NTL is call centre with longest wait in Mirror test

[bo-peep]

well i posted the other day that i get thru straight away.that was until i tried to ring faults with waiting x's of owt up2 2 hrs.i'd tried 3x's but only hung on 4 30 mins. decided to ring at 6.45 this morning thinking it was a 24 hour service.wrong.tried at 8 and was waiting 4 25mins.woman told me the fault had been corrected ( been unable to get 1471 all week)NOT.rang cs and only had a 5 min wait.was told they were taking names of customers with the problem and it was caused by new software or summat and only affected those who had upgraded/downgraded their package.the thing is i changed the package on the 1st and 1471 has only been out of action this week.

[poolking]

Originally Posted by 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

Can you cut out the insults? Get that in before someone else tells you to.

Originally Posted by poolking

Can you cut out the insults? Get that in before someone else tells you to.

... and I'll second that, the insults in that post were uncalled for, please refrain from them in the future.

I work in a call centre, and we'd all be sacked if we had a service like NTL's.

Ok 140 thousand users supported by 20 people isnt exactly a huge deficit, but we support software, hardware and telephony. We also have to answer 90% of calls withint 30 seconds of them entering the Q.

Do not and I repeat do not show any contempt for call centre staff, they usually are the hardest workign people you will come across, anywhere.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by 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

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

<upset monkey>

Well I think I speak for everyone else when I say that CF and it's members value your and other NTL employees' help and assistance, but there must be at least a few employees at NTL (excluding the managers) who don't take as much interest in their work and are generally pretty useless?

[mandrake]

I opologise if i have offended any of you youngsters on the bb tech support team.
what I should have said is ,that, on thursday night at 11.30pm I phoned the tech support line, told the guy on the phone my problem and got an answer within 20 mins. My gripe is not with you guys, but with the call centre staff who take ages to answer the phone and when you do finally get through, promptly get put on an even longer hold .
Again apologise to all concerened

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by mandrake

I opologise if i have offended any of you youngsters on the bb tech support team.
what I should have said is ,that, on thursday night at 11.30pm I phoned the tech support line, told the guy on the phone my problem and got an answer within 20 mins. My gripe is not with you guys, but with the call centre staff who take ages to answer the phone and when you do finally get through, promptly get put on an even longer hold .
Again apologise to all concerened

We need a little clarity here.

Please understand that the staff taking your call do not take ages to answer your call on an individual basis. Your posts are implying that they are morons because they don't answer you quick enough. This implies they are all sat around doing nothing.

What's actually happening is they are answering other calls. They will be short staffed, there will not be enough of them to deal with the volume of calls at that time, so they are working extremely hard to get the calls answered whilst still providing a good service.

Now it is extremely poor if your call is taking that long to answer but it is NOT the fault of the people on the end of the phone, and it is NOT acceptable to be calling them morons.

Those same people are the people that will offer assistance on here IN THEIR OWN TIME, they won't do it if you're going to hurl abuse around.

[Richard M]

Blame the call queues on the old women who like to chat about Eastenders on the phone for 20 minutes.

[Marge]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Blame the call queues on the old women who like to chat about Eastenders on the phone for 20 minutes.

Must get at least one of them a day, had a little old dear last week who had rang in just for someone to talk to cos she was lonely.

[carlingman]

Originally Posted by Mark B

We need a little clarity here.

Please understand that the staff taking your call do not take ages to answer your call on an individual basis. Your posts are implying that they are morons because they don't answer you quick enough. This implies they are all sat around doing nothing.

What's actually happening is they are answering other calls. They will be short staffed, there will not be enough of them to deal with the volume of calls at that time, so they are working extremely hard to get the calls answered whilst still providing a good service.

Now it is extremely poor if your call is taking that long to answer but it is NOT the fault of the people on the end of the phone, and it is NOT acceptable to be calling them morons.

Those same people are the people that will offer assistance on here IN THEIR OWN TIME, they won't do it if you're going to hurl abuse around.

Sadly we need even more clarity.

It is nothing to do with the guy or girl who actually answers the call.

It solely to do with the fact that NTL do not have the knowledge to use a perfectly good call routing system they have in place.

Churn is their key word, they do not care about quality just quantity and this has always and will continue to be their motto and to me they will never place a dent in their call wait times as customers sign up and agents leave or are forced out.

I have said it once and will say it again the rot starts 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.

What sends the alarm bells ringing for me is also that fact that current employees will go out of their way to defend them to the bitter end.

Yet when we get someone for example like Mark who is I believe currently serving his redundancy notice who on many occasions goes and has gone out of his way to help people, what does NTL decide to do well rather than address the problem head on no they decide to adopt the sliencing approach.

FFS when will they learn that this approach does not work, they have tried this before on .com and got all the MODS/ADMIN on side for a small period until they woke up and smealt the coffee.

Heres a novel idea then why don't NTL address the problem face on instead of trying to brush under the carpet by silencing the problem.

For a change it would be nice to see an official reply from NTL to work with this site and not try and silence its Employees and Members by actually giving a **** rather than adopting their usual attitude and trying to buy it to silence it.

They must know this site exists for them to issue such a directive in Marks direction to try and silence his postings.

[mandrake]

With reference to my post about the time taken for call centre to amswer the phone.
Its down to downright frustration when, after spending something like 40 mins holding onto a phone with only a female telling you how great ntl is, that on finally speaking to an advisor, you get told, "we will have to tranfer you to another department", knowing full well that you face another long wait before you get an answer.
I agree that its not all the staff's fault, but someone has to take the blame for this poor service.And it would seem that all the complaints about my post seem to be comming from ntl employee's who are not allowed to advise us that they work for ntl, seems these youngsters are too young to realise when they are being used.

[Racingdick]

Right... I've been sitting on my hands for this one..

1. If people had the forsight to make the call when they are next to there pc it would save time..
Many a time have i had someone running up and down stairs doing the simplest of tasks that takes an age!

2. If people listened to what they were told, ie to reboot the cm in event of a prob.. if it says a problem gu12 and they are gu12 then the issue applies (9out10) to them.

3. General customer knoledge of pc's and the internet is getting even worse, the number of first time users who dont know how to double click, select the @ symbol, even know a URL... Get my drift!!

4. Techs such as myself and others on here are constantly being hit with calls, we put one down another comes through. We do not sit on our behinds watching tv.

5. Customers preparation for the call is daft, calls come through with cable modems/pc off.. some dont know there post codes, some call from work and nowhere near the pc...the best one mum calls up, does the name etc, then calls little Johnny from the bottom of the garden!

[Racingdick]

FYI.. Ive just moved house and got NTL Broadband..

anyways...

Called BT to cancel line, 3 attempts where i gave up
4th attempt was waiting 25minutes...

Called Orange to register a new phone
20 minutes

Called NTL to check my pin, couldnt make out a 3 from 5
my own fault

10minutes!!! no bu*lsh*t

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Racingdick

Right... I've been sitting on my hands for this one..

1. If people had the forsight to make the call when they are next to there pc it would save time..
Many a time have i had someone running up and down stairs doing the simplest of tasks that takes an age!

So some people may not realise they need to be next to their pc to sort out a problem?? Scandal!! For shame on them!!! How DARE they not have pre-knowledge!!

Originally Posted by Racingdick

2. If people listened to what they were told, ie to reboot the cm in event of a prob.. if it says a problem gu12 and they are gu12 then the issue applies (9out10) to them.

Perhaps it's something to do with the way you deliver the instructions?

Originally Posted by Racingdick

3. General customer knoledge of pc's and the internet is getting even worse, the number of first time users who dont know how to double click, select the @ symbol, even know a URL... Get my drift!!

Customers don't need to have knowledge of PCs - that's YOUR job remember

Originally Posted by Racingdick

4. Techs such as myself and others on here are constantly being hit with calls, we put one down another comes through. We do not sit on our behinds watching tv.

Even though there are TV screens on most supporting pillars in Matrix Court??

No, we know you're not sitting around doing nothing.

Originally Posted by Racingdick

5. Customers preparation for the call is daft, calls come through with cable modems/pc off.. some dont know there post codes, some call from work and nowhere near the pc...the best one mum calls up, does the name etc, then calls little Johnny from the bottom of the garden!

I never realised it was part of the customer's contract that they need to have prior knowledge before they call. Oh that's right - they don't.

If you feel put out at all that these thick people call you up then perhaps it would be less stressful for you if you weren't in the role of Tech Support Agent?