ntl Customer Charter
 

Hi All,

You can find information related to ntl's new customer charter by clicking the link below. ntl want cable forum members and visitors to provide them with feedback and if and where possible ntl may make operational changes based on the feedback received from staff internally and customers from Cable Forum.

Please take time to read it and provide your feedback. Thanks.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...er-information

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Nice to see UK Call Centres mentioned, but I'd like to see the split of call centre staff for both here (UK) and worldwide.

All very nice wording, glossy brochure etc etc...but seen it all before....

Let hope they keep the promises this time...

How long does it take to speak to someone in a call centre.....94 SECONDS....sorry - I don't believe that!!!

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

ITV recently did a Live Call centre test of some the more popular call centres - When they tried ntl - it was answered within 1 Minute 58 Seconds.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...07&postcount=1

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Thats one and a half minutes, hardly something to brag about......and while we are on the subject-I can't believe ntl are boasting that it takes over ten minutes to get to speak to tech support!

On the positive side of things, the booklet is nicely designed and contains contact numbers and a section about what happens in cases of non payment.

One thing that is a bit strange about the booklet is how it's entitled 'the big 5' 'quality/value and choice/simplicity etc...' and that's mentioned on the top right of every page.....leading me to expect ntl to run through the 5 topics one after the other.....but they don't seem to, why not? They have made a song and dance about 5 topics and while they waffle on about aspects of their service don't really clearly address each of the big 5.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

i can not see any thing about things "coming soon" like VOD .

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

the ntl pop up for the feedback does not work well with FF.

it is very small and FF1.5 does not resize pop ups, by default.


ik

---------- Post added at 19:32 ---------- Previous post was at 19:31 ----------

agreed

ik

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Probably because thats not the purpose of the booklet....

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

To be fair, 1.5 minutes is a lot better than the 20-30 minutes that used to be the norm. The '10 minutes' bit could perhaps do with re-wording - I think they mean the time to answer the query and close the call, rather than the time to answer the phone!

Lots of 'we aim to...' but no mention of any compensation, or such, for missed appointments with no apology/explanation - something which seems to happen quite often from reading this forum.

I'd also like to see some commitment to consistent charging, notified in advance, rather than the 10MB STB upgrade fiasco, where many got/get it free, particularly those who requested it before the official announcement, and many others are expected to pay £50 to replace something which NTL provided. As I (and many others) have said elsewhere, it is a bit rich for NTL to provide reconditioned Pace boxes on the basis that customers are paying for the service and it is up to NTL what equipment they supply to deliver that service, and then try to charge customers for upgrading the supplied equipment when it can't cope.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

It looks nice and can only be a positive thing. At least now they know where they are trying to go as a business and have a document to refer to when they forget ;)
lets hope this new approach will give some results that benefit the people who keep the company going.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Seems pretty much as I expected, the main thing thats missing though is a phone number or email address to report network problems on.
That would REALLY Help, Tech support in India just don't seem to cut it for this sort of thing, and to be fair they probably are not trained for it, but NTL could really do with having even an email address that can be used to report peering faults etc.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Things are looking up with NTL working together with CF and asking for feedback to help them further develop the customer experience.

What puzzles me though is that only two methods of written communication with NTL are discussed in the brochure, snail mail and fax. What about email which is part of the service that NTL are selling to us? Is there any reason why they have not listed email as a valid communication method? Perhaps it is because email is the only free method of writing to them and so easy for customers with an internet connection to use and they think that its use would generate too much work for them. My feeling is that if you have a concern and are willing to spend time communicating the facts to NTL then they should listen and respond whether the contact with them is by snail mail, fax or email.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

[QUOTE=JohnHorb]To be fair, 1.5 minutes is a lot better than the 20-30 minutes that used to be the norm.[/quote[ Bluddy hell! I can see why they might be pleased, but to the casual observer (me) the times are still poor..... Def needs re-wording in that case!

I suppose thats the best they can do.....no company pleases everyone all the time.

---------- Post added at 08:58 ---------- Previous post was at 08:56 ----------

Thats the point I was making earlier......they set out the title like a document, I was expecting a bullet point style document addressing the 'big 5' and how they are going to live up to them.......and then we get a large dose of waffle.....

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Would be nice if those pictures where actual ntl customer service rather than actors posing :) The odd ntl van about but other than that its all faked :erm:

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

You mean that ntl staff aren't that good looking? I was going to ring cs to see if I could speak to that rather nice brunette.......now I'm gutted! :D

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

There will be forms of compensation but i can not mention them at the mo

You right about charging to upgrade old hardware, Thats not on. Did not know they was doing that

I could say what i realy think but this not topic 4 it :)

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Another red herring from ntl.

As a long term customer (7 years) of ntl I've seen and heard it all.

ntl won't offer and give compensation and or goodwill gestures for love nor money as they know they can't live up to their own promises - it's all hype as usual.

I've had many goodwill gestures in my 7 years but, I have had to suffer (and I mean suffer) nthell and back to get it.

If they did do the above I guarantee ntl would make potential claims go through CS front line (what horrors wait their is anyones guess), have masses of t&c's attatched and then their interpretation of things will be a whole lot different and theirs will be right no matter what you the customer knows and then it'd take weeks/months/years to get a pathetic tenner for weeks/months of hell trying to get at it!

Not worth the paper it's written on!

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Is this big 5 thing still going? If so the "draft" which has been made available needs to be updated.
Such a misleading document should not be left on the system without a big "draft" or better still "only kidding" watermark on every page. I cannot see any mention of it on the ntl site.

So by their own figures, over a fifth of customers who trouble to call them waited over 3 minutes in the period covered.

In my experience very believable. 8 minutes plus today just to find out what my direct debit payment was going to be because I hadn't received my monthly bill, which may I suppose just have gone missing in the post.

I am not sure what the 94 seconds is. Maybe the wording needs changing the same as for the tech support calls - but anyway not all calls to a call centre take exactly the same time to either be answered or have exactly the same duration whichever the time is supposed to be.

The really digusting bit is where it says on page 9 that "We provide a free customer service helpline" when they have just sent out information that the free helpline is going on to a "local rate" 0845 number.

It is unbeleivable that they say "We keep waiting times to a minimum ... " and "We have a thorough and rigorous recruitment policy as we only want to employ the best talent .... Customer Service representatives receive special training ...."

I don't really care what the person on the other end of the phone looks like as long as they are honest, knowledgeable, helpful, recognise that I am probably calling because the organisation they represent has already failed to deliver its promise in some way, preferably understand English and speak it intelligably, and are not rude and do not imply that I am lying when I merely tell them the facts as I perceive them, but I do agree with Ramrod that the lady in headset on page 7 and 18 looks very nice. In fact page 7 about disconnecting is probably the best part of the brochure.

If the totally inflexible and timewasting responsetek procedure annoys you as much as it does me there is a email address on the big5 draft brochure for feedback on the charter. I don't know yet if it works, but it is TheBig5@ntl.com

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

I work in Tech Support for another company and there is a team of ten of us serving the entire world. 1 and a half minutes is considered an EXTREMELY long time for our customers to wait before the phone is answered. Also, 2 minutes? I have never had the phone answered by NTL in less than TWENTY minutes...

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

What is the business you are in? What is you customer base? It sounds like you do not get very busy then, if it takes 1 out of 10 of you to answer the phone in <1 1/5 minutes, is something along the lines of

YOU...hello XXXX company how can I help
CUST...my radio is playing up can you help
YOU...I will just transfer you to someone that can help please hold
YOU...hello XXXX company how etc etc etc etc

I write this in jest but for what you write (and as you have made comparison to ntl which has a multi-million cust base) must be wrong.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Not wrong and a worldwide customer base, worldwide selling Software company (serif), maybe not as many staff as NTL, but not half as many problems either. We just work our A*ses off. Even if we have X times less customers than NTL, I bet they have a higher ratio of staff per customer and we STILL get the phone answered quicker on average.