[lostandconfused]

hi im new to this forum and would just like my say.

firstly i work in ntl customer services, i have read most of the posts on this thread and i agree in many cases there are cause to be very angry.
ive worked there for a few years and ill be honest ive seen some right royal cock ups in my time, and a lot of that is due to incompetence from some staff. i have indeed reported a lot of them to their team leaders as in my opinion some actions should be concidered as gross misconduct.

however i would also like to set the record straight. i read a post, not sure who it was by and cant really be bothered to go and check saying you should always ask for a supervisor when you call in, frankly thats just unhelpfull. if every customer demands to speak to a supervisor, their just going to make everyone a supervisor as you cant expect 1 team leader to take the same amount of calls as a team of 15 agents!

secondly, a lot of the problems i encounter are due to customer education, for example i had a call not so long ago where a customer had been charged the part month charges when he changed one of his services, now this should have been explained to him when it was changed, however if your going to start screaming at me as soon as i answer the call i cant really do much to explain or help with the matter.

its just human nature, if i were to get a call where the customer is pleasant (i understand you would be frustrated, god knows i have when moving house but you should understand that the person answering the call hasnt spoken to you before and you shouldnt judge them on past experience) i will bend over backwards even if it means having to finish later (unpaid) to help. but to be honest and i wouldnt admit this in work, if a customer calls in and starts hurling abuse at me (ive been called words i didnt know existed before, and some which really offended me) i'm not going to be as willing to help.

an example of this, recently a customer had a problem with a housemove, this customer although frustrated at having to speak to many different departments was nice enough. unfortunatly i couldnt help that day as the dept was closed, i explained i would sort it out and call the customer back as soon as possible. although dubious that this would happen the customer accepted this.
i then came in on my day off the next day to speak to the correct department to get the problem sorted. i called the customer back with the news and they were delighted.

ive also read in some posts how you have never had call backs when promised, now i do understand that in some cases this is the case and the people that promise this shouldnt be working for ntl, however in some cases this is genuine, there can be system problems or the agent that promised the call back may have been ill on that day and when they get in the next day they can see from the notes on the account that the customer called in 8 times the day before and the problem is now solved. therfor it is reasonable to say that they shouldnt call the customer back and possibly inconvienience them more when they could be trying to get the call queues down by helping customers that have a current problem.

i would like to round off by saying, that whilst most of the people on this forum have serious and ongoing problems with ntl, and in many cases their experience has been poor to say the least, you should also bear in mind that when a customer services agent picks up the call it is probably the first time you have spoken to them, and most of you wouldnt shout at someone in the street so why do it over the phone??

i welcome and comments on this post.