[andygrif]

Constructive post, thanks.

Originally Posted by Mark W

ummm...one number? most franchises now have 0800 0522000 - you call that number and you can go through to customer services, faults or tech support. you press option tech support and you get put into our q....so good idea - its already being done...

I can't get through to Broadband Tech support from that number. Plus by screening via a human being and low level call handling, it has been proven that the people who are grouped by area of expertise are more focussed, more efficient and have high levels of morale than those who arean't.

I don't disagree with any of the facts you present, and I am sure you do have methods of trend tracking and so on....but the one thing is paramount:

For the customer....it isn't working

Originally Posted by Mark W

I can back that up. before working in broadband tech support, i used to do narrowband (dialup) support, back in the day when it was £1 per min. you generally KNEW they had a proper issue when they called up as they would have tried themselves first to fix the problem rather than just say "oh, its not working, ill call tech support"
ALOT of calls we take CAN be fixed by the customer themselves, if they work through it, and read avaliable help options. a surprising ammount of people are afraid to do a thing to their pc tho without somone telling them exactly what to do - try it! its not gonna bite you!
as for people calling up about the weather - i had a lady last week call up to ask how to find out about the best heat for geraniums.....

I'm sorry, that is not a reason for a customer not to call, just becuase you don't consider their problem to be 'real'. All problems are real to the customer - and the long term damage of them suffering from such problems is that they will get fed up and cancel. I know I've come close on many occasions. How many problems are not being tracked becuase customers having already dealt with the level of service on the £1 per minute line never call back? How do you track that?

Originally Posted by Mark W

im not sure, but if it was a definate ntl fault, you would have a case for getting that knocked off your phone bill by customer services - i know that was the case on the premium line

What? Every time? At the time this is all well and good, but it's more hassle than it is worth - whilst still being a big bone of contention. To have spent an hour in a queue to be told there is something wrong, following a call to the status line that tells me nothing is wrong, the concept of sitting in another call queue to claim my 2 quid back is silly. But when you add up how much extra month ntl has leeched from my account becuase of network problems I take offence at it.

Originally Posted by Mark W

a little while ago i made a record of the sort of calls i got on a particular day
i took 32 calls.
2 were faults with the STB
1 was an outage
1 was giving a customers pid number (something he had lost)
6 were finding out customers email details as they had lost/not written them down
and 21 were altering peoples pc settings to get them back online/better thier connection/setting up outlook express

so out of 32 calls, 3 were things that were ntl issues. ok, admittedly that was a little - and only a little mind you - low, ntl faults wise, but even if you x4 it, that still leaves you with 2/3 of the calls comming in being related to the customers pc. please dont be INSULTED by us assuming its your pc....its just a fact that most calls we take ARE to do with the customers pc, and so thats where we generally start to look for the problem.....

Which is again why my system would work, as it would operate on a pay per incident support method.

Originally Posted by Mark W

we have strict guidlines on how long the average call is supposed to be, and if we dont make those criteria we get in trouble.... - last week i sat in a disciplinary with a collegue who consistently failed to meet them - and we are not talking by too much either. he is not a bad tech at all, but did his job thoroughly, to make sure that customer did not call back.....

anyway...think this is turning into a thesis

All of which unfortunately re-affirms the fact that ntl are not overly interesting in how customers are treated. This is probably one of the reasons why staff in these call centres are so demotivated and take their frustrations out on the customers. Sad isn't it.