NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience

[Neil]

Originally Posted by orangebird

IMO? Get rid of that ****ty horribly AHT they all have to work to

What's AHT?

Originally Posted by orangebird

and start focusing on customers rather the the time customers take up.

Not rocket science is it?

Originally Posted by orangebird

And start paying CS staff better wages - this might entice a better calibre of prospective employee.

You get what you pay for in most cases.

Originally Posted by orangebird

Will things like that happen? Probably not.

Defo not I would suspect.

Originally Posted by orangebird

BUt naming people on here isn't going to change it either. And TBH, doing that looks like nothing but sheer spite, almost vigilante. This site got away from it's 'hate-site' rep. Naming and shaming will only brign it back. It's a very extremist thing to do - and being extreme hasn't done Islamics any favours, has it?

I think you're being a bit extreme comparing us taking passing details of ntl employees who muck customers about to managers who can & will deal with it instead of ignoring it to Islamic extremeists....

Number 1 rule of business-look after your customers.

Number 2 rule of business-refer to number 1.

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by Neil

What's AHT?

Average Handling Time - so much is focused on this, rather than the quality of the call.

Not rocket science is it?



You get what you pay for in most cases.

Indeed.

Defo not I would suspect.



I think you're being a bit extreme comparing us taking passing details of ntl employees who muck customers about to managers who can & will deal with it instead of ignoring it to Islamic extremeists....

Number 1 rule of business-look after your customers.

Number 2 rule of business-refer to number 1.

I know the rules Neil, thank you.

[Neil]

Taken from Richer Sounds website:

Originally Posted by Richer Sounds

WE TRY HARD BUT WE’RE ONLY HUMAN!

Due to recent changes in government legislation, our lawyers tell us that it is necessary to employ human beings in our stores.
Although we think they are the best you’ll find, please don’t expect the impossible. We hope we get it right at least 99% of the time but even if we do, (and we’re still trying to improve) that means that out of the millions of customers we serve a year, a few are bound to be disappointed in one way or another. For the sake of future customers as much as yourself we need to know if we’ve gone wrong. Please help us. All receipts include a short questionnaire that we beg you to fill in, because, if we’ve done something wrong we can’t put it right if we don’t know about it. Julian insists on seeing every one (you’ll notice they’re addressed to him personally postage paid), and if you’re disappointed in any way, we’ll do our best to make you happy! The address is, Julian Richer, Richer Sounds Plc, Freepost, London SE1 4BB (Freepost can take up to 14 days to arrive.)

ntl would do well to take a leaf out of his book.

Instead of employing idiots who don't give a stuff about customers, why don't they employ someone to take on something like this?

Pay them £40/50/60k PA if needs be, but put the info returned to good use & make sure that employees are dealt with accordingly-by this I mean disciplined or rewarded.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Neil

[Edit]-You know as well as I do that proof is hard to come by as most CSRs that mess customers about won't even give a name, let alone a real one.

So, if we encourage people to name and shame, they could be libelling the wrong person?

I don't know the helpdesk management system NTL use, but I would be amazed if it did not log who it assigned a call to. If we refer things to our contact, they should be able to look up that log.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I don't know the helpdesk management system NTL use, but I would be amazed if it did not log who it assigned a call to. If we refer things to our contact, they should be able to look up that log.

Stu-this has been a major thing for years, CSRs can log in while you're on the phone, talk to you like you're an idiot & yet there's no footrprint when you phone back to complain.

[Badger2407]

Lets not be naive here, for the amount of trouble the vast majority of NTL customers experience there is something rotten through the whole organisation and not down to just a number of poor agents. Top management know how bad it is and has been for years. Maybe just maybe things will improve with Virgin

Originally Posted by Badger2407

Lets not be naive here, for the amount of trouble the vast majority of NTL customers experience there is something rotten through the whole organisation and not down to just a number of poor agents. Top management know how bad it is and has been for years. Maybe just maybe things will improve with Virgin

I think you'll find the 'vast majority' of NTL's customers don't experience anything like the problems you infer.

That isn't to say there aren't problems, but not to the extent of 'rotten through the whole organisation' - do you really think the NTL staff who help on here appreciate being labelled like that? Does helping customers in their own time indicate they are 'rotten'?

The main issues NTL need to address, in my opinion, are communication with both employees & customers, and training of their customer service/technical support teams. As you say, that may improve with the Virgin branding, but there is the, not so small, issue of the merger with Telewest to sort out, first.

[Russ]

I've worked on the frontline for ntl - and I know first hand how easy it is to fob customers off with any old rubbish.

In my first week out of training I was listening to someone on my team taking a call from an angry customer who wanted to speak to a supervisor. My colleague had no intentions of passing the call on so he got one of the others to come on the phone, pretend to be a TL, listen to the caller shout and moan and fob him off with a promise to "look in to the matter".

The call was forgotten about as soon as they put the phone down.

At the time I had no idea what to do. With the benefit of hindsight yes I should have taken things further but I'd just started out and didn't know if I could prove what just happened.

But these people ARE out there. Admittedly all companies have people like this but seeing as this is a Cable forum.....

We had a long thread a year or so back where we discussed 'naming and shaming' and I gave my opinions for doing so then, so I won't go in to it again but as Neil says, if ntl cannot (or will not) taken action against these people (or even identify them) then perhaps we, as customers, should be looking out for ourselves and helping them to do it.

[Badger2407]

Originally Posted by homealone

I think you'll find the 'vast majority' of NTL's customers don't experience anything like the problems you infer.

I'm sorry I would take issue with this, I know alot of people who have, or have had NTL services, and everyone has a frustrating story to tell about them, the majority just walk away quietly and take up Sky, AOL etc. Of course there are genuine people who really want to get things right and probably a large percentage who would like to help out more but arent encouraged due to the culture within parts of the organisation.

There are obviously serious flaws in their processes and procedures that cause these problems and quality of service is not something they can embrace

Originally Posted by Badger2407

I'm sorry I would take issue with this, I know alot of people who have, or have had NTL services, and everyone has a frustrating story to tell about them, the majority just walk away quietly and take up Sky, AOL etc. Of course there are genuine people who really want to get things right and probably a large percentage who would like to help out more but arent encouraged due to the culture within parts of the organisation.

There are obviously serious flaws in their processes and procedures that cause these problems and quality of service is not something they can embrace

I'm not denying people have problems, but you are inferring it applies to 'the vast majority' of NTL's customers, of which there are over a million. I also talk to people who, like me, have had no problems, in over 5 years, what should I infer from that?

Unless you can come up with more evidence for your statement, than the small sample of the customer base you have extrapolated it from, I'm afraid you aren't doing any more than expressing opinion as fact.

[Badger2407]

OK I cannot say it is the vast majority but it is certainly TOO MANY you cant deny that, as a customer you have the right to expect good service and problems to be sorted quickly and efficiently, this never happens with any company all of the time but NTL's poor customer service reputation is renowned and has been for some years. Management should be addressing this once and for all but if anything it 'appears' to be getting worse.

You may be happy to accept this situation but I am not. A week ago I sent a recorded letter to Simon Duffy at NTL, thanks to this forum it has been sorted out but I have not even had an acknowledgement of my letter from him or his office, this I dont feel is good enough from someone in his position. I dont expect him to deal with it personally but having worked in customer relations an acknowledgement within 2 working days is usually built into a companys procedures.

Originally Posted by Badger2407

OK I cannot say it is the vast majority but it is certainly TOO MANY you cant deny that, as a customer you have the right to expect good service and problems to be sorted quickly and efficiently, this never happens with any company all of the time but NTL's poor customer service reputation is renowned and has been for some years. Management should be addressing this once and for all but if anything it 'appears' to be getting worse.

You may be happy to accept this situation but I am not. A week ago I sent a recorded letter to Simon Duffy at NTL, thanks to this forum it has been sorted out but I have not even had an acknowledgement of my letter from him or his office, this I dont feel is good enough from someone in his position. I dont expect him to deal with it personally but having worked in customer relations an acknowledgement within 2 working days is usually built into a companys procedures.

I don't disagree with that, and in the short term I don't see it getting any better, either, until the blood letting from the merger has finished, anyway.

As I've said, my own situation is good, so I don't have anything to 'put up with', but I do sympathise with people who do have problems - and I've been a member of this forum long enough to have seen quite a few of them

I would be amazed if your letter got anywhere near Simon Duffy, there will be someone filtering his mail & I wouldn't be surprised if yours, along with other similar letters are quietly binned... - please note I deplore this, if it does happen.

All I can suggest is to try using the 'responsetek' tool, which I know does get looked at - at least you should get a reply

[chrisjones]

For me as an employer its simple. I explain to my staff what I expect of them, I give them every oppertunity to achieve the levels both my customers and I myself expect, should they not achieve that level? Easy, I sack them! No BS no hand holding, they go!

If I were in a high position at NTL I would be hiding my head. I feel they need to toughen up and start kicking out the ppl not pulling thier wieght and coasting.

[[XAP]Bob]

Excellent customer services TBH.
The phone line is always answered by a polite and friendly machine which proceeds (invariably) to tell me there are lots of people calling and I might have to wait up to 5 minutes (or 10 or 15 depending on how busy they are).
So I give it my phone no. and go through a couple of menus - easy.
Then I way, usually just a little less time that I was led to believe, and asked for my phone number again (hmm.) and then I ge to sort the problem.
Yesterday the engineer was out within a few hours, and gave me a nice new shiny cable TV box, and a new cable for my modem (so when I finish building the office I won't have 5m of cable coiled up on the floor...)

To be honest the "You'll be waiting 10 minutes" sentenec makes ALL the difference in the world, although I wouldn't mind an occasional update (say every 5 minutes).
Taking the phone number twice is a bit superfluous, but the advice they give to try while you wait must save them *so* much work...

[Jon M]

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img] Bob, glad to see NTL are getting it right for you