Friday, March 06, 2009

Test Call

The other day, I was chatting online with Kikey, the Malaysian blogger in London. It was 2.45 pm, or 6.45 am UK time. She told me that she was woken up by a call from Malaysia, but the caller apparently dialed a wrong number. “How could that be? UK numbers are so different?” she asked.

I was hardly surprised. I have been working in telecommunication industry for many years. We regularly make test calls to all over the world to check line quality.

Imagine this hypothetical case:

A relative of Kikey called her a day earlier. She was not happy as the line was too noisy, so she filed a complaint to Maxis, the mobile phone operator. The customer service officer of Maxis raised a “trouble ticket” (TT), and passed it to the engineer on duty. Further, there was a rule in Maxis which stated that all TT pertaining to customer complaints must be answered within 4 hours.

Kikey’s relative filed the complaint at 11 am. The engineer on duty did some troubleshooting. At 2 pm, or 6 am UK time, he reluctantly made a call to Kikey, and said, “Hello, may I speak to Katherine please? … Oops! Sorry, wrong number!” He hung up the phone, and breathed a sigh of relief, “After the troubleshooting, the line appears clear…”


So, if you receive a call from an unknown Philippines number, chances are it is another test call. Don’t yell at the caller for disturbing you, as he is merely doing his job, very reluctantly.


P/S Can any lenglui (pretty gals) please give me you mobile phone number? I want to make test calls to you

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9 comments:

  1. Kikey Loo3/06/2009 4:02 AM

    Thanks for explained that so clearly. (^.^)

    But I hope that they will look at the oversea time zone before they call! :p

    p/s: have you make friends with someone from ur test call? hehe.. :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous3/06/2009 9:47 AM

    hmmm was wondering y cant they test it with their partners or other telcos there instead of making prank call like this...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3/06/2009 10:23 AM

    didn't receive such call before...
    but once hor,
    a china lady phone me up ask me need service not :S
    siao one!

    ReplyDelete
  4. iamthewitch3/06/2009 11:41 AM

    Wow, I didn't know the telco will make test calls with random numbers :P Luckily I haven't met with such incidents before. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Shingo T3/06/2009 2:10 PM

    That's enriching.

    Does this apply too to the telemarketers who call me from nowhere? They were just trying to "test" the line. =p

    ReplyDelete
  6. khengsiong3/06/2009 8:33 PM

    kikey
    Sometimes they (we) are under pressure to do the job fast.

    Unfortunately haven't made any friends from test calls yet.

    nic
    Sometimes need to try different numbers.

    annant
    What service? Lesbian service?

    witch
    Actually the chance is slim.

    shingo
    I suppose telemarketers want to talk to the people. Unless their target customers are women and when men answer the calls, they hang up. And vice versa.

    ReplyDelete
  7. foongpc3/07/2009 1:35 AM

    Oh, this is new to me! I don't know of such things! Thanks for posting about it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lisa3/07/2009 9:57 PM

    so they do that???

    I didnt know that, they should have just inform customer about that test calls mah...

    apalah....

    ReplyDelete
  9. 昕倩3/13/2009 10:43 PM

    i prefer you vusit my blogs then call...heee

    ReplyDelete

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