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"Not exactly politics, but political will could change things. When I was somewhat younger good customer service meant that a company would pick up your call before the phone had rung twice. It was a sign of excellence and an indication that the company was professional. Roll on forty years or so and it seems that companies now go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for you to speak to them. Phone numbers do not exist and where they do they are manned by a virtual menu service that cuts you off if you want something outside of the pre-determined menu. Then you have virtual chat lines that also appear to lead you down various menu options until your chat is disconnected because “all our operators are busy.” I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we as consumers put so many barriers in the way of people contacting us so that companies were forced to spend anything from 20 minutes to two hours to talk to us when they want something? I mean, we as consumers all work for someone (or ourselves) and everyone’s time is precious right? I can’t help but think that this never ending push for virtual technology is going to come undone one day when companies/entities realise that the people whose lives they are making so difficult also work for other companies/entities who are making other peoples lives difficult and eventually nothing gets done because no-one can actually talk to anyone anymore and the country just grinds to a halt. Caveat to add… Virtual systems are great and efficient when things go right, but when they go wrong (as happens) it can’t be right that companies conduct Olympian type corporate gymnastics to prevent you from trying to correct issues by simply speaking to someone and spending countless unproductive hours trying to do so. Shouldn’t there be a mandated minimum service standard that all companies adhere to? Or better still, shouldn’t ordinary people have the right to have their mail forwarded to PO Boxes that refuse recorded delivery letters, email auto responders that say that the address in unmonitored and telephone numbers that connect to a service that puts unknown callers on hold until you feel like talking to them?" You forgot that as genx we are stubborn with technology. Will not read the manual and spends days fiddling until we either get it right before using Google!. | |||
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" Or better still, shouldn’t ordinary people have the right to have their mail forwarded to PO Boxes that refuse recorded delivery letters, email auto responders that say that the address in unmonitored and telephone numbers that connect to a service that puts unknown callers on hold until you feel like talking to them?" * You can Pay Royal Mail to open a PO box for you and divert all mail. * Every email address these days has the ability to auto-respond - it's up to you what message you put in it. Every email address has a whitelist too. * Do not disturb and voice mail does that already on cells phones. Landline (BT) has a Pre-Screen Service for the last 9 years. We don't take unknown calls - set in settings, Problem solved. If you didn't answer your phone, then no company would wait more than 7/8 rings before hanging up. Not sure what putting them on hold would achieve, except more calls to you later or none at all. | |||
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"I think there is definitely a difference in customer services these days, compared to what I experienced 30 years ago. There is also a generational change or two since then. For example, most of my nieces are Gen Alpha (Born since 2010). . Generation Alpha Learning Style : Virtual Influence / Advice : Chatbots . Generation Z (1995-1994) Learning Style : Multi-modal Influence / Advice : Forums . Neither of those Generations like picking up the phone to talk to people. They avoid it as much as possible. Many get stressed when doing so. . I'm Gen X, which was the first Generation to embrace the emergence of technology. So I should be quite comfortable calling a company to ask for advice, right ? Except I am not. Because embracing technology means I go online to look for answers to my problems. It's my first port of call. I'll look for manuals, check forums, check the company website, use a chatbot, and sort myself out. I don't need someone on the end of a phone. That implies I have to spend ages explaining the problem to them, and to be fair, they'd probably on nat. min wage, so why should they give a shit anyway ? . Besides, I don't want to be another moaning customer. No thanks. I'll find my own answers, because in all likelihood, the answers are already out there for those who can be bothered to look for them. Gen Z like being self-sufficient. . Now you, could say "Isn't that a waste of your time?", but my counter is, "No. Because as well as finding the solution, I want to learn how to resolve it myself for the next time it happens, so I am investing my time to broaden my knowledge. I want to know WHY it is broken. Not just how to fix it." . Personally, I feel most companies realise they can leverage all the assistance they can provide virtually. The same things get asked day in day out. With the same answers. If you can funnel most of your traffic to those online platforms, it keeps most Gen X's and after that happy. Cheaper too for the company. . Sure, there are always going to be outlier issues which cannot be resolved, and a phone call or more likely email is going to be needed, but a good AI will detail and record those and they get added to the knowledge pool for future callers / searchers of knowledge. . The bottom line is, most answers can be found online and many customers who seek those answers don't feel the need to make a call anymore. It's somewhat archaic, and in some cases, distressing to later generations. . Case in point : 2 weeks ago we reported a fault with a household item. It's in year 2 of a 5 year warranty. Everything has been done online, photos taken, records checked, invoices sent of proof of purchase. We're waiting on a date for an engineer. Not a single phone call needed. Problem. Email. Type. Send. Done." I will give you three different examples of what I mean - all in the last four days: 1) Parcel sent by a well known courier on Monday due for urgent next day delivery (Tuesday). Parcel not delivered. Virtual chat full menu to “where is my parcel”… out for delivery, thank you for using our virtual chat. Call the helpline… your parcel is out for delivery - call ends. Parcel attempted delivered this morning, but recipient already left the country - undeliverable. Received a call from courier but missed it. Tried to call back told to go to virtual chat for options. Full menu to: “please call our helpline.” 2) Boiler breakdown - call to service contractor. “Please key in your contract number or go to our website for help.” Billing is online and so I don’t know contract number. Go to website for help, “for help with breakdowns go to our virtual chat for fastest response” full menu on chat ends up with call our emergency helpline, we are here 24/7 for breakdowns. Call emergency helpline “please key on your contract number or go to our website for help.” Eventually got a head office number from MSE forum and got through to someone who gave me my contract number over the phone and organised a next day repair. 3) Large Telecoms Company. We had a new broadband installed on Tuesday. On Wednesday I received a letter from them saying they were sorry that I had decided to cancel the service and the service would end on 24th January. Called the helpline and fairly quickly got through, so far so good. Asian call centre however could not understand what was going on so I asked to speak to a local operator. Was transferred to second line customer support in U.K. who also struggled. She was very helpful but said she needed to transfer me to the connections team - 30 minutes so far and the call disconnected on transfer. I called back and again managed to get through quickly and asked to speak to the person who I had just been speaking to. No can do. Policy is not to transfer calls internally so have to through whole story and validation again before being transferred to connections with a promise to call me back. Transfer successful but discovered that a system error had cancelled both the broadband and the line port and the number port had gone back to Sky. Needed to transfer me to another department by which time I could not continue the call. Person called me back a couple of hours later and said they had tried to cancel the disconnection error but couldn’t but would escalate and call me back. So far a more than two hours on the phone. No one called back so I called again in the evening and spent another hour being passed around. 7.45pm that night received an email saying “your complaint has been resolved” but no explanation. Called again - full validation process and 35 minutes later told that someone would call me back the next day as the complaint was raised on my behalf and wasn’t a complaint that I had made. This was just this week! In the past I have had similar issues with loads of companies. They just don’t seem to understand that we all also work for someone or are self employed and if our companies decided to make their processes efficient only for ourselves then almost the entire U.K. workforce would be wasting hours of their working day trying to resolve their problems instead of actually being productive. | |||
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" I will give you three different examples of what I mean - all in the last four days: 1) Parcel sent by a well known courier on Monday due for urgent next day delivery (Tuesday). Parcel not delivered. Virtual chat full menu to “where is my parcel”… out for delivery, thank you for using our virtual chat. Call the helpline… your parcel is out for delivery - call ends. Parcel attempted delivered this morning, but recipient already left the country - undeliverable. Received a call from courier but missed it. Tried to call back told to go to virtual chat for options. Full menu to: “please call our helpline.” 2) Boiler breakdown - call to service contractor. “Please key in your contract number or go to our website for help.” Billing is online and so I don’t know contract number. Go to website for help, “for help with breakdowns go to our virtual chat for fastest response” full menu on chat ends up with call our emergency helpline, we are here 24/7 for breakdowns. Call emergency helpline “please key on your contract number or go to our website for help.” Eventually got a head office number from MSE forum and got through to someone who gave me my contract number over the phone and organised a next day repair. 3) Large Telecoms Company. We had a new broadband installed on Tuesday. On Wednesday I received a letter from them saying they were sorry that I had decided to cancel the service and the service would end on 24th January. Called the helpline and fairly quickly got through, so far so good. Asian call centre however could not understand what was going on so I asked to speak to a local operator. Was transferred to second line customer support in U.K. who also struggled. She was very helpful but said she needed to transfer me to the connections team - 30 minutes so far and the call disconnected on transfer. I called back and again managed to get through quickly and asked to speak to the person who I had just been speaking to. No can do. Policy is not to transfer calls internally so have to through whole story and validation again before being transferred to connections with a promise to call me back. Transfer successful but discovered that a system error had cancelled both the broadband and the line port and the number port had gone back to Sky. Needed to transfer me to another department by which time I could not continue the call. Person called me back a couple of hours later and said they had tried to cancel the disconnection error but couldn’t but would escalate and call me back. So far a more than two hours on the phone. No one called back so I called again in the evening and spent another hour being passed around. 7.45pm that night received an email saying “your complaint has been resolved” but no explanation. Called again - full validation process and 35 minutes later told that someone would call me back the next day as the complaint was raised on my behalf and wasn’t a complaint that I had made. This was just this week! In the past I have had similar issues with loads of companies. They just don’t seem to understand that we all also work for someone or are self employed and if our companies decided to make their processes efficient only for ourselves then almost the entire U.K. workforce would be wasting hours of their working day trying to resolve their problems instead of actually being productive." I'm sorry you've not had an easy time of it. I don't know what, if any, the answer is. #1 sounds just unfortunate the courier was unable to deliver and had attempted to do so. #2 is silly. They need to review their fault escalation process to make it smooth and easy to report. #3 is a tricky one, involving multiple points of failure from internal and external stakeholders. I'm not surprised it was a faff due to the complexity involved. Those sort of faults are a nightmare to put right and no one person can make that happen. Sorry for your trouble. | |||
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"Have we ever done good customer service in this country?? I mean I know Fawlty Towers was pretend but it's really not that far from reality. Customer service is given more importance these days in a target's driven society. Having worked for a customer service department for almost ten years for a well known furniture company I can honestly say our jobs would be much easier if it wasn't for customers." Amen to that ! Having done Retail in the past, it's inevitable that some develop a jaded view of the public. And some customers, retail or not, are just toxic and not worth the time and trouble. I cannot imagine being a call-handler is a terribly pleasant job, as you are paid to be shouted at and people do like to vent. I always start with (after pleasantries) "I am so sorry to call/chat online with you but I wondered if you can help with X or know someone who can ?" I then say "X is broken, and I would like this straightened out please. Can you or someone up the chain do that? This would be an adequate resolution." . Greeting-Outline-Customer Expected Solution or Escalation Path. . When I have worked in call handling, it's more a case of Mr Hyper Aggressive X calls with "My W$%^& is broken and £$%£$% not working and "%%^&$%^ stopped. This is preventing me for taking my son to *%^$%^ footie practice and he's in £$$&$56 tears and I've got the (£$%%^ mother-in-law coming round in 2&%£"%% mins and the "£$%^& dog just did a whoopsie on the "£%$%& carpet and...". . By which time I've turned off and don't need the abuse. | |||
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"Have we ever done good customer service in this country?? I mean I know Fawlty Towers was pretend but it's really not that far from reality. Customer service is given more importance these days in a target's driven society. Having worked for a customer service department for almost ten years for a well known furniture company I can honestly say our jobs would be much easier if it wasn't for customers. Amen to that ! Having done Retail in the past, it's inevitable that some develop a jaded view of the public. And some customers, retail or not, are just toxic and not worth the time and trouble. I cannot imagine being a call-handler is a terribly pleasant job, as you are paid to be shouted at and people do like to vent. I always start with (after pleasantries) "I am so sorry to call/chat online with you but I wondered if you can help with X or know someone who can ?" I then say "X is broken, and I would like this straightened out please. Can you or someone up the chain do that? This would be an adequate resolution." . Greeting-Outline-Customer Expected Solution or Escalation Path. . When I have worked in call handling, it's more a case of Mr Hyper Aggressive X calls with "My W$%^& is broken and £$%£$% not working and "%%^&$%^ stopped. This is preventing me for taking my son to *%^$%^ footie practice and he's in £$$&$56 tears and I've got the (£$%%^ mother-in-law coming round in 2&%£"%% mins and the "£$%^& dog just did a whoopsie on the "£%$%& carpet and...". . By which time I've turned off and don't need the abuse. " Hooray for AI.   | |||
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