KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 20): Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) has apologised to a customer who lodged a complaint yesterday and assured its customers that they are the group's utmost priority.

The customer, Caroleena D'Cruz, took the issue to Twitter, complaining about the difficulty her father had when dealing with the company's customer service to terminate a TM fixed line subscription.

"We would like to clarify that we have immediately reached out to Ms D'Cruz to address her and her father's concerns and have resolved the issue yesterday," TM said in a statement today in response to an article on theedgemarkets.com.

"We also would like to update that our acting group chief executive officer, Imri Mokhtar, and TM leaders personally paid a visit to the D'Cruz's family to make right on the unpleasant customer experience that clearly should not have happened," it added.

On Twitter, D'Cruz lamented that her wheelchair-bound 89-year-old father had to be brought to a TMPoint centre for the transaction in keeping with the TM policy of prohibiting any other individual, even a son or daughter, from representing the subscriber.

To add to the burden, she said, her father, who had been a TM subscriber for the past 50 years, was asked to go to another TMPoint centre because the staff at the first centre claimed that they could not terminate the subscription, resulting in her taking her father home as he had became exhausted by then.

TM, in its statement, stressed that customer service is the cornerstone of its business and as such, it will implement changes to its operating procedures to ensure a better customer experience.

"Our aim is to do everything we can to ensure that all employees who represent TM are empowered to serve customers with the best customer experience possible," it said.

TM declared that 2019 is the year it makes a renewed pledge to its customers, where customers will be put first and that Imri will take the lead to shape the mindset throughout the organisation.

"A new TM that admits its shortcomings and will continue to strive to do better; for our customers and all our stakeholders — to make life easier for a better Malaysia," it added.

Shares of TM closed up 8 sen or 2.77% today to RM2.97 for a market capitalisation of RM11.16 billion.