unreturned change into the account payment. I always thought thats a great way to make extra money (collect the left overs for the day and it soon turns into a nice little profit maker for the clerk.)