NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience

[carlingman]

With regards to call waits it is not exactly rocket science but merely simple call vectoring.

No doubt like many call centres NTL use CMS (Call Monitoring Software) which will provide them stats for their peak calling periods.

Any such switch can be modified at a moments notice to change the way calls route.

It can be configured instantly to for example if calls waiting are equal or greater than 20 then give engaged signal.

If a major service outage occurs then it will play an instant announcement of the fault and then continue into the vectoring system of if persistent call are greater than say 20 then disconnect calls.

The variations are steps and can pre defined manually by usually the controller are the there are endless configurations of these.

One old classic example from NTL would be in the days of Tech Support in Newport when they abandoned the night shift and moved it to the Swansea Call Centre - what would happen at 12 midnight is any calls waiting would be dropped while they routed the calls to Swansea.

The vector for this would be to allow say for example unlimited call to get into the queue but come 12 midnight the vector would be to drop all current calls and then reroute all new calls to Swansea.

So at 11.59pm there could be 50 callers waiting for however amount of time but come 12 midnight they would be disconnected and when they redialled they would be routed to Swansea etc.

Totally unacceptable from the customers point but that is how it used to happen and no doubt with clever configuration still does.

[DeadKenny]

Quite simply, cutting a customer off is about the worst (and rudest) thing customer support can do, even if it's automated. Instant anger and frustration leading to the potential for them to take their business elsewhere.

Makes a mockery of the whole "your call is valuable to us" business (though that's always been a joke in my opinion).

I'd even be happy to be routed to India than be cut off. At least I get to speak to someone even if neither of us can understand one another.

Originally Posted by Chris T

You won't have to look far on here to find people who have had to wait longer than that. My worst NTL CS experience was well past the hour. To be fair to them, though, I have also been answered in under 10 minutes

I don`t think that 10 minutes is an acceptable wait either, no other company that I have had to deal with on the phone has made me wait that long. When I`ve had to contact Thames Water or Southern Electric their interpretation of the message telling me they have a high call volume and there will be a wait means a wait of around 5 minutes, not the NTL standard of several days.

[Brian Longstaff]

Advert for NTL jobs in the Manchester Metro (free newspaper):

Full and part-time Customer Service Representatives.

"We speak to all kinds of customers, every day... young, old, TV lovers, chatterboxes, students, mums, internet surfers... the list goes on. We need you to take their calls, and offer advice on a variety of broadband internet, telephone and TV services. Sometimes you'll help them select the right package or get connected; sometimes you'll resolve a bill query or note a change of address. Owning each call and getting great results is quite a buzz. You'll need pc skills and at least 6 months' customer service experience. Our training will teach you everything else you need to know."

Yeah, right...... I burst out laughing when I read the last part.

[Brian Longstaff]

As far as I'm concerned, the most ridiculous part of calling customer services was when they were pushing the Broadband Medic. Like I need a program that tells me that when the internet goes down I need to go and unplug the box and then plug it back in again, and does so only after ten minutes of tests!

As for the broadband speed itself, I was on 256kps - same as at work. Using a newsgroup reader at home to download stuff I was getting a maximum of 30kps no matter what time of the day or night it was. At work, using the same reader, I get a maximum of 61.3kps with 12 of 20 computers in our office actively connected to the internet... NTL said it was due to heavy demand at times I was on....

[Neil]

Originally Posted by ntl PR/BS machine

Our training will teach you everything else you need to know."

I have never seen such rubbish in all my life-ntl will never stop BS-ing, it's in their blood.

[philquinney]

Hey All,

Just to post about a positive experience: I just called faults because we were having problems with the volume on our STB being really low. For some reason the call got cut off just after I had given the CSR our account number and my name. A few minutes later we got a call back from the CSR asking what the fault was...

Hats off to Rob in Manchester (I presume). Customer Service should involve ntl servicing the customers - which is exactly what happened.

Phil.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by Neil

I have never seen such rubbish in all my life-ntl will never stop BS-ing, it's in their blood.

There are two key things with training - that the right people are sent on the right courses, and that they have post-training time to try out their newly acquired knowledge and skills. IME, and from talking to various friends and family, neither of those ever happens. Without them, training is pointless and ineffective. The training courses I've attended have involved the "trainer" handing out a manual and leaving us to work through it. This is something that can be done in the workplace, so why send people to a hotel to do it? For me, training should ensure that every individual goes away with a baseline compentency in whatever they were trained in, but more often than not people (if they're lucky) go away with a manual and have to learn on the job, which if nothing else has implications for standards of customer service. I don't understand why training is so bad - surely companies see they're wasting money? It seems to be a tick-box process - i.e. ensuring that you can claim that team x have all being trained in y.

[Larnyboy]

Hats off to Rob in Manchester (I presume). Customer Service should involve ntl servicing the customers - which is exactly what happened.

Phil.

Phil u could have asked Rob about my phone line while he rang u back

Big thanks


Ahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a

[philquinney]

Originally Posted by Larnyboy

Phil u could have asked Rob about my phone line while he rang u back

Big thanks


Ahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a

Hey Larnyboy,

I'm really sorry to hear you're having troubles - have you tried asking people on this board for help?

Phil.

Why on Earth do we get such a discrepancy between the good and the bad at NTL? I had to call them last night with a problem about billing, which the guy on the line (Matt) dealt with really quickly and efficiently, and even called me back because I couldn`t get through to NTL on my landline and was having to call from my mobile.

Which brings me to the bad, I cannot call customer services at the moment from my landline either on the 150 or the 0800 number, I just get a continuous tone. I phone up this morning to report it as a fault. The stupid idiot at the other end of the line could not seem to get it through her head that because I can call in on a completely different line while at the office that doesn`t mean that there isn`t a problem with my home line, she refused to actually pay attention to what I was saying (I mean, as far as I could tell she had a big list of faults and was picking them at random by rolling a die, the only relation they had to the fault I was reporting whenever she opened her mouth was that they were phone related and I suspect that was just luck on her part) and just kept insisting that there couldn`t possible be a fault, of course without actually checking. When I finally managed to persuade her to check with someone she came back with the excuse that the 150 number isn`t running in my area, but apparently that isn`t a fault if the CS number is offline. Needless to say she got a mouthful about actually listening to customers and not attempting to make a technical diagnosis that she clearly isn`t competent to make. It's just as well I`m in the office as that forces me to moderate my temper, but her arrogant attitude that is only propped up by her ignorance makes my blood boil.

You see threads on here moaning about the way some customers treat CS staff, but if you experienced the way I was treated by this young woman, who I`m pretty certain should get her house checked for a carbon monoxide leak, you'd understand why.

[orangebird]

So, if ntl cs really is that crap, why does the poll suggest that the majority of the time it's generally OK?

Originally Posted by orangebird

So, if ntl cs really is that crap, why does the poll suggest that the majority of the time it's generally OK?

About 80% of people who responded have had at least 'occasional hassle'. 48% of people who responded said that their experience was at least 'very hit and miss'. Only 20% have never had any problem with them. To me, those figures are far too high for comfort. If I was working in NTL CS, I'd be worried - professional pride wouldn't allow me to try to pretend they were acceptable. It wouldn't matter to me if every other call centre in the UK was as bad (or worse), I would want to aim for complete customer satisfaction.

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by Chris T

About 80% of people who responded have had at least 'occasional hassle'. 48% of people who responded said that their experience was at least 'very hit and miss'. Only 20% have never had any problem with them. To me, those figures are far too high for comfort. If I was working in NTL CS, I'd be worried - professional pride wouldn't allow me to try to pretend they were acceptable. It wouldn't matter to me if every other call centre in the UK was as bad (or worse), I would want to aim for complete customer satisfaction.

No Chris, they didn't vote at least 'occasional hassle' - they voted 'generally OK, occasional hassle. Come on, I always thought better of you than to pick and choose words to suit yourself.

Originally Posted by orangebird

No Chris, they didn't vote at least 'occasional hassle' - they voted 'generally OK, occasional hassle. Come on, I always thought better of you than to pick and choose words to suit yourself.

I'm not picking my words - the poll is at the top of the page for all to see.(and I wrote it in the first place ) And in any case, didn't you conveniently miss 'occasional hassle' when you suggested that the poll says the majority of people find the service to be 'generally ok'?