NCC reels out new guidelines for MTN, Airtel, Glo, others

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued new guidelines to telecommunication companies in Nigeria to improve customers’ experience and relations.

The telecom regulator said the new guidelines align with Section 57 of the NCC Act, which allows stakeholders to contribute to the policy.

NCC stipulates waiting time for customers at call centres

The new guidelines stipulate the minimum quality and standards of service associated with measurements and critical performance indicators for measuring the quality of service.

Per the NCC document, the regulator asked telecom firms to attend to customers within 30 minutes of arrival at any of their service centres across Nigeria.

NCC said: “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.

TheCable reports that 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; a 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.

Customers' lines to be deactivated after one year of inactive service

“In exceptional cases where a live agent may be unavailable within five minutes to answer the call, a customer should be given the option to hang up to be called back within a maximum time of 30 minutes.

“Customer care lines that can be accessed through 21 free access numbers and if 1 number then it should accommodate multiple other network calls simultaneously.”

“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.”

“RGE regards deduction of line rental charge. The Commission said subscribers must provide proof of a good reason for the absence is at liberty to request line parking.”

According to NCC, telcos are expected to send a short beep to the customer or call initiator for two minutes and 30 seconds to terminate the ongoing call.

“low credit announcement to be played while the call originated in a situation where the call cannot last up to 30 secs,” NCC said.