Notwithstanding the digital divide prevalent in our country, for many, voice and data connectivity are necessities of life along water and electricity far more important to some extent than food. I do not know about you, but I know many others like me easily losing appetite even, when having to face power, water and connectivity outages with no access to backup services.

What is more frustrating is having those outages occurring closer to or outside normal office hours, say from four in the afternoon on weekdays or twelve on a Saturday or any other time on Sunday. The frustration is owing to many service providers limiting their (onsite) support to office hours on weekdays mainly.

If ever you did not know you had comorbidities, wait until you have deadlines to meet and these outages occur outside those “normal” office hours, then assess your health afterwards. Living in South Africa means investing, not only in these primary services, but having backups too for all your needs to avoid having burst arteries. With these “basic” services already so expensive for many, who would have sufficient resources to invest even in backup solutions? By Nimroth Gwetsa, 31 January 2021.

If “free” services such as Google, now so tightly integral to every aspect of our lives, can have such high redundancy, why do many paid services we consume not have such high levels of redundancy? The uptime of services from Google would make you want them providing and managing all other basic services needed. Perhaps our economic performance and unemployment rate would not be as underwhelming as they are now. The kind of outstanding service performance we receive from companies such as Google has made the adage, “you get what you pay for” false and redundant.

I know with this statement, I could be accused of pricing my privacy cheaply, but truth be told, in exchange for their detailed knowledge of my online consumption and interactions with their services, I enjoy an almost “always on” daily, weekly, monthly, and even many years of uninterrupted service from them than I do from consuming services from those taking hundreds, if not thousands from my account regularly.

Something is not right with “paid for” services. As consumers, we are swindled. Some may argue that we are given poor service because there is no competition. Again, I would point out that companies such as Google are monopolies, yet their services are outstanding. It does not surprise me that these companies managed to grow their footprint and share of the market so rapidly. This rapid expansion cannot be attributed to their investors injection of capital alone, but their focused and customer-centric strategies as well.

Consumers are naturally drawn to service providers going beyond expectations. I do not know why many companies, especially large ones with little competition, do not learn from Google and adopt similar strategies. Perhaps we need understanding of incentive schemes in place at companies such as Google to enable service providers in our country learn about areas they too need to transform to improve quality of services delivered to consumers. Giving higher levels of customer service is not a unilateral gain for consumers and a loss to companies, but a gain for everyone as shown by performance of “freely” available services.

At best, if companies providing such basic services consumers are highly dependent on cannot increase the redundancy of services, can they not, at least, increase operating hours of their “on-site” support up to ten at night on weekdays and five on weekends including Sundays? Depending on severity of the outage and need for the solution by the consumer, service providers can even charge a small fee for provision of prioritised response.

Perhaps the adage, “each to their own” not only governs our choices in life but dictates levels of financial sacrifice we need to make to experience the kind of service we need. To have such higher levels of redundancies or support, one needs to make a financial sacrifice. It somehow shows that the more we earn, the higher the expenses of our basic life needs and the more unsustainable life in suburbia becomes.

Of all challenges one can experience, nothing is more frustrating than exposure to incompetent staff from the service provider. Incompetence intensifies the pain because not only is the problem unresolved, but one starts wondering if such incompetence is not the reason for unstable and costly services given in the first place. As human beings, we should be more tolerant and show humility to one another. Service providers too, need to treat consumers with respect and know the quality of services they give to consumers.

Consumers are generally forgiving and resilient. Budget conscious consumers tend to be intolerant of service providers not giving them value for the money they are spending than consumers with more resources. Budget conscious consumers want the most for the little they spend and are sensitive to offers given. The wealthy, on the other hand, are more responsive to the quality and responsiveness of service given for to them. Their willingness to spend higher on services should be rewarded with more stable, available, and secure services all the time.

Nowadays, many companies do not even care but treat premium services as though they are “budget” services. I do not advocate for different treatment of people, but I want service providers to consider the sacrifice consumers are making to acquire services from them. Such a sacrifice should equally be rewarded with diligence and care.

Is that too much to ask?