Well done VM - NOT in the 5 top worse companies...

... For answering the phones too long ...

BBC Watchdog survey...

Out of the five that were...

BT
Tiscali
Vodafone
3
Sky

Sky was the worst... A a random call to them last week took 2 hours 10 minutes to answer.

...

Originally Posted by BBC Watchdog

Hanging on the telephone
We made one hundred calls to each company, phoning their main customer service line at different times of the day, over a three-day period. We timed each phone call, from the moment we finished dialling, to when we first heard a human voice. All in all, we made 500 calls.

On average, the companies answered in less than three and half minutes. The fastest by far was Three, with an average of just one minute, 39 seconds before we got through to someone. The quickest single call of all was to Vodafone: they put us through to a human in 50 seconds flat.

BT and Sky were the two companies that kept us waiting the longest. On one call, BT took 24 minutes and 47 seconds to connect us to a human; Our longest single wait of all was to Sky who took even longer at 29 minutes and 33 seconds and then cut us off.


On hold for two hours
Sky cut us off so often, we wondered if they were just having a bad day. A few days later we called them again one extra time just to be sure. On call number 101, Sky blew all previous records out of the water. They kept us on hold for a marathon two hours and ten minutes. We could have gone to the movies in that time. We asked you what you thought of the amount of time Sky kept us on hold;

One man said: "I can't believe you were on the phone for two hours man. I don't know what sort of company would let you wait for two hours and if they are even worth letting you wait for two hours to be honest. I would have put the phone down."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/...vice_test.html

i've just finished watching that and must agree with the findings during my years with sky (6) i found the customer service appalling
having said that i phoned virgin last week to complain about my bb and spent about 30mins on the phone then got put on hold for 15mins while he consulted with a tech then the line went dead so i phoned back to get a recorded message saying the offices were shut

[lsproc]

Crikey 2 hours!

Thats pretty bad...

ive never had a problem with getting through to Sky ive only had a problem with at least 5 maybe 6 Sky plus boxes and thats only the last contract. I had 4 boxes previously until I got a Panasonic silver instead of Amstrads I think they were pre Sky+

I always check saynoto0870 and dial standard geo numbers if I can think maybe that helps

[chickendippers]

Unfortunately I've never had the pleasure of speaking to a single British person at Three, even when I wrote a letter of complaint! I recall they downsized their CS presence in Scotland a while back

[Sirius]

For the short period i had a Sky+ box i lost most of my hair from the total shambles that Sky customer services and technical support subjected me to. It ended up with me disconnecting my service with them. The Sky+ box is sat in a cupboard collecting dust now along with the adsl router.

[Welshchris]

Last time i rang Sky on behalf of my sister to sort out problems she was having with her emails, it took almost 20 mins for them to answer the phone and then we were passed between different departments all in all we were on the phone almost an hour.

[Paul K]

3 departments? Did you call the BB tech department? Sky's phone platform is driving it's staff nuts at the moment, hopefully they will fix it soon as it currently is not doing it job properly.

[mentalis]

I have never had to call Sky CS... yet.

I called VM at the weekend because my V+ box forgot which channels I was subscribed to (it has been turned off for some time). They were helpful, and were British.

Still makes me laugh though that I was going to be on hold for so long that I could choose my own on hold music. To be fair, they said I would be on hold for ten minutes, and it was ten minutes.

Well nicky campbell said the watchdog team would have had a chance to go down the cinema and watch a film in the time it took sky to answer the phone,not bad for a communication company.

Also i beileve sky was the only company to have made watchdogs list every year since they run the survey,the man from sky stated that they are having problems with the phone systems,fair enough, but what went wrong in the two previous years i wonder. When sky came number one, as watchdog said this year was skys hatrick,well done to vm though for not appearing in the list,something must be going right on that front at least.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Paul

3 departments? Did you call the BB tech department? Sky's phone platform is driving it's staff nuts at the moment, hopefully they will fix it soon as it currently is not doing it job properly.

I found it slightly funny that the guy that Nicky Campbell was harrassing about the bad performance was happy to blame their phone system, while also bringing in the fact that they answer 10s of millions of calls each year.

I am not denying that the phone system is crap (it wouldn't be the first time that a company has bought in an IT system that is not up to the task* and I dare say it won't be the last), but rather than just saying the old system is crap, shouldn't he have said something along the lines of they were trying to fix it?



* See the call logging system the London Ambulance Service used for a while in the late 90s for an example of that. I studied it in my degree. They bought an off the shelf system that was designed for a smaller ambulance service. It presented the operator with a scrolling list of calls, but didn't log those that went off the top of the screen. As such, if the operator did not answer a call fast enough (which was a distinct possibility with the rate the calls are made to the London Ambulance Service), the call went off the top of the screen and was forgotten by the system. That was a little worse than the Sky system though. At least with Sky, the worst that can happen is that they lose service. If a 999 call is not answered fast enough, the person could die.

[Paul K]

Trouble is they have been trying to fix it, then they changed a part of it and now they are trying to fix it again. Unfortunately they have also rolled out HD and a brand new viewing card within the last couple of months and it's not doing their queues any favours.
I must admit though if customers listened to the options and took the right ones the customer services queues would be shorter. Customers often moan at queue length and then you look at your screen and see they came in via the wrong department completely.
Sky need a callback option though, it is do-able and would save a lot of grief on the lines.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Paul

Trouble is they have been trying to fix it, then they changed a part of it and now they are trying to fix it again. Unfortunately they have also rolled out HD and a brand new viewing card within the last couple of months and it's not doing their queues any favours.
I must admit though if customers listened to the options and took the right ones the customer services queues would be shorter. Customers often moan at queue length and then you look at your screen and see they came in via the wrong department completely.
Sky need a callback option though, it is do-able and would save a lot of grief on the lines.

Actually, when I worked for Blockbuster, their internal tech support line had a nifty call back system. If they (or you) were busy, you just rung them once and hung up. They would call back, and when the operator did, he/she would already have the store details up. Saved an awful lot of time. Not sure if it's practical for Sky though.

I agree about customers listening to the options, but with some queries, it's not always obvious which department to go to. I've had to phone companies, and found my query could fit two or three different departments.

[Welshchris]

Originally Posted by Paul

3 departments? Did you call the BB tech department? Sky's phone platform is driving it's staff nuts at the moment, hopefully they will fix it soon as it currently is not doing it job properly.

i called tech support and because the password wasnt working they said i had to speak to customer services to verify account details and then put back to tech support it was a joke lol

[Paul K]

The only time you have to do that is if either you aren't the account holder or details on the system are incorrect. Oh and to be honest they shouldn't have dealt with anyone but the account holder for a primary email address issue as it breaches DPA. Was your sister there?