Public service efficiency

Leper said:
We all have our ideas of how these companies do not work efficiently regarding customer service. To me it's obvious that Call Centres sorry Modern Customer Contact Centres of Excellence do not work.

Is there anybody out there who work or worked in these Customer Contact Centres of Excellence can supply any light from inside these places?
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they are almost always outsourced to a company who has contractual SLA's to meet. As long as they are dealing with 99% (or whatever the target is) the other 1% don't matter.
Because they are outsourced, there is no scope for discretion. The agents are not paid to think but to stick to process
Massive staff turnover because they don't pay much in many cases and people see them as a first job or holding role before they move on
You pay peanuts................

However the biggest issue I see is a lack of overall ownership on a problem and in fairness to the contact centres, if the staff in the field are useless or you don't have enough of them, what the agent commits to might not be delivered
 
Peanuts20 said:
However the biggest issue I see is a lack of overall ownership on a problem and in fairness to the contact centres, if the staff in the field are useless or you don't have enough of them, what the agent commits to might not be delivered
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And that's why there's no point in getting angry with the poor sod that answers your call.
 
Well said Peanuts. I have used my former union sources to ask how do these Call Centres actually survive. I hear from people who are working or have worked in such places and the following is the normal situation:-
(i) Nearly all staff are badly trained.
(ii) The Team Coaches/Team Leaders are on a small amount more than the operator. Most of them are ill trained too.
(iii) The pay for operators and Team Coaches/Team Leaders is little above the lowest minimum wage.
(iv) There is an electronic "bleep" that sounds louder and faster depending on the amount of calls waiting.
(v) Staff Reviews are a joke and most fail whatever review is on hands.
(vi) Team Leaders shout to take calls and the "resolution" will be later. Most "resolutions" never happen.
(vii) Like Peanuts said above staff are transient and run out of such places as soon as anything else comes up.
(viii) The better Call Centre Operators are moved to actual shops e.g. eir shop.
(ix) Most operators cannot afford union membership.
(x) If they become union members their presence is frowned upon.
(xi) The staff have their supervisors/management listening into their calls nearly every minute of the day.
(xii) Breaks including toilet breaks are anything but personal and are timed.
(xiii) There is an employee of the month award which is nearly in the Tommy Cooper book of jokes.
(xiv) There are incentive schemes to make people work harder, but only one member of staff will get that award. There are no supplementary awards.
(xv) There is weekend work, Sunday work, Saturday Work, lots of unsocial hours, Bank Holiday duty and the reward is minimal.
(xvi) Dreadful abuse is showered on the operators by people ringing in. Crying and walk aways from duty are frequent.

I would be more comfortable if some call centre employee would agree or disagree with me or even add their own thoughts.
 
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I was naive enough to think that some call centre worker would come on here and comment. Instead we have Cynic 1 and Cynic 2 (make up your own mind as to who is in pole position).

The penny just dropped:- The call centre workers know what forum to ignore.
 
Leper said:
I was naive enough to think that some call centre worker would come on here and comment. Instead we have Cynic 1 and Cynic 2 (make up your own mind as to who is in pole position).

The penny just dropped:- The call centre workers know what forum to ignore.
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That's quite hurtful Leper. :D
 
Leper said:
Well said Peanuts. I have used my former union sources to ask how do these Call Centres actually survive. I hear from people who are working or have worked in such places and the following is the normal situation:-
(i) Nearly all staff are badly trained.
(ii) The Team Coaches/Team Leaders are on a small amount more than the operator. Most of them are ill trained too.
(iii) The pay for operators and Team Coaches/Team Leaders is little above the lowest minimum wage.
(iv) There is an electronic "bleep" that sounds louder and faster depending on the amount of calls waiting.
(v) Staff Reviews are a joke and most fail whatever review is on hands.
(vi) Team Leaders shout to take calls and the "resolution" will be later. Most "resolutions" never happen.
(vii) Like Peanuts said above staff are transient and run out of such places as soon as anything else comes up.
(viii) The better Call Centre Operators are moved to actual shops e.g. eir shop.
(ix) Most operators cannot afford union membership.
(x) If they become union members their presence is frowned upon.
(xi) The staff have their supervisors/management listening into their calls nearly every minute of the day.
(xii) Breaks including toilet breaks are anything but personal and are timed.
(xiii) There is an employee of the month award which is nearly in the Tommy Cooper book of jokes.
(xiv) There are incentive schemes to make people work harder, but only one member of staff will get that award. There are no supplementary awards.
(xv) There is weekend work, Sunday work, Saturday Work, lots of unsocial hours, Bank Holiday duty and the reward is minimal.
(xvi) Dreadful abuse is showered on the operators by people ringing in. Crying and walk aways from duty are frequent.

I would be more comfortable if some call centre employee would agree or disagree with me or even add their own thoughts.
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I've never heard of the beep but having screens giving visability of call status on the walls is quite common. Likewise timed breaks but then that is no different then if you work in a shop. That's just management of staff. Union membership is irrelevant since most companies simply won't engage with the unions anyway in this industry. As for the hours, well that is what we as the general public expect, "always on" services. We can't complain about the hours these staff work if we want to call during those times and indeed for many staff, that level of flexibility suits, especially for part timers

The bigger issues for me is pay, training, the fact that supervisors and managers actually don't listen to calls and are never available so no effective escalation and the fact that many call centres are really "catch and dispatch." Field the call, log the case and shove it on to parts of the business that can't, won't or are unable to resolve it.
 
I cannot argue with much of what Peanuts20 said. He made one overriding point "Union memberships irrelevant since most companies simply won't engage with the unions anyway in this industry." I don't know what Call Centre senior management is afraid of, but Peanuts20 sentence says it all. The Call Centre operator is at their mercy.

Staff Training:- Another area where trainees are denigrated having to sing songs live and loud in front of many other trainees and training officers. Supposedly, this is to increase your confidence. When you make it onto the work area you are trained with all this type of irrelevant methods and given little knowledge of the actual work you will be doing. Therefore, you're defeated before you start.

Staff Working Hours:- It's nearly impossible to get through to say Eir call centres within any daytime hours. Consequently, from their failure to answer your call you're facilitating them by ringing during the quieter unsocial hours.

Quality of Performance:- You're ill trained, handicapped by the enormous amount of calls where quantity not quality is of the essence, you've no safe tenure, no union input, you're being verbally abused nearly every day and have team leaders that are as ill trained as you.

We can read on this thread alone that Call Centres do not work. All the experience listed by me have been given to me by people who worked in such places.
 
Leper said:
We can read on this thread alone that Call Centres do not work. All the experience listed by me have been given to me by people who worked in such places.
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Call centres do work when they are done right. First Direct in the UK when it started up in the 90s as a telephone only bank was an example of that. In fairness, anytime I've ever had to contact my own bank over here (Ulster for the record) I've never had an issue getting through or getting an issue closed out.

What doesn't work is off-shoring to foreign climes unless it is for something like proper technical support. I've no time for all the "lovey dovey" training rubbish either, train them how to do things right and they'll get the confidence that way.

Webchat can be good also for basic queries and a competent agent can manage 3 or 4 discussions at a time making them more efficient

Lastly, a contact centre won't work unless a company invests in fixing it's core issues. If Eir, for example, got their installation and repair side of things working better, calls would naturally drop, that would take the pressure off the call centre and allow them to train and recruit and invest for the future
 
I'm glad call centres for our banks are performing well. The main reason is that if they don't customers will run from them like you'd run from a leper.

But, my experience with call centres in the past year Vodafone, Eir, That Crowd who answer Property Tax queries, all proved dreadful. The Property Tax Crowd although I provided them with a Reference Number couldn't track my payment of several hundred euro online. As usual I always ask for the name of the person with which I am dealing. Despite several promises they did not recontact me as promised.

Vodafone:- Not as bad as Eir on waiting. However, there it stops. After contact they are just as incompetent as Eir. Again they failed to recontact me in a dispute of €30.

Eir:- Positively the worst. You could be diagnosed and treated with serious illness while waiting for first contact, the same for the 2nd contact and again for the 3rd contact.

In my experience of contact, I was let down 100% by each of the call centres listed in this post.
 
I have been dealing with Pure Telecom customer service of late. They've been very good...so far...
 
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