Fakoyejo OlalekanThe Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued new guidelines to the telecommunications companies operating within the country.
According to the NCC, any line that has an inactive Revenue Generating Event (RGE) for six months will be deactivated. Should it persist for another six months, the owner of the line will lose the number.
To reactive the line, the user must provide “proof of good reason for absence is at liberty to request for line parking.”
The network providers were given the directive in a guideline document titled; ‘Draft Quality of Service Business Rules’, in accordance with section 57 of the NCC act to allow stakeholders to make contributions to the policy.
NCC said the guidelines are expected to improve the quality of service experienced by customers and also allow network providers to take decisions on inactive customers.
In the document, NCC disclosed: “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.”
The NCC further stated that customers must not be kept waiting for more than 30 minutes without being attended to at the customer care centre, while on the helpline, the wait time should not be more than five minutes.
“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 NCC document reads.
“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 explained further.
Also, NCC warned: “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.”
Furthermore, the telecommunications industry regulator also insisted that a customer, who initiated a call, should be made aware of their balance when they are left with two minutes and 30 seconds before the call ends.
“a single short-beep to the call initiator 2 minutes, and at 30 seconds to termination of the ongoing call” should be sent, NCC said, adding 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.”
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