VM's Indian callcentre

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Kursk

Oh come on Mr Russ () don't be so grumpy. I hope all the young people in India who work hard for much less than people are paid in the UK don't think we're all a bunch of miserable old men and women. The British and Indian people have always got on well together often because their patience counterbalances the way we are sometimes intrusively rude.

Don't let a pc get in the way of being pc

You seem not to think this way but I feel totaly justified in being disatisfied with a section of VM's service over my recent experiences. 9 different people failed to spot the problem and the common denominator was they were in in the Indian callcentre. 1 UK agent spots the problem almost immediately.

You don't see anything wrong enough there for me to justify my post?

[sherer]

Originally Posted by Russ B

You seem not to think this way but I feel totaly justified in being disatisfied with a section of VM's service over my recent experiences. 9 different people failed to spot the problem and the common denominator was they were in in the Indian callcentre. 1 UK agent spots the problem almost immediately.

You don't see anything wrong enough there for me to justify my post?

As I said this seems to be a problem with the whole call centre and the training they are given. They could have opened this up in somewhere else in the Uk and done the same thing. It seems clear the idea of the call centre is to just employ people with technical or PC knowledge and just give them a script to use to solve the problems. Anyone of us who work in this industry know that doesn't really work and leads to all sorts of problems.

If call call centre was staffed by people who had been on a proper training course and were knowledgable to start with before they got the job then I don't think it would have been a problem.

By just giving the call centre the ability to read from a script they will never solve all the problems and will lead to customers being angry and upset but that could happen if this same call centre was in the UK with the same processes

[Russ]

There seems to be 2 schools of thought here.

One that says we are paying for a service and not getting it because those delivering it are substandard and we should be disatsified with it.

The other seems to say ok the service seems to be bad but they apparently "work hard" and get paid less so although we aren't getting the level of service we expect, we should not complain regardless of the fact we're paying for it.

So it seems to be ok to suffer from slow speeds and complain about the poor service but not ok to complain about poor technical support which is part of the service.

Guess which school of though I'm from.

[The PIT]

I'm lucky so far I haven't ever got put through to an Indian call centre yet.
However I can understand why these people keep to a script as they will have little knowledge of the product little knowledge of computers and won't have any direct access to someone who does.
Virgin would cease to use these centres if we all had the nerve to ring up and cancel our broadband as the losses would out weigh the savings it's costs to hire script "monkeys". However the British nature is too put up with substandard service and not complain too much as me may offend. Hence Virgin can get away with it.
Ukonline have a call centre in Ireland and did briefly hire some script "monkeys". I had a rare failure from this ISP so rang up and got an Irish bloke who dropped the script straight away as I had done all the trouble shooting. He went away to check things out and said call back in hour if the problem persists. Gave me a reference number. Called back an hour later and got a script monkey. Jesus would he clung to the script like a limpet. The problem he had is that 2nd line support didn't want to talk to any customers and they were telling him to use the script despite a previous call being logged and I was beginning to rather annoyed been asked to do the same checks already done. In the end I said "Listen I need to talk to the 2nd line I know they don't want to take calls and I'm getting rather annoyed with you so you need to pass me through as you're the one getting the flak which isn't right." he passed me through. The problem being very odd didn't get resolved but at least I spoke to someone else who recognised there was a problem. In the end the solution was too leave the modem disconnected for 24 hours and bingo everything fixed itself. The modem carried on working years and I still got it as a spare.

[Kursk]

I can only judge tech support by my own experience which I admit is limited because I'm getting a good enough service in the first place so I don't have to contact them that much. When I have, it's been fine. They speak to me politely and in my language (not their own) and I make allowance for that. I cut them some slack, but that's just me, I'm nice.

It is of course your prerogative to complain if your experience of any part of a service doesn't meet the standard you expect but keep in mind how many know-it-all's ring tech support - the people who ring up in a bad mood giving directions about what is wrong and how tech ought to do this and ought to do that. Of course there's a script. Tech have no idea what your real ability is and they don't know what you've tried (and in what order) so they have to take you through basic steps so that they know for real what point has been reached in resolving your problem.

Seems to be if they do this in a polite manner, it gets on some people's wick. Perhaps it would be better if it went like this:

You: Hi, my connection is playing up.
Tech: You dumb mofo stop messing with the settings.
You: But I haven't, I pay for a better service than this.
Tech: If you just stfu for a moment, I'll try to fix it for you.
You: I have never been spoken to so rudely in all my life.
Tech: Yeah? Well VM tech is in Norf London now so get used to it.
You: I think I'll move to adsl.
Tech: Good, it'll make my life easier.
You: Tech was much better when it was run from India.
Tech: Are you ever happy?
You: Perhaps I do get a bit over-excited about my internet connection.
Tech: Believe me sir, cable may not be perfect but it's better than the alternative.
You: I feel better now.
Tech: Have a good day sir.

Chwarae Teg Russ.

[Russ]

Not sure how your extreme example has anything to do with the fact that 9 indians failed to spot my problem yet 1 UK agent picked it up using exactly the same tools. How polite they are is totally irrelevant. If I want polite support I'll call my local Age Concern. If I want and expect my connection to be fixed I should be able to do so by calling Virgin's tech support. As it turned out it took an offer of help on this site for me to get it fixed.

[Kursk]

But you do expect a certain brand of politeness or to be less irritated in the way you are spoken to http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34739873-post13.html.

I accept that getting your connection fixed is (rightly) the priority; just seems to me tech are a soft target sometimes.

[The PIT]

The clue of good support is a good tech knowledge of the product you're supporting and only using a script too guide a none technical user through the fault checking.
I find it very useful when someone rings up and go I've done and that and this and I've still got a problem.

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Kursk

But you do expect a certain brand of politeness or to be less irritated in the way you are spoken to http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34739873-post13.html.

I accept that getting your connection fixed is (rightly) the priority; just seems to me tech are a soft target sometimes.

I don't know how Virgin tech support agents have their set-up but when 9 of them in one country can't spot the problem yet 1 in the UK can, with exactly the same tools, they leave themselves extremely wide open to be a soft target, and rightly so in my case. 9 is beyond a forgivable or understandable amount.

[chickendippers]

I'm not hugely bothered where the call centre is geographically as long as they are able to resolve problems effectively. However it does seem that the UK call centres are generally better at this. That said there have been occasions in my experience where the UK call centres haven't been able to resolve my issue either.

I have no problem with going "through the script" with a 1st level tech the first time I raise an issue as they need to be sure you've done all the obvious stuff and check your account is in order. The problem seems to lie with escalation (in both continents).

[Milambar]

I have no problems going through the script either, when I can understand what they are saying, provided thatwhen the script fails to fix the problem, they DON'T blame "winsock problem, reinstall windows. Thankyou bye bye.", they actually admit they can't fix it, and escalate it to someone who can.

So far, when I've spoken to India, the problem has been:
Winsock problem, reinstall windows. (Identical problem on a non-windows PC tho).
Spyware (on a linux machine)
Speedtests are inaccurate, bye bye. (I was reporting my modems config was still set at 2MB a week after I had upgraded to 10MB)

In each case, all those problems were resolved within minutes of reaching a UK based agent, or the newsgroup.

Put short, the Indian call centers only seem to be interested in closing the call asap, to keep their call rates up. They might be lovely people, but as technical support agents, in my experience, they suck.

[Down the Pub]

i thought was a funny read re. call centres

http://forums.hexus.net/networking-b...le-modems.html

never had anything like that, but had my fair share of problems with them.

[georgepomone]

Hi All,
I don't make any excuses or comments on how bad or how good the Indian Support is. The reason is I, like many others remember ntl support at it's best. Remember those day's Russ. If I had to call for any support I had to prepare myself for the call. It was usually the customers fault regardless of what the fault was. I lost my temper a few times I remember. I once had a Supervisor tell me I was thick and to get off the phone. No use complaining they didn't believe you anyway. Happy Days.
All this of course in due time led to the creation of this sites origanal formation. It's all been fun over the years. Of course we didn't think so at the time. So thanks to all those friends past and present who have helped customers like me and you.
Best Wishes to All.
George.

[Kursk]

Originally Posted by Russ B

I don't know how Virgin tech support agents have their set-up but when 9 of them in one country can't spot the problem yet 1 in the UK can, with exactly the same tools, they leave themselves extremely wide open to be a soft target, and rightly so in my case. 9 is beyond a forgivable or understandable amount.

Like I said, I can only go by my own experience. But beyond that, will it really help for one of the moderators on the best cable forum in the UK to be so openly critical? The training provided to the techs is the training provided; I think these guys would be feeling pretty glum about the service they try to provide if they were to read this. Sherer has made this point very well a few times. I dunno, perhaps all us computer types are just inherently miserable.