Peninsula - 20/5/2006

Qatar Telecom will undergo a major switch announcement change to provide a uniform message and voice prompt system for its customers, a company spokesman, said here on Wednesday.

In line with Qtel's focus for 2006 — Customer Service — the switch-based announcements have been made more customer friendly and given a uniform voice profile in order that customers can identify more closely with Qtel's customer service.

"Qtel is keen to make its services as customer friendly as possible. The changes in the announcements have been done to give it a single voice identity that the customer can identify with; and at the same time make the regular announcements simpler and easier to comprehend," said Mustafa Al Qatami, Manager, Public Relations at Qtel.

The announcement change project is to be rolled out in phases. "Callers to 111 will already have noticed a refreshing and warmer Interactive Voice Response and in the next phase, Wire-line announcements will now also be changed, making them more self-explanatory and with clearer messages avoiding, wherever possible, the use of technical terms," he said.

Qtel customers can expect changes on all Hala-related announcements later in the summer, which will be the result of final phase of the project.