Here's a great SME-Nation idea! Actually side with your customers when it comes to your service! Here are a few things that you can incorporate to your operation to do this.
1. Treat DSL downtime for SME's as a serious affair. I imagine a company such as yours would do everything it could if clients such as major call center companies and banks lose their internet connection. It would be great if you could extend such professionalism to small SME's who have as much to lose (or even more) than these big-time companies.
2. Whenever your DSL service goes off-line for a certain SME member, immediately include in your billing the proper compensation for your service downtime. Don't leave it to your customers to file for a refund whenever your service goes offline. From my humble point of view, I cannot see any real reason operating in such a way would be difficult for you.
3. If your SME member is unable to pay his or her bills for two months, how about a little leniency on your part when it comes to forcing him or her to catch up with the bills? Right now, your SOP for such a situation is this:
a. cut off the customer's connection after he or she has not paid for two months
b. if he or she is still not able to pay the bills after two weeks, send a letter containing a thinly veiled lawsuit threat to them
c. once the customer is able to pay, bill him or her for having his or her connection restored.
This SOP is irritating and downright oppressive. Only someone completely removed from the actual realities of this country and its economy could agree to such an SOP. Granted that these steps do provide for a strong deterrent to SMEs who are late in their payments (God forbid your company should lose out on the 10,000.00+PHP that your SME customer was not able to pay after several months of faithful payment), the measures you take are just too harsh for an SME trying to establish itself in a highly competitive market.
Furthermore, the "almost-strong-arming" way that your company treats customers who are late in their payments make your company look even more "uglier" to your SME clients when they come face to face with the lazy and unreliable customer service that you provide.
For instance, I have never been so insulted as when one of your representatives chided me for not following up on my bills in your main office after several months passed without any bill delivery service from your company. Even if checking on my bill involved as simple a task as dialling some numbers on my phone, I believe that I have the right to demand that you deliver your bills to my doorstep given that I pay for it (obviously). Even the bank (to which I owe even more money and whose service I am more reliant on) remained courteous enough to deliver me monthly bills.
I have also been the irritated recipient of your unbelievable customer service. For an SME like me, a single day, half a day or a quarter of a day that I am unable to provide service means a great big hit on my capability to generate income. Is this too hard to understand for a major company like yours? Your company regularly disconnect your service to the very day when your SME customer become overdue for payment. How can it be acceptable for you to you to tell your SME clients that their critical technical problems will not be getting attention (note: not fixed BUT be given attention) immediate technical attention? Your lack of technical personnel is not an excuse, by the way.
This is to say nothing of the quality of your technical personnel. FYI, some of your SME customers are actually technically adept and know when they are being lied to and offered "placebo" solutions.
I thank you for your time (if you have read my message this far which I sincerely doubt). I do hope that you consider the contents of this message. I assure you that taking them as constructive criticisms and implementing something in your SOP to compensate for these problems will surely make your PLDTSME-NATION efforts something more than a marketing strategy.
For the record, I am an SME customer of PLDT and I have this to say to anyone who wants to enrol in your service:
When PLDT DSL works, it works awesome and it is one of the best deal around.
When PLDT DSL does NOT work (and this will inevitably happen), the tech-support will take a long time, you will be billed for the days that you have no DSL connection and you had better have been burning their 171 line for tech-support or they won't refund you (they base their refunds according to your 171 tech-support requests apparently, go figure). And, when you get the refund, you will most probably get around 50% of your monthly bill amount, even though you had been experiencing problems for more than a month.
Also, if you have PLDT DSL, you better make sure you are able to pay their monthly bills on time (even if you are experiencing connection problems). If you are not able to do this, not only will you be disconnected from their service, they will also sue you if you haven't paid them two weeks after your disconnection.
One last piece of advice, do not EVER go for a lock-in for your PLDT DSL service, no matter what kind of freebie they throw your way. Once you start getting connection problems, you will regret having given up your right to move to a less dictatorial DSL service.
The above has always been and will always be my standard reply to anyone who asks me about connecting to PLDT.
Sincerely yours,
About-To-Quit PLDT-DSL SME Customer
PS: I am quitting PLDT DSL because your lousy service got me up to my neck in debt after you gave me unreliable DSL service for 2 whole months (your DSL service always managed to disconnect during peak hours too!) Thank you so much for getting my SME known around the neighbourhood as the "AOL-cafe". AOL being Always Off Line!
PPS: I am posting this mail to istorya.net just as soon as I get off work
PPPS: I am currently working AND running my SME just so I am able to catch up to my bills, not least of which is my monthly PLDT bill. I hope someone appreciates the humour in this situation. I certainly don't.
Received PLDT SMENation marketing flyer. Got their mail, mailed them this.
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