Virgin media off shore call centres

[kayc3660]

Originally Posted by chickendippers

On the plus side now a Philippineo will be able to feed their family in a country where the social security system is doubtless less developed than our own.

As a customer this is a real blow to the quality of service. VM know that people don't like the off-shore call centres according to their "We Hear You" website.

I cant find the 'we hear you' page on the web. Is it somewhere that you can actually tell thm things or just where they tell us what they are supposedly doing to improve?

[jungleguy]

this is very unfortunate, I wonder whether the current lack of deals, offers and products (HD channels) is a way of thwarting any decent redundancy package for the unlucky sales staff?

[frogstamper]

After the fiasco of the Indian call centers you'd have thought VM would have learned their lesson, other UK companies are actively using the fact they have UK call centers as a selling point in their advertising, but not it seems VM, they are well aware that foreign call centers are one of the customers biggest moans and yet here they are opening even more.
It may look good to some bean counter in a darkened room at VM towers, but the average customer upon ringing up CS will now find even more people he/she can't understand or be understood by, even if you get past this barrier the foreign call centers fob you off with a list of pat answers written in front of them, you end up finishing the call and ringing again hoping to get an English speaker and invariably when you do the problem is solved quickly and efficiently.
IMO these foreign call centers are a complete false economy, I mean what price do VM put on providing a decent CS for us? not much it would seem.
VM are getting rid of the very people that their customers hope and pray will answer the phone when they ring with a problem, and are going to replace them with some non English speaking automaton.
How short sighted can they be?

Originally Posted by chickendippers

It's a shame they don't even outsource somewhere decent; I have experienced South African call centres with both Virgin Mobile and Plusnet and they are pretty much equal to their British counterparts.

Agreed, but then again their first language is English so its no real surprise, now it appears we are off to the Philippines!

[chickendippers]

Here's the response I got from the complaint email I sent a few days ago:

Thanks for your email regarding our recent increase in outsourcing for our call centres.

First of all I'd just like to say how sorry I am that you've not had particularly good experiences with our outsourced centres. We feel that our outsourced centres are just as good as our UK based centres. Our staff are all highly trained and the majority of our customers are more than happy with this service.

However, i do understand that theirt have been a few issues with our centres. I'm therefore more than happy to pass your feedback on to the relevant department to let them know how you feel. We value our customers opinions highly and feel that taking feedback from people like yourself is the best way to improve our service.

On the plus side, it's nice to see these email forms are now being responded too.

[Trent]

I however do have experience of Global Service Delivery.

The Data Protection Act only applies in 1 country.. The UK.. Once your data leaves the shores of this land it is subject to the laws of the land in which its used. The Phillipines for example does not have any Data Protection Laws and 45% of all personal data thefts occur in asian countries. 23 % in African Countries, 22% in American countries (38% of these in the US!!) 10% in the EU. (only 15% of these occur from UK companies! and most are data loses not thefts).

Do you think your financial records are safe.. No.. truth is anyone anywhere in the world will be at risk but with companies like Virgin Media outsourcing out data to far off lands it will get much worse.

I will now not speak to a contact centre that is not in the UK. If you feel strongly about this then you should write to your MP, raise this issue on local media.

I am trying to create a No10 Petition on the issue and would like you guys to all sign up for it, if it gets approved - I have delibrately taken this from a Data protection standpoint as there are numerous petitions on the no10 website to stop outsourcing of contact centres they have about 400 signitures in total. The trick here is not to sound "Protectionist" but instead to sound like your primary interest is to give the choice back to the consumer.

Your petition reads:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Add a clause
to the Data Protection Act 1998

We ask the Prime Minister to add a clause into the Data
Protection act which reads "Data collected in the UK may not be
used, transfered or in anyway accessed by companies,
individuals or groups, with out the express permission of the
Data Subject, which are based outside of the UK. It will be the
responcability of the company, individual or group who collects
the data to ensure the data is used in compliance with this
section of the act and failure to comply with this provision
would be subject to the same provisions as provided for with
this act to deal with data misuse. Companies, groups or
individuals who intend to use this data must provide a service
for data subjects who excercise the right to keep their data in
the UK which complies with these provisions"

Will post link if it gets published.

[frogstamper]

Originally Posted by chickendippers

Here's the response I got from the complaint email I sent a few days ago:
On the plus side, it's nice to see these email forms are now being responded too.

I find it very hard to believe what this guy says, "the majority of our customers are more than happy with oversea call centers", I seem to remember somebody posting a link recently that VM put out saying, "our oversea call centers do not mean a second rate service". They went on to admit that they had been receiving complaints about the language barrier and they then showed a clip of very happy Indians being "retrained".
Also two separate VM engineers whom I know have both told me that this is one of the biggest complaints they hear about from customers when on their rounds.
Strange also how companies like Saga and Admiral are now using the fact that they have UK call centers in their advertising, I think the person who spun you that line chickendippers that, "most of us are happy with foreign call centers" is either deluded to the extent he believes it or he's trying to delude you mate.

[jungleguy]

The demographic Saga and Admiral are targeting are somewhat different to what VM are targeting. Lets be frank here, VM are pushing super fast BB, and early V festival tickets, you got to ask your self who are VM trying to target? Your average 18-24 year old online gamer, single bloke probably doesn't care if he places his order for VM with a Philippino, but would be interested in those V festival tickets.

[Russ]

Admiral use Indian callcentres in the evenings purely because they want their UK staff to enoy the benefits of having a 9 to 5 day. They're one of the few companies that use offshoring but not for financial reasons.

The whole data protection thing was brought up a few years ago - apparently no infomation is stored in those countries, it's all retreived from the UK.

[WHISTLED]

Literacy has never been a pre-requisite of sales clearly..

[piggy]

Originally Posted by WHISTLED

Literacy has never been a pre-requisite of sales clearly..

are you affected with the latest offshore news?

[WHISTLED]

are you affected with the latest offshore news?

No and I have sympathy for my colleagues in those areas I worked in Sales for a few years

[sparky621]

I had a sales call from an Indian call-centre a few months ago. I could hardly understand a word he was saying so asked him to put the info in the post. Needless to say it never arrived. How many other sales do they loose in this way. VM obviously don't care what the first impression of the company a potential customer will have is like! One thing's for sure it WILL put a lot of people off.

[frogstamper]

Originally Posted by Russ B

Admiral use Indian callcentres in the evenings purely because they want their UK staff to enoy the benefits of having a 9 to 5 day. They're one of the few companies that use offshoring but not for financial reasons.

The whole data protection thing was brought up a few years ago - apparently no infomation is stored in those countries, it's all retreived from the UK.

I got that one wrong Russ its Churchill not Admiral who use the term UK call centers in their adverts.

Originally Posted by jungleguy

The demographic Saga and Admiral are targeting are somewhat different to what VM are targeting. Lets be frank here, VM are pushing super fast BB, and early V festival tickets, you got to ask your self who are VM trying to target? Your average 18-24 year old online gamer, single bloke probably doesn't care if he places his order for VM with a Philippino, but would be interested in those V festival tickets.

I agree that Saga maybe a special case, but Admiral and Churchill certainly don't deal exclusively with older customers, in fact I'd hazard a guess they make up a rather small percentage of their overall client base.
I also disagree that VM's target audience would be between 18-24 your forgetting about the phone and more importantly the TV services they offer, at another guess I'd say the demographic that holds the biggest sway with VM would be the 35-60 year olds.
I agree that in the case of 50mb BB most customers would be at the younger end of the scale, but when you consider that of all VM's BB services over 70% of customers are on 2mb. The only reason VM are moving their UK call centers abroad is money, nothing to do with youngsters not caring who they talk to, besides out of those 18-24 year olds I wonder how many have the bill in their names? or is it more likely thats its in their parents name.

[SMG]

I`m amazed that VM have done this. So much for their new policy of listening to customers. We say scrap the foreign call centers, VM do the opposite.

Well done Virgin. No change then. Money first, customers last.

[Compaq3]

Well its typical of Virgin Media, putting money before customer service, I had a sales call from the Manilla call centre the other day and they could not understand me and i could not understand them, I got so fustrated i put the phone down after 2 minutes, a waste of time..
When will companys like Virgin Media uderstand that it is customer service that counts and by transfering British jobs are doing the British economy no good..
Nevermind the crap about demographic targeting in simply words its just money grapping...