KEY POINTS:
It seems Vodafone's scheduled "pit stop" to overhaul its billing systems may already be taking its toll on customers.
I've heard from several Herald readers today who are complaining of disruption to services and of not being able to get through on Vodafone's customer service line due to overloading.
"Looks like Vodafone is having a meltdown this morning. My phone won't allow any calls out and the customer service line is overloaded. New billing stuff must have crocked the system," writes Ted.
"The service you have dialled is currently overloaded," I was told when I rang 0800 800 021 , Vodafone's customer service line a few minutes ago.
"We're upgrading our behind the scenes systems and tools, and that's good news for you," Vodafone says of its massive upgrade, which kicked off today. Well, it's not quite that good new for some. I wonder if this is the start of a major nightmare for Vodafone customers. It begs the question as to whether Vodafone has done enough to warn its customers of this pending service outage.
From today until the end of June, Vodafone is attempting something unprecedented for a company of its size. It's disabling a number of key services while it undertakes a project with its technology partner IBM to upgrade its billing system to handle the new services it wants to deliver. It's a bit like trying to change a car's head gasket while the car is traveling at 100km per hour.
It means that if you are an "on account" customer, you won't be able to get an accurate reading of your account balance or monitor your mobile data usage, enable your phone for roaming or switch plans.
The next ten days will see the worst of the disruption there's a list of things you can't do on the Vodafone website. But there's several weeks of disruption ahead which means you're going have to closely watch your phone usage, because you won't be able to constantly check your account balance.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Customers will put up with a level of disruption, but it seems a lot of people are unaware about the disruption to service, hence the flurry of calls to the help desk. What if there's some project creep and the June 30 deadline slips? What will the impact be on Vodafone's revenue as new sign-ups are delayed and people become a lot more conservative in their phone and data usage?
The billing upgrade gets under way just as Vodafone announces it is losing two key senior executives, director of sales Mark Giles and human resources director Neil Porteous. There's unlikely to be any relation between the departures and the billing upgrade, I understand both directors have recently had family bereavements, but it's always disruptive to lose senior staff, especially staff with the level of experience of the red giant these two had.
Are any of your Vodafone services disrupted today? Email me and let me know.
