Here’s an article I wrote some time ago about what I think is inherently wrong with using call centres, which companies I’ve had the misfortune of having to deal with in the past and why I won’t ever use them again unless threatened at gunpoint…yes, British Telecom (BT) get another mention. I wonder why?
Funnily enough, last time this article appeared on a website, I received a complaint from someone who works as a customer service adviser in a call centre! How is that for irony?!?! Needless to say, I transferred them.
The lousy service we all receive regularly from organisations is not going to go away, but we can do something about it as consumers. The best form of advertising is word of mouth. A flashy and expensive advert in a magazine for a product or service that appears wonderful is not going to influence me to buy if the company cannot follow this up with good customer relations (oxymoron?). The bigger the company, the worse they treat us in my experience, because dealings become exponentially more impersonal as you go up the scale. Large companies need to wake up to this. Losing one customer is perceived as irrelevant. Maybe so initially, but don’t forget that the single customer has relatives, friends and work colleagues who are all willing to lend an ear when personal recommendations are required. What was one lone voice in the wilderness suddenly becomes a crowd of people with money to spend and choices to make. People talk, they pass on information. How many times have you heard someone say “Don’t use that company, I know someone who was treated badly by them”. I’ve heard this many times over the years, and it does influence my choices. Then there’s the media. There are lots of consumer programmes on TV who are eager to follow up on cases of aggrieved customers. Newspapers and magazines quite happily print stories about how poor Joe Bloggs was conned by some large organisation which should have known better. What I’m saying to these companies is: don’t be so complacent! You man have a virtual monopoly status now, but when the competition arrives and all your customers disappear because you’ve ridden roughshod over them all these years, you’ll have no business left. Will you be mourned? Nope.
I think half the problem these days is that many large organisations have chosen to install the dreaded call centre. Surely these don’t work well for anyone except the company in question? Call centres are incredibly impersonal and simply increase frustration levels of customers for a number of reasons. Gone is the day where I knew my bank manager by name, as a person who I could sit in an office with and discuss my finances. I now have to make a telephone call to some disembodied stranger (usually on the other side of the world!) who frankly couldn’t care less. I yearn for the good old days. Ok, so it wasn’t as good as I’m implying, but it was more preferable to the way things are now in a lot of cases. You’ll find my list of annoying things about call centre’s and their staff listed below. How many of these do you recognise? Can you add any more? I have experienced each and every one of these, more than once in most cases:
* Standard Menu – Press 1 for this option, press 2 for the next option and so on. Irritating!
* Nested Menu – You listen to six options when the phone is first answered, pick number six in the list and are presented with another menu containing another six items to choose from. Very, very irritating!!
* Unusable Menu – None of the items in the menus (and you listened intently to each one) mentioned by the recorded voice apply to your requirement. It becomes a lottery instead. Pick any number and pray!
* Queue type 1 – “You are in a queue. A customer service representative will be with you shortly”. The definition of “shortly” varies enormously, and seems to be inversely proportionate to the cost per minute of the call, how full your bladder is at that moment or how little time you have to spend waiting on the phone. It can be anything from 30 seconds to 3 hours, but you don’t know how long until someone actually answers.
* Queue type 2 – “You are number five in a queue. Your call will be answered when you reach number one”. Again, if the four people in front of you talk for 15 minutes each, you’ll be on hold for another hour. Meaningless bollocks.
* Queue type 3 – “You are in a queue. Estimated time before one of our representatives becomes available is now ten minutes”. Forty minutes later you are still five minutes away from speaking to someone. Someone’s watch stopped working perchance?
* Musak type 1 – “On hold” music so quiet you can hardly hear it. You desperately want to put the phone on loudspeaker because you need to visit the loo after waiting 2 days for someone to speak to you. You take the risk, miss someone answering the call at the precise moment you park your bum and are promptly cut off.
* Musak type 2 – “On hold” music played very quietly, punctuated every 30 seconds by some robot shouting “You are in a queue….”. Aaarrrrrgggghhh!!!!
* Musak type 3 – A “jingle”. This is a ten second rendition of something resembling a three year old playing with one of those cheap toy keyboards. It is played in an endless loop, so by the time someone answers the call you have lost the will to live or are on the way out of the front door with the nice men in white coats. You then spend all day humming the tune to yourself.
* Musak type 4 – Nice classical or decent chart music (oxymoron?) played for ten seconds between adverts lasting twenty seconds for “today’s special offer” which was recorded at precisely 120 decibels. Just enough to cause permanent damage to your hearing. The opposite of subliminal advertising?
* Technology – “I’m sorry, our computer system is down for maintenance today”. It’s so plausible I almost believe this one. What they really mean is “I’m not sorry and I don’t want to interrupt my game of FreeCell to sort your mess out”.
* I can’t help you – You finally manage to speak to someone in customer services (oxymoron! especially from BT), spend a few minutes explaining your problem and they reply: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you I’m afraid. You need to speak to someone in another department” (BT!). At this point they put you on hold again. Cue the queue. When someone else does answer you have to repeat everything again as they have no idea who you are or what you’re ringing about. They then say: “Oh, you’ve been put through to the wrong department, I’ll just transfer you to…” (BT). One of three things will now happen: 1. You will be passed back to the drone who you first spoke to who doesn’t actually remember you (BT). 2. You will be passed through every department in the company listening to excuses from drones who can’t be arsed doing their job and just want rid of you (BT!!!!!). 3. The phone goes dead in mid transfer. Yep, they’ve suddenly developed problems with their telephone system! (Oh, this is a real fave with BT!!!).
* I hear what you are saying, but… – This has to be the most patronising statement the customer service (oxymoron) drone can make, and they all do it! You make a perfectly reasonable case for complaining about a cock up they’ve made and they come back with this. How helpful! You just know they are going to follow it up with some other scripted drivel about how it’s not really their fault because they were short of staff etc. etc. Whatever!
* Can’t be arsed – This is the clone customer services (oxymoron) drone who just doesn’t give a shit about you, your problems, their job or the company they work for. They are on a crap wage, so why should they take the flak for a mistake made by someone else? Usually speaking in monotone they won’t budge from “company policy” and use the scripted and insincere phrase “I can only apologise” every other minute.
* Angry – The drone who got out of bed the wrong side this morning and has had a really bad day listening to other idiots like you making endless complaints. They have finally lost their patience and become confrontational with you because all they want to do now is shout at someone. You react in one of two ways: Either you become equally angry and shout back at them, ending up slamming the phone down or you are so shocked that you feel guilty and make desperate attempts to become their best friend. Stockholm Syndrome anyone?
* I’ll just go and check… – You explain your problem and become quite annoyed on the phone, the drone gets a little sick of hearing your whining and uses this effective technique to pacify and give you time to calm down. They say something like “I’ll just have to go and speak to a colleague..” and put you on hold while they make a brew and visit the toilet whilst laughing like hyena’s with the other drones because you are on the other end of the phone thinking they are doing something constructive. You didn’t seriously think they would try to help did you? Don’t let them put you on hold!
* Promises, promises – I’ve lost count how many times I’ve heard this one!!! After ringing the drones, you actually find one who appears to be completely human with a modicum of intelligence (ok, so that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift). They listen to your grievance and make all the right noises in the right places without making you more angry or sounding patronising. Yes, they really care about you. “I’m making notes on the system about this and will have it sorted out for you this afternoon” they say. A few days later, you ring back because nothing seems to have been resolved. The drone you spoke to previously is absolutely guaranteed to be either on holiday, in a meeting, off sick or has left the company. You ask the shiny new drone why this issue hasn’t been resolved. “What issue sir?” they enquire, to which you politely and confidently ask them to look on their computer system which contains all the details. After a lengthy pause whilst they wait for the “slow computer system” they say: “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing mentioned in your file about this and it doesn’t look like anything has been followed up from the other day. I can only apologise. I’ll just have to go and speak to a colleague”. You would happily commit murder at this point.
What follows is a (currently small) list of companies I will never be a customer of again and my reasons why. If I have no documentary evidence to back up what I have written, the company name will not be mentioned until I’m confident I can do so without being hauled into court for libel!
British Telecom (BT) – The worst case of bloated bureaucracy I have ever encountered. One of the most infuriating experiences I ever had was trying to speak to the same person more than once in BT’s customer services (oxymoron!). You wouldn’t believe how hard this actually is. When I moved house some time ago (around 2001/2), BT screwed up on the installation of the telephone. The man I spoke to in their “customer services” said that an engineer would be at my home sometime between 1pm and 6pm on a specific day. At 4:30pm I rang to check that this would still be the case. He told me that as it was getting dark outside, the engineer would not be visiting as they aren’t allowed to work in the dark. Why then was I told to wait in until 6:30pm??? No answer! As I wanted to take this further I asked him for his name, which specific department he belonged to and a telephone number I could use to ring him back. I had reason to return the call a few days later and asked to speak to him. BT’s response?: “Which part of the country is he in?”. As I had failed to ask him for this information they told me it would be impossible to trace him. So, the largest telecoms company in the UK is unable to find one of their staff unless the customer has the foresight to ask for their address? Pathetic!
My second and equally annoying encounter with BT’s “customer services” relates to my Internet access. When I moved into my new home (again, this was the move in 2001/2), I was unable to receive broadband and had to make do with dial-up. I signed up to BT’s “Anytime” service where you paid a fixed fee per month to be able to access the Internet “anytime”. So far, so good. After some weeks, I received an email from BT informing me that I was using the Internet too much and must reduce the amount of time online. Pardon? I’ll spare you the gory details, but my complaints that I’d signed up to their “Anytime” service fell on deaf ears. According to their “Terms & Conditions” they were so fond of quoting to me, any user found to be online for more than 12 hours in any 24hr period is basically breaking the rules and in danger of having their account suspended. I received this warning a number of times and eventually told them to stick the account where the sun don’t shine. So much for “Anytime” Internet access.
My opinion: BT are number one on my list of companies to hate. I have no choice but to use their telephone service (for now!), but will get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. Never again!
Un-named Company (who are no longer trading, woohoo!) – We were moving house (2001/2) and booked un-named as the removal company. On the morning of the move, there were some delays while the Solicitors signed off the paperwork and exchanged contracts. We were not legally allowed to move into the new house until this had been done. So, we rang the removal firm and told them not to turn up too early as we probably wouldn’t be moving until later in the morning. No problem. We then rang them at 11:00am and said we’d be ready to start within the next 30 minutes. No problem. They were in a local cafe and would wait for our call. At 12pm we got the green light and made the call…or tried to. Un-named had switched off their mobile phones and the office number was unanswered. We never saw or heard from them again and spent a frantic afternoon trying desperately to find a removal firm willing to stand in literally at the last minute.
My opinion: They simply do not deserve to be in business!
De Agostini – This is a UK publisher of fortnightly magazine series. Early in 2003 they began a Lord of the Rings series based on the Games Workshop models and game. I purchased issue 2 and placed a subscription order immediately. Since then I heard nothing. I tried to ring De Agostini many times to enquire about the lack of contact. Each time, I was unable to get past their automated message service which simply stated that due to unprecedented demand subscribers will have to wait a bit longer. I also emailed them a number of times asking for information, with one response. Their email reply basically stated that they couldn’t continue with the support request from me until I provided them with my full name and address. At the end of their email, they quoted mine. Guess what? Yep, my full name and address were there too! I replied once again, explaining the situation but never heard from them again. The page containing the email form on their website stated that they respond via email or telephone (depending upon which option you choose) within 3 working days. Rubbish!
They also ran a series some time ago about building yourself a remote control car from a kit provided with the magazine subscription. I tried to contact them again to ensure they’d follow up on a subscription. Guess what? I couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone or reply to email. Perhaps I’m on their spam list?
My opinion: Customer service? What customer service?!
Palm Inc. and UPS – Yet another customer service failure. I ordered a pack of screen protectors for a Palm handheld from their online shop. A few days later I checked the UPS website to see why the order hadn’t arrived. According to UPS, it had been delivered. I contacted Palm to say it hadn’t. Palm responded that according to UPS it had. And so began a lengthy argument between us. Palm wouldn’t budge. I then contacted UPS. They took over 2 weeks and numerous calls to tell me that they had a new driver who had screwed up and delivered the package to the wrong address. They would send a claim form out to me. What infuriated me most was that while my wife was explaining yet again on the telephone to UPS what had happened, the guy she was speaking to said he’s transfer her to a colleague. As he was in the process of making the transfer, my wife heard him say “cut her off!”. Which they did! Unbelievable.
My opinion: Two companies who in my experience have absolutely no clue how to treat customers!