GEORGE TOWN – The Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association (Fomca) has urged the Communications and Multimedia Ministry to phase out the automated response call system which many essential services in the public and private sectors have installed.
Its vice-president Datuk Koris K. Atan said this is because the system has become unfriendly to customers.
Instead, he told The Vibes, the digital services should be replaced by a well-trained call centre filled with human operators instead of machines.
Furthermore, he added that Malaysia could do this due to its relatively small population of around 33 million, compared with bigger markets such as China, India and the United States which have no choice but to utilise automated voice calls due to higher demand.
“I think our consumers had enough of dealing with automated response call services because the service is in the most deplorable condition. Nothing works and the majority of the callers just hang up because they are irritated with the service.
“We had enough of talking to machines,” he said in an interview with The Vibes.
He then singled out the MySejahtera call centre services and the ones used by essential services such as commercial banks, telecommunications firms, and Tenaga Nasional Bhd as well as institutions such as the Social Security Organisation (Sosco) and the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) for not functioning effectively.
“Even the Astro satellite television provider needs to do away with their automated services.”
Koris pointed out that since health authorities wanted the public to stay at home, it became obvious that television and electricity services would be fully utilised. Therefore, during high usage, technical issues would crop up, requiring the attention of the service providers.
Apparently, there were many instances where issues went unresolved with callers being forced to call back when the automated services cut them off invertedly.
He also said that referring the public to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter would also be counter-productive, as a similar bottleneck would likely occur online such as the recent registration exercise to opt-in for the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which caused the server to crash.
“It is a big annoyance as already, people are suffering from the depression of fighting Covid - 19, now the services which they pay for are not up to par.”
Instead of helping the callers, the automated services have confused them, many are senior citizens who probably saw their blood pressure shooting up, he said.
He said that in light of record level retrenchments due to Covid-19, more workers should now be allowed to work in manned call centres.
Compared with an automated message, these workers can resolve the queries made by the public in a more efficient manner.
The waiting time should also be reduced to a maximum of 10 minutes, said the consumer activist.
Citing an example, Koris said that he had advised complainants that they must now use three cell phones to reach an operator on the MySejahtera call centre as it is impossible to reach anyone, especially during peak hours between 9am and 5pm, while the waiting time is long.
He also urged the ministry to ensure that during lockdown, critical services such as banking and health centres operate around the clock.
A state domestic trade and consumer affairs division spokesperson urged consumers who are disgruntled with the services to write formal emails so they can investigate the matter.
“For now, we have yet to receive any formal complaint on the matter. We have a mechanism which can be initiated to investigate claims over shoddy caller services by banks and those who are offering after-sales services.” – The Vibes, June 18, 2021
