<https://www.rte.ie/author/666389-will-goodbody/> By Will Goodbody
Business Editor
The chairman of Eir has apologised for poor customer service at the telecoms
company over the past year.
But David McRedmond said customer care is improving, with investment in
additional staff and systems beginning to have an impact.
"Customer care has had a difficult 2020, to put it mildly," Mr McRedmond
said.
Eir faced severe criticism from its customers and politicians during the
early stages of the pandemic because of deficiencies in its customer care.
Customers complained of having to wait long periods before having their
calls answered and slow follow up on complaints and orders.
Mr McRedmond said Eir had been doing the right thing for its customers by
deciding to in-source customer care, but it had underestimated the scale of
the challenge.
It would have been manageable, he said, and before the pandemic there was a
list of about 10 or more issues to address which became more than 100 issues
when Covid-19 struck.
"The challenges of establishing a new care team, managing calls and staff
remotely and a lockdown driven increase in call volumes was the perfect
storm," he said.
But Mr McRedmond also acknowledged that there had been an emotional deficit.
"Eir wants to do the best for its customers, but we didn't adequately feel
the impact of poor service on people's lives," he said.
"We are all really sorry for this and every effort is being made to ensure
eir's customers have a much better experience in the future," he added.
Mr McRedmond said most of the immediate issues have now been addressed, but
added that there are legacy issues, such as the number of systems across the
company, which will take longer to simplify.
The company has hired 235 new customer agents since July and continues to
recruit at its customer service centres in Cork, Limerick and Sligo.
It has also built online contact forms so customers do not need to ring call
centres and is upgrading its IT equipment and systems used by customer
service staff.
As a result, customer satisfaction scores having improved since the summer,
the company claimed, and complaints to the regulator have fallen between the
third and fourth quarters of 2020.
"You are going to see massive improvement in 2021 and 2022," Eir's chief
executive Carolan Lennon said.
Providing an update to the media on Eir's investment plans, Mr McRedmond
claimed that it is a much better company than its reputation and 2020 had
shown.
He said the company's investment is starting to bear fruit, with the fibre
to the home (FTTH) broadband rollout progressing.
Ms Lennon said 314,000 homes in 19 counties have now been passed by the
network, or 749,000 when its rural and other programmes are included.
60,000 premises in Dublin have also been passed by FTTH, setting Eir up to
compete more strongly with cable operator Virgin Media.
Ms Lennon said when complete, Eir's fibre network will cover 84% of premises
in the country.
She added that the company continues to work with National Broadband Ireland
to make its ducts and poles available for the rollout of the National
Broadband Plan.
In relation to mobile, the Eir boss said the company now has the largest 5G
network, covering 237 towns in 26 counties, with 55% population coverage.
She said the company continues its programme to upgrade its 4G network, with
99.6% of the population now covered and 97% of the land mass.
The company also spoke about the benefits of its acquisition of IT services
company, Evros, which it said would create a one-stop-shop for business
customers.
The last year also saw its GoMo budget mobile service reach the 250,000
customer milestone, although with other telcos entering the market Ms Lennon
acknowledged that the growth in new customers has slowed down.
Asked about when Eir's majority shareholders, NJJ, were likely to exit the
business, Ms Lennon said if you look at their record they do not sell, they
buy.
She said the owners believe in investment and infrastructure and they create
capital to do that.
"I see nothing but long-term thinking," she added.
Regarding the future of work at Eir, Ms Lennon said the company would be
moving to a hybrid model of home and office working, which would result in
it using fewer building than it has today.
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