NTL is call centre with longest wait in Mirror test

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Mark B

There ARE good people there, I speak to them regularly.

What about the people that the customers speak to that get told constantly that their PC is to blame, or that some in "3rd line support" will call them back (etc etc) ?

Originally Posted by Mark B

Plus, the intention with buying that site was actually good, it just got lost in the translation somewhere.....

Sorry Mark, but you're wrong.

ntl's only intention when buying NTHW.com was to (try to) silence it's fiercest critics, I don't believe to this day they had any intention of doing anything other than closing it. It was an invaluable & innovative (not to mention cheap) way of showing it's customers that it cared about them, & was prepared to listen to them.

So what did ntl do? They closed the site down.

I don't believe ntl give a flying fig about it's customers, the rot is too seep, the problems are insurmountable IMO.

They haven't managed in the 7 or 8 years I have dealt with them, even after going through Chapter 11, & I don't believe they can change this far down the line.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Neil

What about the people that the customers speak to that get told constantly that their PC is to blame, or that some in "3rd line support" will call them back (etc etc) ?


Sorry Mark, but you're wrong.

ntl's only intention when buying NTHW.com was to (try to) silence it's fiercest critics, I don't believe to this day they had any intention of doing anything other than closing it. It was an invaluable & innovative (not to mention cheap) way of showing it's customers that it cared about them, & was prepared to listen to them.

So what did ntl do? They closed the site down.

I don't believe ntl give a flying fig about it's customers, the rot is too seep, the problems are insurmountable IMO.

They haven't managed in the 7 or 8 years I have dealt with them, even after going through Chapter 11, & I don't believe they can change this far down the line.

Buying the .com site certainly silenced all the critics who were working for the company, I know for a fact that there were many questions being asked about who I was. In one meeting involving customer care a senior person asked and wanted me silenced, they said the ntl legal team should be put onto me. I don't know how they would do that because they wouldn't want certain things coming out in court/public.

I was told by another employee who used to post on .com that he was asked who I was, there were a couple of managers going around asking people if they knew. I was even asked by one ntl guy who didn't know I posted there on a night out.

The field technician/engineers in south wales were told to stay away from .com shortly after it was bought by ntl, I never found out how far up the ladder this "friendly advice" came from but it was denied by one or two mods on .com, and I was branded a liar for quoting such a thing.

ntl succeeded in shutting up employees when they bought .com, and I think the harm they felt employees were doing to the company by telling the truth had far more to do with the purchase than any intention of helping customers.

The people on .com who called people like me cynical, were generally ones taking all the BS and hype form ntl and employees that hadn't been with the company long enough to know how they operated.

Rant over

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Mark B

There ARE good people there, I speak to them regularly

That's never been in doubt - my point was to question whether increasing the pay succeeded in bring in quality people or just saw an increase in people fancying a good level of pay.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Russ D

That's never been in doubt - my point was to question whether increasing the pay succeeded in bring in quality people or just saw an increase in people fancying a good level of pay.

IMHO you can only employ good people, if the people selecting the applicants know their onions!

There are now pockets of employees in ntl earning extremely good wages just because they are good talkers. It makes my blood boil that in meetings with very senior management we discussed employees coming in on higher wages, and they used the excuse that it was happening because these people were better quality.

Thats was rubbish, some were worse but generally their skills were the same as the existing guys. ntl had to pay more money because the market dictated it, however they didn't need to pay more money to existing employees. ntl now has a certain amount of employees who have moved up to fill the places of people who have left, the block on outside recruitment for these positions has meant accepting lower quality employees from inside the company, and very often it has involved appointing employees to the position just because they were on the "At threat of redundancy list"

These practices have not helped ntl any way shape or form. It's hard to remove these people if they dont perform once they have been installed into a new position. I have every sympathy for people who have lost their jobs through redundnacy, but I have little sympathy for the ones who have been placed like a round peg in a square hole.

No one has taken charge in ntl and dealt with these matters, some employees have been shuffled around because managers dont want them and are unable to get rid of them. They just find a way of off loading them onto someone else!

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Escapee

IMHO you can only employ good people, if the people selecting the applicants know their onions!

So what went wrong?

I acrually disagree with that - I suppose it's easy to BS your way through interviews and tell the interviewer what they want to hear.

Maybe it's changed no but when I was there, there were too many people who made it their objective to have an easy day without too many disturbances from customers.

[greencreeper]

There is a pecking order of worst jobs, starting with burger flipping and moving up through stock replenishment to call centre work. It's not surprising it attracts the wrong sort of people, but aptitude and technical competency tests (though I hate them) should weed out the worst. The trouble is, what do you do when after the weeding there's only 2 people left?

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by Neil

What about the people that the customers speak to that get told constantly that their PC is to blame, or that some in "3rd line support" will call them back (etc etc) ?

Such people should be rooted out and sorted out. When/if that happens, it's inexcusable.

ntl's only intention when buying NTHW.com was to (try to) silence it's fiercest critics, I don't believe to this day they had any intention of doing anything other than closing it. It was an invaluable & innovative (not to mention cheap) way of showing it's customers that it cared about them, & was prepared to listen to them.

So what did ntl do? They closed the site down.

I don't believe ntl give a flying fig about it's customers, the rot is too seep, the problems are insurmountable IMO.

They haven't managed in the 7 or 8 years I have dealt with them, even after going through Chapter 11, & I don't believe they can change this far down the line.

I am unsure. I believe there WAS a good intention, but then the people responsible for the site were changed and it was clear they didn't want the site to continue for whatever reason. A huge mistake but I always thought the purchase was an unlikely alliance and was never likely to work. Sad...it could have been such an innovative move.

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by Russ D

That's never been in doubt - my point was to question whether increasing the pay succeeded in bring in quality people or just saw an increase in people fancying a good level of pay.

In credit control where I worked, it was successful...it stopped a leakage of staff to other departments and helped attract higher calibre people.

Don't know anything about Swansea though. Might not have worked there, I dunno.

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Such people should be rooted out and sorted out.

Absolutely. But what is ntl doing to find them? They have never been too interested in the past.

[scrotnig]

Well the tech support people are not even ntl staff any more, so it'll be up to Manpower.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Well the tech support people are not even ntl staff any more, so it'll be up to Manpower.

And so the ntl problems that they cause their customers go on.....

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Russ D

So what went wrong?

I acrually disagree with that - I suppose it's easy to BS your way through interviews and tell the interviewer what they want to hear.

Maybe it's changed no but when I was there, there were too many people who made it their objective to have an easy day without too many disturbances from customers.

We are probably on different issues, I have little knowledge of customer care or support functions at matrix court so I cant really comment.

There are many in other departments that just want an easy day, some that I know have been having an easy day since planning for growth "one" and that was back 4 yrs plus. There has been no budget for some departments and they have kept at it looking busy twiddling their thumbs coming up with new things to do that dont cost the company any money but at the same time makes it look like they are busy.

"Job Creation" its a big thing in some ntl departments, and the problem is unlike customer services or technical support because lack of knowledge goes un-noticed a lot easier in some departments. I have been filled in recently on some going on in ntl, and its quite laughable the BS that has come from one guy in a senior engineering position earning over 50k.
There seems to be no one to suss him out, he's the only one left out of the original corporate engineering team and has been able to take control of technical matters.

The same has happened in their planning department, massive cull and now they are looking for HFC architects because all they are left with is a few people with no engineering knowledge of the networks apart from drawing some lines with a pc package.

Engineering wise ntl is in dire straights, who is there to interview people for these positions. Dr or Professor XYZ or whatever his name is in Architecture and Planning has made some very simple engineering mistakes recently that have made some of the few experienced people laugh.
ntl has always been a company with poor intercommunication problems, the result is that you probably think I'm on another planet when I talk about ntl, and vice versa. We are talking about teh same company but its vastly different between departments.

I dont suppose its only ntl though, the attitude that you only need a degree and experience doesn't matter is bringing companies to a crawling pace and holding up technology in general.

[carlingman]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Like I've said, no one high up at ntl thinks there isn't a problem, they KNOW there are problems with call waiting times and standards of service, and they know where they want to be.

ntl is sadly not cash rich like Sky and BT and is not able to simply throw money at the problem...this approach rarely works anyway.

Having to do it on a comparatively tight budget means it's more likely to be done right, and that is what we are finding.

Sadly they have and are still aware of the problem and yet do very little to address this at all and the amount of cash they have or have not got is irrelevant as even when they had cash they could not get it right or even find a balance.

A certain 8 million pound call system proves that point as they shelled out loadsa cash on that and consultants and when the consultants left they never had a clue on how to utilize what they had and to my knowledge it is still not utilized to its max even now.

Bottom line on that is they cannot use the tools they have so not really a question of not having the money more a case of not having know how.

What company in their right mind would introduce a brand new state of the art call routing system and install in their primary Cable Modem support office and before it even beds in and proves workable then decide to squander more money by putting 70 plus staff on full pay on Garden Leave for 4 months and transfer everything to a newly trained handful of staff in Swansea.

Originally Posted by Russ D

Yet ntl were able to give ALL tech support agents a minimum of a £3000 per annum payrise back in november 2001 whilst allowing us to work for an hour and a half less per week, all for doing EXACTLY the same job and the same work.

Let's not forget that ntl were in the middle of chapter 11 at the time.

I believe this stemmed back even further to November 2000 as well as whilst working in Newport myself and other colleagues were promised this increase to bring us into line with COCO Customer Service Agents in the regions who were earning more than Tech Support Agents at the time.

It was to do with planning for growth or scheduling for redundancy as we preferred to call it as we never got the pay rise just 4 months full pay on garden leave and a months notice at the end of it.

The same director paid in excess of £50k per year a certain (initials) CS also during this time was paying for his entire block of flats in Swansea to have free access to the full package of ntl channels and I know because a member of my team was seconded for an afternoon into updating all the records on the systems to his name and tagged as associate free packages.

Originally Posted by Neil

Mark (with respect)...

The problems that we are discussing here have been typical of ntl for many years. It's no different now to when I 1st got them to install me some 7 years ago.

There have been many management changes over the prevailing years, but ntl still suffer with the same old problems-BS/no call backs/getting cut off/long wait times etc etc.

Agreed and it was like this 5 years ago when I was there and still is in certain areas.

The decent techs that went out of their way to help customers and solve the problem first time were bullied into assigning the call elsewhere so ntl could enhance their turnover of calls without worrying about resolves.

In their minds 200 calls answered 100 resolved with a 50% first time fix was much better reading than 150 calls answered with a 100 resolved with 75% first time fix and thus eliminating the need for the customer to call back.

Churn was their key word at the time, they did not care about quality just quantity and then and now as it seems they are not even placing a dent in their call wait times as customers sign up agents leave or are forced out.

Classic example I always remember is a Tech from my team phoning in to the Supervisors desk saying his car had broken down and they asked where he was and said a Supervisor would be with him soon †“ oh how considerate he thought they are going to tow me home, how wrong could he be they towed him into work.

Originally Posted by Neil

What about the people that the customers speak to that get told constantly that their PC is to blame, or that some in "3rd line support" will call them back (etc etc) ?


Sorry Mark, but you're wrong.

ntl's only intention when buying NTHW.com was to (try to) silence it's fiercest critics, I don't believe to this day they had any intention of doing anything other than closing it. It was an invaluable & innovative (not to mention cheap) way of showing it's customers that it cared about them, & was prepared to listen to them.

So what did ntl do? They closed the site down.

I don't believe ntl give a flying fig about it's customers, the rot is too seep, the problems are insurmountable IMO.

They haven't managed in the 7 or 8 years I have dealt with them, even after going through Chapter 11, & I don't believe they can change this far down the line.

Spot on, money was short so what were they doing paying people to Mod a site via freebies (oops we wont go there).

But essentially again it was more BS from them by suckering the customers into thinking they were not silencing the critics but ultimately going to produce an all singing and dancing problem solving site.

Community I think it was called but cant seem to find any links to it or mention of it now.

Plus I believe that wasnâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t the only site they threw money at to silence.

I have said it once and will say it again the rot start at the top and unless they clear that out of the way and get someone who actually has an idea what customer service means they have and never will give a flying fig about their customer base.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by carlingman

Sadly they have and are still aware of the problem and yet do very little to address this at all and the amount of cash they have or have not got is irrelevant as even when they had cash they could not get it right or even find a balance.

A certain 8 million pound call system proves that point as they shelled out loadsa cash on that and consultants and when the consultants left they never had a clue on how to utilize what they had and to my knowledge it is still not utilized to its max even now.

Bottom line on that is they cannot use the tools they have so not really a question of not having the money more a case of not having know how.

What company in their right mind would introduce a brand new state of the art call routing system and install in their primary Cable Modem support office and before it even beds in and proves workable then decide to squander more money by putting 70 plus staff on full pay on Garden Leave for 4 months and transfer everything to a newly trained handful of staff in Swansea.



I believe this stemmed back even further to November 2000 as well as whilst working in Newport myself and other colleagues were promised this increase to bring us into line with COCO Customer Service Agents in the regions who were earning more than Tech Support Agents at the time.

It was to do with planning for growth or scheduling for redundancy as we preferred to call it as we never got the pay rise just 4 months full pay on garden leave and a months notice at the end of it.

The same director paid in excess of £50k per year a certain (initials) CS also during this time was paying for his entire block of flats in Swansea to have free access to the full package of ntl channels and I know because a member of my team was seconded for an afternoon into updating all the records on the systems to his name and tagged as associate free packages.







Agreed and it was like this 5 years ago when I was there and still is in certain areas.

The decent techs that went out of their way to help customers and solve the problem first time were bullied into assigning the call elsewhere so ntl could enhance their turnover of calls without worrying about resolves.

In their minds 200 calls answered 100 resolved with a 50% first time fix was much better reading than 150 calls answered with a 100 resolved with 75% first time fix and thus eliminating the need for the customer to call back.

Churn was their key word at the time, they did not care about quality just quantity and then and now as it seems they are not even placing a dent in their call wait times as customers sign up agents leave or are forced out.

Classic example I always remember is a Tech from my team phoning in to the Supervisors desk saying his car had broken down and they asked where he was and said a Supervisor would be with him soon – oh how considerate he thought they are going to tow me home, how wrong could he be they towed him into work.







Spot on, money was short so what were they doing paying people to Mod a site via freebies (oops we wont go there).

But essentially again it was more BS from them by suckering the customers into thinking they were not silencing the critics but ultimately going to produce an all singing and dancing problem solving site.

Community I think it was called but cant seem to find any links to it or mention of it now.

Plus I believe that wasn’t the only site they threw money at to silence.

I have said it once and will say it again the rot start at the top and unless they clear that out of the way and get someone who actually has an idea what customer service means they have and never will give a flying fig about their customer base.

Spot on carlingman the same ntl I know, they made exactly the same money wasting mistales in other departments.

Although with the engineers they didn't give payrises to come ino line with cwc, they just tried to keep it quiet about the different wages. The management got very annoyed if it was mentioned and said wages shouldn't be discussed amongst associates.

"Associates" A Bulls**t term I refused to use

[mandrake]

i can confirm the mirror report, so far today i have spent over 2 hours trying to get through to report a fault on my broadband. we might as well be living on another planet as do most of the moranic idiots who man these call centres.as of now 17.15pm i have been hanging on this phone for nigh on 50 minutes, except for some feeble minded female keep tellling me how great the service is it looks like i'll be still hanging on till monday morning while they(the call centre staff) go home to their curry's and to watch elephant footballl on theit tv,s