We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Your wait may be longer than usual.

This winds me up no end, and it's all our fault. The fact that we as a society sit back and go "yanno what, I'll work around your greed and incompetence" and then sit for 20 minutes in hold as if this is perfectly acceptable behaviour. What we should be saying is "we pay your for a service, now provide the bloody service or I'll find someone who will".

Same with right to repair, subscription models, microtransactions in full-price games and my latest one - paying £17 for a ticket to the cinema only to have to sit through 15 minutes of ads. Hang on, we paid for a film, why are we seeing ads?

Personally I try to avoid any of this nonsense as much as possible as it's quite frankly ridiculous that companies are getting away with it.

I wonder how BMW's £15/month fee for already-installed heated seats is going.
 
It's code.

'We don't want to invest in proper customer services, we are happy for you to wait on the phone for hours and hopefully give up in the end'
 
I think it was virgin where I was on hold for 15min listening to that message then the line just got cut off... That's brilliant.
 
My personal favourite was when I worked for a large unnamed mobile provider who definitely don't have Kevin Bacon advertising for them.
Sat in a meeting with their uk head of customer service who was reflecting on customer satisfaction scores and how we shouldn't take stock of the fact that the Indian call centres constantly had atrocious customer service scores as it was down to nothing more than customer prejudices.
He was very confused when I asked why we had them if the customers simply didn't like them, seeing as our duty was customer service.
 
Dis86 said:
My personal favourite was when I worked for a large unnamed mobile provider who definitely don't have Kevin Bacon advertising for them.
Sat in a meeting with their uk head of customer service who was reflecting on customer satisfaction scores and how we shouldn't take stock of the fact that the Indian call centres constantly had atrocious customer service scores as it was down to nothing more than customer prejudices.
He was very confused when I asked why we had them if the customers simply didn't like them, seeing as our duty was customer service.
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It’s not prejudice if you genuinely have problems understanding someone. I’ve had some calls that were a real struggle to understand
 
robfosters said:
It’s not prejudice if you genuinely have problems understanding someone. I’ve had some calls that were a real struggle to understand
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Totally agree. Plus they were actually terrible. We had a team who's job was basically to fix the messes of people's accounts resulting from their incompetence.
In their defence their training was also very poor.
There were also significant issues around data protection.
 
robfosters said:
It’s not prejudice if you genuinely have problems understanding someone. I’ve had some calls that were a real struggle to understand
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Just had one from someone trying to sell me insulation or something. I think he was from Newcastle, totally incomprehensible.
 
Uther said:
Just had one from someone trying to sell me insulation or something. I think he was from Newcastle, totally incomprehensible.
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Give Cheryl Cole a break, she's still reeling from being rejected in the States, times are tough for the lass.

Regarding live chat, I've noticed a significant delay from when I type something to getting a reply, I'm sure they are multitasking between a number of customers.
 
Mysterae_ said:
Give Cheryl Cole a break, she's still reeling from being rejected in the States, times are tough for the lass.

Regarding live chat, I've noticed a significant delay from when I type something to getting a reply, I'm sure they are multitasking between a number of customers.
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They are. Normally 4 or 5 customers at a time.
 
As has alreadybeen mentioned though, a lot of them are probably still wfh. My son covered a Sunday shift yesterday, sat in his bedroom in his pyjamas. :D
 
Uther said:
As has alreadybeen mentioned though, a lot of them are probably still wfh. My son covered a Sunday shift yesterday, sat in his bedroom in his pyjamas. :D
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What my call centre agent is wearing and where they are sitting is irrelevant to me. Much better worklife balance for people, although the option to work in the office for x days a week is important to retain human connection IMO.
 
Won't be long before 4 hours is the standard waiting time for this. If you think about it, if you can wait in A&E for FOUR HOURS before being treated, then you can very well wait for 4 hours to get through technical support. It's a feature of late stage capitalism - at the end of the day, it's how much profit you can squeeze at the expense of plebs. :D
 
something daft already!! said:
Call my company now and you won't hear that message. We have around 30-40 staff ready to take incoming support calls. There is no hold music, the phone rings and we answer it. We mostly do not deal with the general public but do on an occasion. I know we are an exception to a rule and is one reason why our support is so highly regarded in our industry.
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Sounds like you have a bit of fat in your budget that could be restructured ;).
 
Efour said:
I think it was virgin where I was on hold for 15min listening to that message then the line just got cut off... That's brilliant.
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was in a queue for DPD last week - when it eventually got through the woman obv couldn't hear me... 'can you hear me sir?' yes 'hello sir, can you hear me?' YES Hellooo? then she eventually hung up - NOOOO...Adriiiaannn :p
 
Dis86 said:
Totally agree. Plus they were actually terrible. We had a team who's job was basically to fix the messes of people's accounts resulting from their incompetence.
In their defence their training was also very poor.
There were also significant issues around data protection.
Click to expand...

I have a Virgin home phone that I have NEVER used or given out to a soul; not even my mum or missus has the number.. A fews weeks after first getting it I started getting calls from folks with Indian accents trying to sell me whatever or scam me.

When I contacted Virgin to complain about this breach (after the 'we are experiencing higher call volumes....' message) the Indian person at the Virgin call centre insisted my number couldn't possibly have been leaked from their side or sold to 3rd parties and maybe I didn't know what an Indian accent sounded like.... I replied, "they sounded like you!"
 
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MartinPrince said:
I have a Virgin home phone that I have NEVER used or given out to a soul; not even my mum or missus has the number.. A fews weeks after first getting it I started getting calls from folks with Indian accents trying to sell me whatever or scam me.

When I contacted Virgin to complain about this breach (after the 'we are experiencing higher call volumes....' message) the Indian person at the Virgin call centre insisted my number couldn't possibly have been leaked from their side or sold to 3rd parties and maybe I didn't know what an Indian accent sounded like.... I replied, "they sounded like you!"
Click to expand...
You know there isn't enough numbers in the world for your number to be totally unique/unknown? I had a friend whose number assigned an old recycled taxi rank number. That was super annoying.
 
When I worked at a call centre, sometimes, the queues for certain departments became full, calls drop into any queue. When I got a customer asking for something my dept wasn’t trained on, customer did say they did press the right options (we had an option tree layout) and came to us!
 
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