NTL is call centre with longest wait in Mirror test

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

The "phone monkeys" (which incidentally is spelt monkies) know a lot more than you think... do you think ntl just pull people off the streets to work in technical support? No.... perhaps not.

I am always getting told not to take things said on this site about ntl personally, but i take "phone monkeys" quite personally. Nice to know that some people appreciate the help that Debsy, Mark B, and I (who are all "phone monkeys") give here in our spare time.

I don't begrudge giving help to people on this forum at all, but i think it is a crying shame that a few people have to spoil it with unnecessary comments that are, frankly, damnright rude.

And anyway, i am only a phone monkey so maybe i should just go back to being on the phone!

Sensitive monkey aren't we?

I have this vision of a monkey - both hands and tail fully occupied, such is said monkey's workload. Think of the phrase as a compliment - a recognition of your skill and dedication. [How am I doing with the placating?] It honestly wasn't meant as you've interpreted it The direct access to NTL employees is the big attraction of this site - you're valued I just see call centre work as the modern sweatshop Uniform, plain, controlled. Maybe NTL is relaxed and colourful - I dunno.

It's monkeys, not monkies. Change the y to an i and add es. So it would be monkeies, which is gibberish, hence monkeys. English language for you

[Marge]

I think a way customers themselves could help reduce the wait time is to have their account number handy or be able to recite their telephone number, so much time is wasted with customers not having any information available and having to go off and find the last bill.

Also taking 5 minutes to tell me how long they have been waiting adds to the length of the call and the wait time for the next person in the Q

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

The "phone monkeys" (which incidentally is spelt monkies) know a lot more than you think... do you think ntl just pull people off the streets to work in technical support? No.... perhaps not.

I am always getting told not to take things said on this site about ntl personally, but i take "phone monkeys" quite personally. Nice to know that some people appreciate the help that Debsy, Mark B, and I (who are all "phone monkeys") give here in our spare time.

I don't begrudge giving help to people on this forum at all, but i think it is a crying shame that a few people have to spoil it with unnecessary comments that are, frankly, damnright rude.

And anyway, i am only a phone monkey so maybe i should just go back to being on the phone!

Not to worry, I'm a phone monkey too.
I'm employed by EDIT: A major mobile phone company who I hear give out special bananas to those who manage to get a certain amount of personal information from each customer so they can spam them in the future by SMS then charge 'em for it.

[greencreeper]

<greencreeper realises that phone monkeys probably wasn't the best phrase to use on a forum full of, er, sensitive phone monkeys>

Originally Posted by Debsy42

I think a way customers themselves could help reduce the wait time is to have their account number handy or be able to recite their telephone number, so much time is wasted with customers not having any information available and having to go off and find the last bill.

Also taking 5 minutes to tell me how long they have been waiting adds to the length of the call and the wait time for the next person in the Q

Your joking!!! People phone up without their account number or knowing their home phone number. No wonder there are excessive wait times, must be so many people making repeat calls because they cant express their problem properly.

Its a bit like when you see women (sorry but ive only ever seen women do this)they queue to put money in the parking ticket machine, when they get to the front of the queue they then scramble around in their handbag for the parking ticket and money. Hellooooooooooooo you knew you needed the money and the ticket when you joined the queue!!

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by jtwn

Its luck of the draw, idiot journalists...

Four months ago....http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews...name_page.html

Why should it be the luck of the draw? Surely these such instances should be occasional at worst, yet I think many customers could validate such claims right?

Originally Posted by Mark B

The likely cause is the phone system going wrong. Still unacceptable, but I get annoyed when I constantly read that ntl staff hang up on customers. We don't.

I agree, most operatives wouldn't hang up for no reason (although it does happen). A phone system going wrong (and so often) is ludicrous for a call centre, AND a phone company!

Originally Posted by orangebird

And the fact that ntl has more than one call centre hadn't been considered either. Surely a fair judgement would've been to go through to all three and take an average...but of course, that wouldn't make interesting reading and would probably leave people with less to whinge about. Not the objective, obviously...

OB, as customers we don't take average readings of three call centres when we call up - we call up and someone (usually and eventually) answers. It's irrelivant to anyone that doesn't work at ntl which call centre you end up at.

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

Indeed

The only times i hang up on people are the abusive ones... I will warn the caller twice that if they use abusive language i will release they call, and if they do it again, i will press release. It's their own fault for not listening to the warnings

Can I ask what the guidelines are for deciding who is abusive and to what degree?

If you're talking about people swearing and threatening you, then I would agree with your action. If you're talking about someone raising their voice, then you need to ask yourself why they are doing it before acting as judge and jury.

I've had many instances where everything starts out fine, but the people at the end of the phone make the problem worse and refuse to do anything about it. I am not afraid of challenging these people, which sometimes they seem to consider 'abusive'. I say they're in the wrong job and should work harder to help the customer. And yes, I've been cut off several times - but it will always come and bite them back later on.

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

HSBC have a good system for dealing with abusive customers though... they warn you and if you don't take any notice they tell you they are putting you on hold until you calm down.... and a couple of minutes later they will come back, and if you are not calm you go back on hold again. It's a good system, because at the end of the day you have the choice to calm down or hang up!

Again this is fine, but who decides what is 'abusive'? I'm with HSBC too, but I have never encountered this, namely becuase I have never had a problem with them - their call centre staff are knowledgeable and friendly - and if they run into something they can't answer, they go and ask someone who can.

Compare to ntl (and I know I am generalising here) but on the whole the call centre staff are indifferent (often lacking in basic manners) not informed (OK this is not their fault, it's ntl's) and regularly make-up answers to the questions they don't know anything about. See the difference?

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

The "phone monkeys" (which incidentally is spelt monkies) know a lot more than you think.

But there are a lot that don't. You have to see it from both sides. Now I'm not blaming a lot that don't know for not knowing, but the guilty ones should not be on the end of the phone line.

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

I am always getting told not to take things said on this site about ntl personally, but i take "phone monkeys" quite personally. Nice to know that some people appreciate the help that Debsy, Mark B, and I (who are all "phone monkeys") give here in our spare time.

But these (and yourself) are the stars...you are the ones who give a damn, don't hang up on people, know the answer or offer to find out. If only ntl employed more like you. It's impossible when talking in general terms not to tar the good ones with the same brush as the bad - I'm sure such comments were never aimed at you.

[Richard M]

We will shortly be conducting our own tests, maybe next week.

[Graham M]

Originally Posted by gary_580

I guess its a toss up between a call centre that takes ages to answer and maybe hang up on you, with one that speaks an Indian version of english and hasnt got a clue what you are talking about.

Spot on, I was out trying to setup a client's Tiscali broadband connection. I tried phoning customer support cos he wasnt getting an ADSL signal and to find that they have an Indian Call Centre who had no idea what i was going on about, were following a script, etc.. Put the phone down twice, finally got to speak to someone who spoke decent English and could understand what i was going on about on the 3rd call.

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by andygrif

<snip>

OB, as customers we don't take average readings of three call centres when we call up - we call up and someone (usually and eventually) answers. It's irrelivant to anyone that doesn't work at ntl which call centre you end up at.

I disagree that it's irrelevant - what if they had called one of the other call centres, and the results were different?

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Richard M

We will shortly be conducting our own tests, maybe next week.

With regards to this, do have any recommendations about who to phone, which department and a query that we could ask them all?
So far I know it'll be NTL, Telewest, BT and maybe a few others related to telco or broadband connections such as popular online hardware shops (dabs etc) or DSL tech support lines.

Each one will be phoned three times, once in the morning, afternoon and early evening to make the tests as fair as possible.
They will then be scored on waiting time in the queue and customer service quality (query resolved, attitude/tone of voice etc) then the results will be submitted as a Cable Forum UK press release to major news agencies/websites.

Originally Posted by orangebird

I disagree that it's irrelevant - what if they had called one of the other call centres, and the results were different?

Must admit OB i agree with andygrif. If i phone NTL i dont really care where to call gets answered (as long as its in Britain!!). If there a three call centres then they should all provide a consistent service. A far as im concerned a call centre is only as good as the worst operator working on that call centre.

At the end of the day the media proabably made one call and it was bad so they made a story. Most of whats in the press just highlights what they want the story to be and not a scientific survey with any real basis to the results.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Mark B

Most often people do not put the phone dopwn on you. For starters, it's not a phone anyway, it's a headset plugged into a swtchboard terminal, so there's nothing to 'put down' anyway.

The likely cause is the phone system going wrong. Still unacceptable, but I get annoyed when I constantly read that ntl staff hang up on customers. We don't.

But the customer knows they have not made an action to terminate the call, either it has been wrongly transferred, the software has caused a bug to drop the call, a headset has been left on auto answer while it's owner goes to the bathroom, all of these things are caused by problems at the call ctr end, not the customer end. I understand that you are not sitting cradling a telephone, but "putting the phone down", is the coloquial epression to describe what happens.

Originally Posted by gary_580

Your joking!!! People phone up without their account number or knowing their home phone number. No wonder there are excessive wait times, must be so many people making repeat calls because they cant express their problem properly.

NTL work on a phone number they force you to have whether you use it or not (I'm a DTV customer, so lets take that as fact and not debate it). It sits in the corner of the living room with nothing plugged in and I'm expected to remember this number?

I Must say of late calling the 0800 052 2000 number punching in a random 01992 number (and trying to report a telco fault - best place to call to moan about green cabinet doors IMHO). I have got through to a person within 5 minutes each time. My experience says things are getting better.

Just a shame the Service Continuity team cannot be bothered to follow up on the mails the call centre generate.

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Richard M

We will shortly be conducting our own tests, maybe next week.

Well if its anything like today there is n hour wait to speak to digiTV faults and a 15 min wait for CS! All I want to know is if the engineer is going to bother to turn up this time

And if that woman tells me about front row again I'm going to trash my phone.

Edit - Richard, as for DSL suppliers I'd say the top 5 :

BT Broadband (both sorts)
Pipex
Tiscali
Wanadoo

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by orangebird

I disagree that it's irrelevant - what if they had called one of the other call centres, and the results were different?

If you work in one of them, then of course it's relevant to you as you don't want to be tarred (and feathered) with the same brush as an underperforming centre.

But if you put yourself in my shoes as a customer (or just think of any other call centre'd company you call) it doesn't matter one jot where you're calling. There must be a standard of service that everyone adheres to if the system is to work. If one doesn't perform, it needs sorting.

You cannot seriously expect customers to differentiate between three call centres - bear in mind that many still think their calls are routed to the local office so the person answering might actually know something about the local systems and places.

In fact one of the things about routing calls to multiple locations is one of the biggest negatives to customers. You can rarely get to speak to the same person twice, meaning you have to jump through the same hoops many times - O2 is the worst for this as they seem to have thousands of locations and your call usually gets routed to the wrong department.

Originally Posted by SMHarman

I Must say of late calling the 0800 052 2000 number punching in a random 01992 number (and trying to report a telco fault - best place to call to moan about green cabinet doors IMHO). I have got through to a person within 5 minutes each time. My experience says things are getting better.

I agree, queues are certainly getting shorter, I'm not sure I can say the standard of care is improving though.

Originally Posted by orangebird

I disagree that it's irrelevant - what if they had called one of the other call centres, and the results were different?

Well, going by your argument, if they had got one of the other call centres they would either have found a problem, so the issues are endemic, or they would have had no problems in which case the problems stem from just this one particular call centre.

Either scenario is bad for NTL. If it is an endemic problem then NTL can`t get any of their call centres running correctly. If it is a problem with just this one then why don`t NTL do something about resolving those issues.

Whichever way you cut it this is a failing on the part of NTL that needs to be resolved. Make a very crude assumption, if calls are split equally between three call centres then 1/3 of of NTL customers aren`t going to get a good quality of service, that is still too high by a long stretch.

*Edit* One other quick point that the call centre staff should take on board. The NTL systems seem to be frequently broken so that when you try to get through to a department it runs through all the recorded messages before just going to an engaged tone. If you press 0 to be put through to a general operator then they shouldn`t get stroppy that you have come through to that department rather than the one you want when you have absolutely no choice in the matter.