Customer Service

Ken

Ken

Ken

Associate
Joined
28 Apr 2004
Posts
1,067
Hi,

Early morning discussion to see what your opinions are on customer service.

Is it me or is customer service painfully poor and frustrating in general. I'd say 9/10 companies provide poor service. The 1/10 being the gem leaving you with peace of mind and possibly going beyond the call of duty.

By poor service it could be...

- Talking to some muppet over the phone or face to face who only had basic training provided by monkeys...sorry, trainers. Which leads on to...

- Talking to said muppet who doesn't know what they're talking about.

- The customer subsequently has to educate him.

- Here's a real pet hate...When you have to fight for not what you want but what you're entitled to.

- Don't you hate it when there's a lack of consistency.

- Compensation offered can really take the **** too.

In my opinion, customer service is shoddy across the board, whether it be insurance, ISP, mobile phone contract provider, tradesmen, local supermarket...whatever.

Very few companies I've dealt with know what they're talking about and cut out waffle and get straight to the point. If a job needs doing it should be quick and painless with a little something special so you'll go back to them.

It's good there are regulatory bodies, watchdogs and independent bodies to resolve complaints but they themselves can be useless.

Arghhhh, exhausted typing about it...:p!
 
Banking is generally pretty good(Santander, Halifax) both in branch and over the phone, I've had advisors often go that extra mile to help out. Unfortunately there are occasions when you're landed with the stroppy witch caked in fake tan who doesn't know her arse from her elbow.

Mobile networks are a nightmare though, Indian call centres, I won't even get started on that...
 
Heh. I have a list of companies I deal with, some are fantastic, others are merely good. There is a small minority which are incredibly bad.
I would disagree with the high percentage of 90% poor though.

More like 10% fantastic bend over backwards, 60% good to ok, 20% poor and 10% so bad its just not funny. I will keep going back to the 10% fantastic despite the fact that they may be an extra £10 on a high value item, just purely because I am rewarding them for outstanding service. I find PC equipment suppliers are toward the bottom of the scale.
There are way too many people who think they know everything, and the customer suffers as a result of their incompetence.
 
You forgot about the foreign callcenters... It is allways nice to speak to someone in my own language when i phone them.

EDIT: haha some people jumped in before me
 
Any company that uses an Indian call centre is automatically in my bad books.

As much as the actual call centre employees may want to help, the whole experience is usually just bloody awful.

I prefer email these days as I would rather wait a few hours to a day for a reply than battle with a muppet and his script.
 
As someone who has worked in customer service for a prolonged period I can agree with your OP. I used to work for Virgin Media before they moved the call centre from Newport to Swansea and the amount of people who were let through training with little to no understanding of computers was an absolute joke, not only that, but there was a large contingent of Indians there who were very hard to understand face to face, let alone down a phone line. Why recruit these people for this kind of task? Everyone there was on the same wage, the 'Team Leaders' were only paid higher because of the various small pay rises they received over the years, the job stank, but you'd always get that caller who'd raise a smile and be grateful that you'd helped them.

I always felt sorry for the customers that would call who had been clearly messed around and passed from pillar to post by other agents who had no idea what they were doing or what they were talking about, the one thing I hated more than anything else during my time there was the amount of people who would fob a customer off purely because they didn't know the answer to a question or just couldn't be arsed to find out, not only does it give the company a bad name it just makes the customer even more ****ed off to the unknowing person who they next get put through to.
 
Apple are probably the best company I've dealt with in terms of customer services, they always go out their way to make sure you're satisfied. Never had a problem with how they have dealt with things.

I would also say that O2 are fairly good, I've always managed to get problems resolved but I have had to push to get through the customer service 'net' to get the second line support in several occasions. Most recently was when I complained that several phones on O2 in my area were have call problems. There was no issue making calls or hearing the caller but it was the person you were speaking to that would be unable to hear you. This was a very difficult problem to explain and the customer service people had no case that covered it. In the end I got through to network services and after a day or so they rebooted the whole base station which fixed the problems.

The worst has to be BT, absolutely zero consistency between customer services representatives, bad information given out and a series of excuses whenever something goes wrong.
 
Few months back, a female shopper in Sainsbury's asks a store assistant for an item as she can't find it. Predictably, he says "Errr..." and then some useless waffle for the sake of poor customer service and then tells her he will ask his colleague. He asks his female colleague and she thinks she knows which aisle it's on so goes off and will bring it back to the shopper. He says he will check another aisle and therefore avoid the awkward silence that would have developed. Don't think anyone returned to her. Anyway, I rather set myself the challenge and find an item rather be faced with the dreaded "Errr" when I ask someone where I can find it.

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I don't bank in Hong Kong but my mother does with Bank of China. Correct me if I'm wrong but all international customers of the bank are treated as VIPs. I think it's because in general anyone international banking with them will be earning a significantly larger sum then the average Hong Konger. My mother deals with one Bank of China representative and she provides a service closer to that of Natwest Black Card Concierge than the generic service Hong Kong people receive. We're not well off. This is purely a rare example of the excellent customer service she receives.

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I agree with the point made about companies being automatically bad if they employ indian call centres. I always ask to be transferred back to the UK! :p
 
I didn't read OP. But I worked CS for Murdoch!.... I worked Skytalk before it was acceptable, even though I don't know if anyone heard about this, but we had a great excuse, something called a represented bill, if our daily image did not match up with skys pay history, you was not gonna get your phone turned on. You know what the worst thing was? I took the most calls, passed point when we were tested, but I got made redudnat, I got more more money than I was legally deserved, but it was still a pittance.

But You live you learn. I ended up doing PBX support for the same ducking call centre! it made me lol!

And this is why I swear about it isnt what what you know, but who you know, I'm walking proof!
 
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RobH said:
Apple are probably the best company I've dealt with in terms of customer services, they always go out their way to make sure you're satisfied. Never had a problem with how they have dealt with things.

I would also say that O2 are fairly good, I've always managed to get problems resolved but I have had to push to get through the customer service 'net' to get the second line support in several occasions. Most recently was when I complained that several phones on O2 in my area were have call problems. There was no issue making calls or hearing the caller but it was the person you were speaking to that would be unable to hear you. This was a very difficult problem to explain and the customer service people had no case that covered it. In the end I got through to network services and after a day or so they rebooted the whole base station which fixed the problems.

The worst has to be BT, absolutely zero consistency between customer services representatives, bad information given out and a series of excuses whenever something goes wrong.
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I'll disagree and agree. I've had very good cs from BT, and a mixed bag with Apple - especially in person to the point where there is one person I won't deal with (He advised me to "go away and buy a Dell" after my Macbook pro broke 6 times in as many months).

However, I agree with O2. Really efficient. Could be biased as I'm a business customer, but I could e-mail now and get a reply in minutes. Orange were similarly good.

Sky are also pleasant, Virgin (bb) terrible.

I've found letting agents to have the worst CS ever. In fact, any agents.
 
Companies that force you to use their automated telephone system when you JUST want to talk to a human being.

Thames Water, took me 3 mins to speak to someone (this is after pressing all those buttons to get through to an operator)

Also another annoyance, when the operator has a lack on empathy (happens a lot with the foreign call centres). Virgin Media were installing broadband for the flat below mine, and accidently (i hope) snipped the wires to my flat. After phoning them to explain the situation and tbh i wasnt too annoyed as mistakes do happen. I did believe at the time that this would be a simple procedure to fix.
How i was so wrong, after agreeing that they would call me 20 mins before they fix the problem as they need someone at home, this did not unfortunately happen. After an hour on the phone with them they told me that i was lucky that they didnt charge me for not keeping the appointment. Was totally dismayed at the ineptness of VM! Took 2 weeks to get it fixed in the end.
 
Dunno if it's the case with all indian call centres but the one I dealt with were scripted like the computers they use and were not willing to offer a resolution to the complaint in the form of compensation. I made the mistake of battling with 2 agents and then 2 managers in relation to my brother's complaint against mobile company 3. should have asked to be transferred to UK but they had no empathy and all they could do was offer a better deal that was no better.
 
meghatronic said:
* or *# or *0 or mash the keypad or press nothing (and wait). All proven methods with most systems.
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I've tried the press # and * and have it work occasionally (and mashing the keypad) but never tried pressing nothing, will have to try that one.

Another annoyance. Carphonewarehouse. Moved to the states temporarily and asked them not to call me as the roaming charges are astronomical. fast forward to a month before my upgrade is applicable and they phone me 20 times in ONE day. Trying to phone the 0870 number puts you to "CPW have called you on a non urgent matter, if you hold we'll get you to an operator"
If you wait it just rings 4-5 times then says all operators are busy, and hangsup!
After speaking to an operator he managed to make sure whenever my file comes up that the note states do not phone me unless it is an urgent matter. Queue 20 mins later and some guy from sales calls me :rolleyes: !
 
mavers said:
I've tried the press # and * and have it work occasionally (and mashing the keypad) but never tried pressing nothing, will have to try that one.
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If you have a rotary/pulse phone, the system can't interpret your request so after a timeout it should go through to someone.
 
I hate the mindset adopted especially in insurance call centres where by they've made a decision (not to your liking of course) and they stick to it. You originally spoke to an agent then a team leader then a customer service manager. They all adopt the same mindset and decision for the sake of consistency and you resort to dealing with customer relations or writing in for the decision to be investigated. Customer service can be so drawn out.
 
I only work in a Café, but I try to ensure I'm not one of these moody customer assistants who doesn't care about their job. As such I've been entered for a Coffee Competition and got a Service Award - Woo! :p
 
Cr0fty said:
I only work in a Café, but I try to ensure I'm not one of these moody customer assistants who doesn't care about their job. As such I've been entered for a Coffee Competition and got a Service Award - Woo! :p
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If everyone adopted that attitude, it'd be brilliant but too many people go to work and count down the hours rather than working their ass off and earning the money that's paid to them at the end of the month.
 
The issue with customer service is it's seen as a job anyone can do, so no real focus is on it (no proper training etc...). The people hired are a mix of people but generally young and inexperienced, the older ones might be educated and give you a false sence of security on the phone, the rest can play all sorts of tricks. Then there are the foriegn call centers/customer service. Personally I say give them all grief. They can at least try and come over here, claim benifit AND take our jobs.
 
Ken said:
If everyone adopted that attitude, it'd be brilliant but too many people go to work and count down the hours rather than working their ass off and earning the money that's paid to them at the end of the month.
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I still count down the hours! I just don't see the point in doing a half-arsed job when you're getting paid. College, on the other hand...!

In all seriousness, though, the quickest way to pass the time at work is to do all the work in front of you, in the same way that a hour long exam goes quicker than an hour long lesson.
 
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