More In One Installation

Live reporting from AMK: Paid for 6 Mbps, got 7 Mbps! But it’s 4pm in the afternoon.

Live blogging an installation can be interesting as well. This will be my first post via ADSL. The technician keeps saying that he’s going to resign due to the terrible back room support he’s getting when running in the field. Like, admitting to mental hospital, taking no pay leave break, etc. Sounds stressful – is it a technical issue? Or process issue? He doesn’t know. At least broadband works after the 2wire box restarted itself several times.

It must have been an eventful week for the field force – since customer service lines aren’t getting through and online complains are limited in characters, they become the unofficial complaint central whenever there’s a MIO outage. As an aside, Chris gave me a great tagline recently: Always complain about the service when the service provider calls you (not call them to complain). These front line workers could really be under appreciated in that sense having to front the company.

Worse part, he himself was put on hold for 10 – 20 minutes to get to his back room support team. Throughly a Malay Singaporean, between the “teruk”s and the “susah”s, lies a simple intention to deliver a quality service that he can’t control. And I quote: “I think it’s the younger generation la, not you la, but the older people always want to deliver a good service, younger ones like to look at the big picture”. What an interesting perspective – who exactly has the big picture?

* * *

Some help eventually came, and he had to get another box since this one keeps reseting. The Mio TV logo is not high def enough, so it’s pixelated during startup. Through the mumblings on the phone, it seems like a process issue (something like my account is signed up wrongly) – I wonder if I’ve confused them by adding football the day after I signed up prior to install. Sophisticated as the system might have been, from the GUI that I saw in the Hello shop earlier when I was signing up for the service, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Maybe it’s a web form design thing.

More quotes of the day: “this piece of modem ah, go to their face and slap them”, “the old modem seems to be more stable” (apparently mine is the new “version 6” modem), “sometimes you have to speak to the modem, then the modem will speak to you”, “mati la like that”, “by August still like that, someone is going to get something, confirm going to go to parliament”, “I keep receiving SMS you know, say that we shouldn’t say bad things about SingTel”. -_-|||

Another thing he had to deal with is this “my starhub this”, “my starhub that” kind of thing, where the entire frame of reference for the service is being compared to SCV from A to Z. Like explaining to customer that the FTA channels can actually come from both lines, that TV has more than one input so you can have multiple boxes connected to it and switch it with your remote etc.

He complimented my phone line quality – MIO requires 18,000 Kbps from the last mile connectivity, and he’s getting 21,000 Kbps from my phone line. Good to know!

The 2nd modem performed much better (didn’t restart), but MIO TV was weird as is, so he had to contact his back room again, flush some settings again etc. The set top box is giving sound but a black screen. Down the staircase he went again to fetch another set top box.

* * *

Everything finally done within 2 hours.

Perhaps the most regrettable part of this experience is the sense that he has lost pride in his job. Lest we forget, the front line is also the people who receives compliments from customers when everything goes smoothly. Let’s give them the encouragement to continue providing their best service.

What speeds are you getting for your broadband these days, in the day and at night? Did you get a cup of water for your technician while he stare hopelessly at his laptop? Did he or she feel appreciated at the end of his work?

Update

It’s 9:20pm, VOD is running, and my broadband is still:

Ok that’s all for today.