bt reach a new low (RE: mac codes)

Skree said:
Any moron can annoy everyone and cause customers to leave, but taking a furious customer, calming them down, sorting their problem, and cheering them up whilst still looking after company interests and remaining within the rules of what we are allowed to say can be very difficult. i'm ashamed to say a lot of my colleagues cannot do this, i am always hearing them arguing and shouting and getting frustrated with customers - its always the same people. I'd never do that, in fact some customers have commented on how calm,and serene i sound for a call centre operative. To which i usually reply "yeah, why be stressed and shouty, all that does is stress you up, then you stress me up, then i stress you up and nothing gets done." - i am perhaps not as formal as some of my colleagues but it works.
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these colleagues of yours are obviously in the wrong job if they cannot keep their cool under pressure. admittedly my call centre experience is very limited as i only worked in one for 3 months. but some of the people had been there for years and not once did i ever hear anyone lose their temper or raise their voice. and by gum did we get some angry customers. i worked for dyson and it was not uncommon for people to ring up having just had their vacuum cleaner go bang with a nice cloud of smoke or had an electric shock from it. :D

maybe a training issue? i was trained solidly for 2 weeks before i was even allowed to go on the spare parts hotline.... :p

and back to bt, the mac code department was most definitely english. no language barriers at all. :)
 
Yeah BT MAC hd is.

Yep, definitely training issues, although.. our training path goes

Foundation: telephone billing advisor (4 weeks training)
CS: customer services level 1 (additional 11 weeks)
Broadband Billing = CS + foundation broadband (additional 2 weeks)
PSTN Service: Customer services level 2 (additional 7 weeks)
Broadband Service : PSTN + Broadband customer services L1 (me) (additional 2 weeks)
Training assistant (floorwalker)
Manager
Sector manager

so by the time people are at our level they've had 6 months of training, as well as training completed online at our desks (typically 1.5hr per month but can be 6-7hr)

With our company the problem is largely upper management. Sector manager level. Mine is a complete.. i cannot describe him without lapsing into great amounts of swearing, but muppet will suffice for here. Investment time in advisors (training, team meetings, breifings, one to one support) which are really important in our job, particularly in telecoms, its such a fast moving industry at the moment have suffered, and dissapeared.

This is, AFAIK, happening at BT at the moment. they have had a "service crisis" for about 18 months now. Caused, IMO, by poorly selected, poorly trained agency advisors (i'm agency for a few more months too), the "Indian Strategy", and very poorly appointed upper management (did you see bt head of CS on watchdog?? made to look like a idiot and a liar - reminded me almost of the cook report) who have no idea how to run a customer services department, and in some cases, even an office type situation.
The telecoms industry is suffering a change of philosophy at the moment too. It is going away from the understanding, flexible, trying hard to please way of doing business, to penalising, generalising, not understanding, cost cutting, despicable contract terms and conditions, and having no responsibility for poor service. This is happening across all "budget" providers, and has been for some time. Hence the media fuore about late payment charges, contract cessation fees, and fees for non-payment by direct debit.

I'll ask all of you though, when you call these companies, bear in mind that (uk advisors) are usually customers too, and it suxs just as hard for us as it does for you, in fact worse, because we HAVE TO explain it to you, and make you accept it, without agreeing with you against these strategies. we HAVE TO defend the things that tbh cause us exactly the same stress and pain.. once every 317 seconds.. lol :D

/sucker for punishment
 
Teal said:
I'm all for being polite when talking to call centre staff, but there needs to be some recognition that there is no obligation for the customer to do anything more than ask for a MAC and provide sufficient information to positively identify him to his ISP.

I know that an ISP may very much want to find out where the customer is going and why and perhaps try and stop him leaving but the customer does not have to co-operate and should not have their time wasted by repeated attempts to engage in conversations that do not lead directly to the issue of a MAC.

Ask by all means, but if the customer says 'no, I just want my MAC' then it is rude to persist in ignoring his wishes.
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Explain to me then why, in my own experience, I had my MAC in less then 3 minutes with none of the hassle marc2003 went through?

All I can say is that where I and marc2003 differed is that I gave the guy I spoke to a minute to do his job (regardless of what he said about BT) before I politely declined his offer and obtained my MAC.

**Edit**
marc2003, I'm in no way implying that you an arrogant, rude or annoying person.
 
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Zico said:
**Edit**
marc2003, I'm in no way implying that you an arrogant, rude or annoying person.
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well it's quite obvious this woman was a loose cannon. i've had 3 separate phone calls now apologising for her behaviour. regardless of what i'm like there simply is no excuse to lie like she did. i was throwing everything she said back in her face by quoting the BT website back at her yet she still persisted. why?

if i was rude/arrogant/obnoxious why didn't she just refuse to deal with me? that's what i used to do with abusive customers. there simply is no excuse for lying through your backteeth. :)
 
I'm not able to say why the women you spoke came over as poorly as you describe.

I can however understand why she was talking about BT Broadband coming top of BBC's Watchdog poll. This is due to two reasons (one of which is my personal opinion):

1) BT Broadband is the biggest ISP (as far as I can say - things may have obviously changed since the time of the program) in the UK. With so many users BT BB is bound to have more satisfied users than those of a smaller ISP (even if the smaller ISP's users are so happy that they are willing to have the babies of the CEO - well you get the idea).

2) Watchdog is a completely *@#$ program in my opinion. The program in which they compared ISPs was just a complete waste of time. If you head over to ADSLguide (sorry ThinkBroadband) and find the archive news about the show, you will see just how poorly people felt about both the program and the poll.

Watchdog links:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/archive/1.html?q=watchdog
 
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i couldn't care less what she said about watchdog. given the millions of customers bt have she may well have been telling the truth. however the following lies are what got me

1) she could count the number of complaints bt have had on one hand (ok this doesn't bother me as it has no effect on me but it's still crap all the same)

2) i can't have a mac code. she need the the details of my new isp and bt will handle the migration. you know as well as i do this is not how migration works. imagine i was gullible enough to belive her, handed over my details and put the phone down? what now....

3) i persist and demand my mac code. ok she says, but if i give it to you now, bt reserve the right to cease my broadband connection within 48 hours.

please don't tell me you can defend this behaviour? :)
 
marc2003 said:
1) she could count the number of complaints bt have had on one hand (ok this doesn't bother me as it has no effect on me but it's still crap all the same)
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I agree. This is a load of rubbish but, as you say, you can ignore this and move on.

2) i can't have a mac code. she need the the details of my new isp and bt will handle the migration. you know as well as i do this is not how migration works. imagine i was gullible enough to belive her, handed over my details and put the phone down? what now....
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This point is a little mixed. Under the migration rules, any ISP must supply you with a MAC code on request within 5 working days. Note the 5 working days line.

On 2 separate calls to BT I got a MAC there and then over the phone. BT BB were well within there rights to tell me that it would take up to 5 working days to provide this to me but they didn't. I've read of other ISPs telling people that the will receive a MAC via post or email and to allow a few days for this to arrive.

As for telling BT BB who I was looking to migrate to, I didn't see a problem with this. Yes you may then be fed some drivel about why BT BB are better than X or Y ISP, but, in the long run BT BB will see why people are leaving and should try and make amends.

Finally in a way BT do handle your migration. BT BB hand over the migration order to BT Wholesale who, in turn, hand it over to BT Openreach. BT Openreach then hook you up with the new ISP (as plainly as I can put it). You can blame OfCom for the broken-down business units.

For all those with MAC queries take look here.

3) i persist and demand my mac code. ok she says, but if i give it to you now, bt reserve the right to cease my broadband connection within 48 hours.
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As with the first point, this is rubbish, more so it's a definite lie. It's something that definitely shouldn't have been said.

please don't tell me you can defend this behaviour? :)
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I can't (and won't) defend some of what you have posted here. I can only put my own experience across and try and see it from the other side of the phone.
 
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Well, to point out your frustration its along the lines of what my mam got today.

She signed up to a bulldog contract around 1.2 years ago and now wanted to move to sky (As thats what i'm on).

She rang bulldog up to request the mac code and the reply was "your not a Buldog customer your a Cable & Wireless" customer.

At this point the bulldog representitive give my mam a "Cable & Wireless" number somy mam rang that... guess what no such number available. Rings then just goes dead!!!

So she rings up bulldog again saying that the number does not work, the customer representitive checks the number, "it is right" the customer representitive said! My mam said it must be wrong because it rings and then goes dead. So my mam told the customer representitive to ring the number themselves so they did.... line goes dead! So they have been giving out this "Cable & Wireless" number out to customers that been requesting their mac code....... NO NO NO NO NO This has been going on now for "21 Days" and counting!!! offcom letter is now in the process of been wrote and typed up and emailed/faxed/post to see what can be done about it.

PS. are there any bulldog customers in this same situation (checking).
 
Zico said:
Note the 5 working days line.
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oh definitely. i knew that and would have been fully satisfied if i was told my mac was going to be with me within 5 working days. i wasn't demanding it on the spot. :)

anyway, we're kind of going round in circles here. i've had my apology (x3) and i've got my mac code. as much as i despise bt at this moment in time, i realise the majority of the support staff are doing the best they can. infact i'd hate to be doing that job right now. because i'm pretty certain most of them haven't a clue what's going on through no fault of their own..... :p
 
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zen62619 said:
I knew there was a forum for stuff like that!!! I forgot the link and didn't save it in my favs. Cheers!!
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No problem. Hope you get things sorted.

marc2003 said:
anyway, we're kind of going round in circles here.
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Our new ISP journey begins here. Lets both hope it's a better experience :D.
 
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Zico said:
Finally in a way BT do handle your migration. BT BB hand over the migration order to BT Wholesale who, in turn, hand it over to BT Openreach. BT Openreach then hook you up with the new ISP (as plainly as I can put it). You can blame OfCom for the broken-down business units.
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Actually, Wholesale do IPStream-IPStream migrations (nothing changes as far as Openreach are concerned, you're still with BTw the "LLUer"), and it depends entirely on the language used - if the CSR used "we" then it's an outright lie (since BT Retail != BT Wholesale, and the latter handles the migration), whereas "BT" is true (but considerably open to confusion).
The ideal would be if Wholesale and Retail had completely different names - the status quo with Chinese walls does no one any good.

Lots of ISPs ask where you're going/come from though (Zen asked it when I migrated in, and Plusnet asked when I migrated out, though both were online)...I guess it must provide them with some meaningful statistics.
 
tolien said:
Actually, Wholesale do IPStream-IPStream migrations (nothing changes as far as Openreach are concerned, you're still with BTw the "LLUer"), and it depends entirely on the language used - if the CSR used "we" then it's an outright lie (since BT Retail != BT Wholesale, and the latter handles the migration), whereas "BT" is true (but considerably open to confusion).
The ideal would be if Wholesale and Retail had completely different names - the status quo with Chinese walls does no one any good.
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I thought Openreach were the ones that would move the lines around and work for BT Wholesale in a similar fashion to Transco working on the gas pipes but working for any reseller.

Lots of ISPs ask where you're going/come from though (Zen asked it when I migrated in, and Plusnet asked when I migrated out, though both were online)...I guess it must provide them with some meaningful statistics.
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Exactly my thoughts. I was a little surpised to find that on the BT.com landline order tracker, on the date I requested my MAC, it mentioned Sky within the description.

Description -- Product name ----- Quantity -- Cost -- Rental
PROVIDE ----- MAC GAINED SKY --- 1 ------- £ 0.0 -- £ 0.0
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that bt advisor will have been disciplined for that. If that has been done on multiple calls she will be disciplined. The things she said are non-compliant with the regs of the comms industry.

The whole reason BT wholesale, Retail, and Openreach are seperate is supposed to aid competition, giving, under Equivalence Of Input regulations (EOI) all SP's and licenced operators exactly the same access to Wholesale (broadband) and openreach (engineering) as BT Retail. This is supposed to cure problems for other companys customers. At the moment these regs are newish and the industry is in a transitional period which is causing major problems at the moment. Trouble is the solutions are not adequate and the whole thing is one great big mess.

I tried to get sky to sort out my brand new connection - the wireless signal is v.v.v poor, and they were useless, useless and more useless. its not just bt. Sky are bad too
 
tolien said:
Lots of ISPs ask where you're going/come from though (Zen asked it when I migrated in, and Plusnet asked when I migrated out, though both were online)...I guess it must provide them with some meaningful statistics.
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Virgin.net asked me. The guy on the phone (British) said "Internet? Who are they?" :(
 
Zico said:
I thought Openreach were the ones that would move the lines around and work for BT Wholesale in a similar fashion to Transco working on the gas pipes but working for any reseller.
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No. For starters, the line doesn't move around, and Openreach don't have any influence over your connection to the DSLAM.
 
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