Chrys
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has published
new guidelines for telecommunications companies (telcos) to improve customers’
experience.
The commission said the publication was in accordance with
section 57 of the NCC act to allow stakeholders to make contributions to the
policy.
The new NCC guidelines, titled, ‘Draft Quality of Service
Business Rules’, stipulate the minimum quality and standards of service,
associated measurements, and key performance indicators for measuring the
quality of service.
In the document, NCC directed telcos to attend to customers
within 30 minutes upon arrival at any of their service centres across the
country.
“For customer care
centres, waiting time to be physically attended to by relevant staff at
customer care centres is 30 minutes. The licensee shall provide means of
measuring the waiting time, starting from the time of arrival at the premises,”
the document reads.
The commission also said telcos must ensure that customers
can speak to a customer care representative within five minutes when they call
a telco’s helpline.
“Lines should not be more than three times; maximum number
of rings before a call is answered by either an IVR machine or a live agent
should not be more than five; and where a customer decides to speak to a live
agent, the maximum duration allowable on the queue/IVR should be 5 minutes
before answer,” NCC said.
“In exceptional cases
where a live agent may be unavailable within five minutes to answer the call, a
customer should be given an option to hang up to be called back within a
maximum time of 30 minutes.
“Customer care lines that can be accessible through 21 free
access numbers and if 1 number then it should accommodate multiple other
network calls at the same time.”
The commission said “subscribers may lose their numbers
within a year if they do not use it”.
“A subscriber line may be deactivated if it has not been used,
within six months, for a Revenue Generating Event (RGE), and If the situation
persists for another six months the subscriber may lose their number, except
for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE.”
“Deduction of line
rental charge is regarded by RGE.
To recover their lines,
the commission said subscribers must provide “proof of good reason for
absence is at liberty to request for line parking.”
On credit alert while on call, telcos are expected to send
“a single short-beep to the call initiator 2 minutes, and at 30 seconds to
termination of the ongoing call”.
It added that “low credit announcement to be played while
the call is being originated in a situation where the call cannot last up to 30
secs.”
Meanwhile, NCC did not state when guidelines would take
effect as
