It’s only answering the telephone…
This is a response to @AngryBritain’s “Helpless Centre” Beef.
OK, @AngryBritain – I love your tweets, you help to keep me sane on my way to work and I often find myself nodding and agreeing with you HOWEVER… I really need to put the other side of the Call Centre story across.
It’s Monday morning, like most of the country I’m off to work. My mission? To help customers, solve problems and generally make them feel good about the company I work for.
In short, I work in Customer Relations, we’re a team of people who’s purpose is to rescue a situation once everything’s gone wrong and help customers in the hope that they’ll return. Now this means that we deal with people after they’ve travelled. In the mobile phone industry we’d be called “retentions” in the car industry we’d be After Sales Care, but the important thing is we are a post travel team.
We have one of those touch-tone thingies that asks you to select which department is best for you. Why? Because otherwise we’d have to hire a team of receptionists to direct your call, and that would mean you’d have to pay for them. But in these credit-cruch recessional times you want to save money, so we need to automate it. I think that my company’s menu’s quite straightforward, for Sales press 1, Flight times 2, Help with your booking 3 and if you have recently travelled and want to talk to us about it? Option 4. It’s not difficult.
So I leave the house and, like @AngryBritain I have the joys of the UK Commute. buses that arrive if and when they want, smelly passengers beside me, coffee shops that aren’t open early enough on a Saturday, Big Issue sellers on every corner and a corner shop with an owner who has two speeds, slow and reverse. But, like the millions of others, I fight my way through to the office and sign in to the numerous systems that I need, reservations, emails, complaints log, check-in, the list goes on…
Then 08.00 kicks round and I signin to my phone, start writing a reply to one of the passengers that I emailed last night and a call comes through. ”Good Morning, you’re through to Ethan in Customer Relations, how can I help?” I’m bright, I’m breezy, I smile down the phone and sincerly want to help this person…
“Oh! Are you a real person, Steven was it?” comes the sharp, clipped voice at the end of the line. ”Absolutely Sir, and it’s Ethan by the way.” Still smiling, still bright – I’m sure we can get this sorted if the customer needs me. ”Well Euan, I’ve been waiting for 15 minutes to get through to you!” I look at the clock, it’s 08.03, the department’s been open for 3 minutes. ”I’m sorry to hear that sir, let’s see if we can get things sorted for you…”
“I want to make a booking but your website’s broken, you’ve got no helpdesk number and I can’t get through to sales…”
Ah… never fear, I know just the person that can help, we have a helpdesk AND a sales team, so let’s just see how we can get this guy to understand…
“I’m sorry to hear that sir, it’s very rare for the website to not work at all so I think the best thing to do would be if I pass you through to the helpdesk who’ll look into it for you. Of course I’d like to give them some details so if I could just take your name…”
“WHAT!?!” The tone is raised, the frustration is building, and who better to take it out on than a voice at the end of a phone? I mean really, it’s not a real person there, sat listening and trying to help, just a voice. They don’t have a face so it’s easy…
So it’s time to let this person have his rant, about how awful call centres are, about how it’s all my fault that he selected the option to come through to the wrong department, about how he hopes that we go bust and that I lose my job. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it, and – while I know he’s just frustrated – it can be a little disheartening when I was only trying to help.
“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t mean to upset you… yes I realise that you’ve been on the phone to me for half an hour now (it’s 08.07 now, but what’s 25 minutes or so between friends!?!) and I’d like to get this sorted as quickly as possible for you so, could I just take your name, where you want to go, and the problems you’ve had? That’s great Mr Angry, thanks very much, now I’m just going to pop you on hold for a minute while I introduce the call and then one of my colleague’s in the web team can help you. If you need them in the future their direct number is 00000000 and they’re open from 08.00-20.00 daily.
So there’s the first victory, but do you thing Mr Angry will be happy with that, or do you think that he’s going to blog about how awful call centres are because of the touch tones and the departments?
I know there are bad call centres out there, with a multi-tiered touch-tone (Sky TV, BT and T-Mobile – I’m looking at you!) and staff who can’t be bothered. In fact, there are staff that can’t be bothered in every job, not just call centres. I know there are call centres who outsource, granted their English is better than my Punjabi, but it can be difficult to understand.
But we’re not all like that, honest!
