Businesses, learn to pick up the phone!
I hate calling the customer service department of a business. Generally, it means being transferred to the right person/department/whatever more than once, hopefully getting the support you need and tolerating that horrible hold music and “hold advice” that they give. I am going to talk to you about a couple of my pet peeves in how a business runs and hopefully, this will inspire you to run your call centre in a more efficient manner. And know that until I can afford to take these measures, I am not going to run a call centre. In fact, I only give my number out to clients or possibly prospective clients.
Dropped calls - Sometimes when you get transferred to another extension, person, whatever, your call gets dropped. This sucks immensely and it requires you to go BACK into the queue and start the process over again. But is this really necessary? If you could build something into your system that allows you to detect when a call has been dropped and attempt to reconnect the call so the customer does not have to wait in the queue. This is a pretty good idea and I would not even charge for royalties if this were implemented in call centres.
With love from India - Call centres use US or Canadian people (people who have a strong command of the English language) to take sales calls but what about people in support? Well, companies like Dell and HP (I know from experience - calling these mother fuckers) hire cheap support from India or other countries where they can pay people $0.05 a hour. I hate to say this, but you can’t skimp on what has to be your must vital resource, support. Am I saying to dump your Indian support? No, but you should make them work in languages they hold a strong command of (i.e. where they DON’T sound like Yoda from Star Wars).
“Hold advice” - You saw me use this term before but you are unsure what I am referring to? It’s quite simple. When you call a support line, they often have a voice repeating 3 or 5 pieces of advice that probably don’t even relate to your situation. Things along the lines of “support can be found at hp.com” or something like that. No shit? Of course it can be found there and I would have tried that first BEFORE calling HP. Of course, they also offer unrelated advice (i.e. hearing about how spyware affects your computer while being transferred to parts). This CAN be useful to certain people, but please - don’t repeat the same few pieces of advice over and over again.
No Hold music or sound at all - Hold music sucks but it’s not as bad as being left in limbo, wondering if you are actually still in queue or if you got dropped. So remember that sound is important. It can allow you to KNOW that you are still waiting, that you don’t have to try calling back and if you have a speaker phone setting on your phone or a louder volume control on a cordless handset, you can set it to that and when the music stops, you just pick it up and start talking.
I’d like to speak to a manager - Okay, sometimes, call centre people can be such assholes and I decide that okay, enough is enough. This is the point where I’d LOVE to speak to a manager. And of course, when I’m being put on hold, I’ll vent my frustration and then be a little calmer for management. But when you can’t even get a manager or you are placed on hold for long periods of time to even get the chance to talk to a manager - this is problematic. I remember the time 1&1 illicitly billed me for domain names, they would not withdraw the case from the collection agency. And I could not speak to a manager about the issue.
Offer a callback request - I love it when call centres have a feature that allows the person in hold to use an automated system to leave your name and number so you can get called back later on by the person that was going to answer your call anyway. It’s perfect queue management and it allows me to go off and do some important things (i.e. cooking and what not) and come back to take the call instead of wasting time on hold. Being on hold sucks and being put on hold sucks. Especially if you are on hold for 30 minutes and up. You can please your customers more (or avoid pissing them off) if you have .
Voice prompt - Okay - I hate voice prompt. No, hate is not a term that is descriptive enough to describe how I truly feel about voice prompt. When my credit card is locked, I don’t want to have to say my credit card number aloud. I don’t want to have to say my Social Security Number, date of birth and other vitals aloud. This sucks and you should know this if you work in customer service. Especially for the credit card company who knows that credit card fraud and other such crimes happen too often.
Tags: being_transferred, business, callback, call_centre, customer_service, dropped_calls, hold, hold_music, india, pet_peeves, queue, Rants, voice_prompt
March 21st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
well you know about my views on phones ^^ but agree completly. i hate it when you get the indian call person…the funny thing is when they say “hello my name is mike”im like yea sure it is >_> by the way im not at all rascist ^^
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