Call Centres

Posted on 2002/11/06 21:15:38 (November 2002) by john.

Call centres, robotic customer service, and so on. I can't believe there hasn't been a rant posted about this already!

Today I needed to pay my electricity bill. OK, no great uproar required so far. Being inexplicably averted to sending cheques (or indeed anything) in the post, I usually tend to pay my bills either by direct debit or over the phone. As I hadn't got around to setting up a direct debit for this particular bill, and perhaps put off by the bewildering number I already seem to have set up, I thought I'd just do it over the phone. When I lived in London I used to do this all the time, it was quick, easy, and got it sorted on the spot. However, I guess either the times have moved on, or perhaps just because I've changed electricity company, but there don't seem to be any human beings left on the planet able to take my payment details any more. Insanely, I was asked to speak (not even dial) all the relevant numbers into a machine. First of all, this was impersonal. I usually enjoy having a bit of a joke with whoever picks up the phone, and nobody particularly likes talking to machines. Secondly, I had very little confidence in this system. How does it work? Surely it can't be speech recognition? I can't possibly believe that we're at that level of technology yet, that any arbitrary person can speak a load of unpredicatable words, over a poor quality audio link, in whatever weird accent they happen to have, and expect a computer to understand it.

As an example, even when talking to humans, the letters f and s can often get confused over the phone, so without the common sense to ask again, or do the "s for sausage" thing, a machine really has no hope. So I simply can't believe it is done purely by machine. Which means it must be processed off line by a human being. Well, errr, call me crazy, but could a real human being not just have actually answered the phone in the first place? Surely it's just the same amount of effort? What happens if the recording wasn't clear? How do they ask me to repeat or rephrase something? I'm left with no confidence that this has worked at all. No feedback occurred whatsoever. So how do I know they got the right card number, the right amount and so on? How do I know the payment has been registered at all? How do I know I'm not paying off someone else's account? What recourse do I have if it didn't go through, and I'm later fined for late payment? I don't even have the machine's name! (Although it sounded distinctly like a Judy). All in all, I thought this system was very poor indeed.

I guess this is indicative of a wider decline in standards of customer services, particularly in the utility industries - gas, electricity and water, and particularly over the phone. I'm sure there'll be no great gasps of surprise to anyone who knows me when I lay at least part of the blame at the door of privitisation. OK sure so they're trying to cut costs, and apparently I benefit from this with lower bills. Well this sounds great in principle, but it doesn't hold water I'm afraid. Firstly, if you go and get the annual report of any utility company in this country, if they are bold enough to list their priorities, share holder profit will be number one. Over and above safety, more likely than not, which is a whole separate argument all by itself. That aside though, customer service and value for money for the customers will be several places down the list. So it's plain to see these cost cutting measures are not primarily for our benefit. Obviously there's also an issue of job losses to consider. Replace a human with a machine, and the former worker is probably quite unhappy, in this particular scenario the customer is pretty unhappy, but you can bet the shareholders don't have too much to complain about.

This isn't the only example of over-the-phone customer service being awful. I'm sure once upon a time the call centre system must have been a reasonably good model, but at some point, either demand grew too big, the workforce became too demoralised, or the CEOs squeezed them too tight and now the bottom seems to be falling out of it. Just about everyone you talk to will have had a frustrating experience with a call centre in the last few months. First there's the enfuriating automated menus. More cold robotic voices. Is it just me, or does the option I want never actually appear in any of the menus? Or at best they are organised so illogically I've worn the keys out on my phone before I've actually got to the bit I want. Couldn't they just start off with "If you hate these enfuriating bastard menus, please dial 1 and we'll let you talk to a real human being"...? It's insulting right from the start.

If you do have sufficient will to live to navigate the maze of numbers, you'll then be faced with the queue. The dreaded queue. The bloody dreaded bloody queue. More robotic voices will apologise that they're "currently experiencing high call demand", and "all our operators are busy". What is this NONSENSE?!??! They're always experiencing bloody "high call demand", so it's bloody meaningless! I'd love to phone up one day and be told they're currently experiencing low call demand, so all of their operators are down the pub instead. Let's not also forget the mindless hold music they always play you. There's a clever algorithm in there somewhere, that makes a judge of the caller's character, and then selects the type of music they are least likely to enjoy. Presumably in an attempt to make them give up. The wait in the queue can be endless. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you'll get the ones that count you down as you move through the queue, or even give you an estimate of how long you'll be waiting for. Usually inaccurate, but nice try. They also seem surprisingly infrequent - only about 1 in 5 of the call centres I've called recently have had these systems. Mostly, you just get a repeated message at regular intervals, the same impassive robot apologising that all their operators are still busy. Could they be a bit more specific? Just for fun? For example: Four of our operators are talking to customers. One is mopping up spilled coffee. One is choosing between a variety of doughnuts. Three are sending emails to their friends. One is sitting about, not doing much, staring dreamily at the ceiling and thinking about the day they'll have enough money to own their own hovercraft. One has made an an entire fleet of paper aeroplanes this morning, and is currently busy colouring them in. One has gone to the toilet. A further two have said they're going to the toilet, but are actually engaging in a sordid affair in the stationery cupboard...

...A few years later, after you've grown up, left home, found a job, bought a house, met a girl, got married, had kids and taken up a keen interest in basket weaving, you finally get to speak to an operator. Your phone bill is by now twice the national deficit of the United Kingdom (something you'll have to phone another call centre afterwards to complain about), but you temporarily put that issue to one side, so elated are you that a real human being is actually going to talk to you. Then you have the next stage of torture to get through. In the first few seconds you bombard the operator with your entire life history, desperate to give them as much detail as possible so this sorry affair can all be over and done with as soon as is humanly possible. And then it all goes quiet. You have that horrible suspicion of what they're about to say. "I'll just transfer you...". AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! What do these first round of people actually DO?!?! You've already been through the labrynthe of the automated menu, and been through about a thousand rediculously pedantic options. By now your query is so specific it is beginning to consider itself sentient. It was all in vain though. You might as well have typed PI to fifty decimal places into the menu system at the start, because by the time you get to the real human being, they're not going to have a clue what you're talking about, and are just going to transfer you on anyway. Let me give you a particualarly crazy example of this scenario. Once I phoned a call centre, waited several minutes in the queue for somebody to pick up, at which point I then did the standard thing of blurting out as much information as possible. The reply was simply "I can't deal with that". Which confused me. On further enquiry, it transpired I wasn't actually talking to an "operator", I was talking to a person whose only job was to answer phones and tell people there were no operators available. THIS IS INSANE! I couldn't help but wonder if in some fit of sheer lunacy, the managers had actually hired more of these "non-operators" than operators.

The final torment comes in the form of transfer tennis. We've all experienced the frustration of being transferred between countless different inept and seemingly pointless operators before finally getting to the person that might actually be prepared to deal with (part of) your query. Every time you have to go through the entire rigmarole of explaining your query in full before they decide they're just going to transfer you anyway. My only reasonable explanation of this crazy behaviour is that this genuinely is an actual sport played by call centre staff where they attempt to have one caller volleyed around as many operators in the room as possible. Perhaps they have teams and a complex scoring system. First person to fifteen Brians wins. Or a Brenda is worth two Keiths and a Derek. Perhaps there is a large wall chart comparing relative GPH (Gordons per Hour) measurements.

I think the recommendations for how to improve the level of service are abundantly clear, and absurdly simple. (A) No machines, and no automated menus. (B) Connect the caller straight through to a real human being, right from the start. (C) Wherever possible, have every operator able to deal with every type of call. (D) If your call centre experiences "high call demand" just get more operators. (E) Don't have operators whose sole purpose is to transfer callers on to other operators. (F) Under no circumstances employ operators just to say no operators are available. This is absurd. (G) Where queueing is absolutely unavoidable, at least give the caller constant feedback on progress. (H) Consider the introduction of a little humour. Although this may be best avoided in some circumstances, say, the call centre for a funeral service.

I feel for you, John (I am currently having a bit of a problem with my bank). And while I won't disagree with poor customer service, I must say that I don't mind 'interacting' with a machine. I'm a busy man and don't have time for small chat at all hours of the day. I do realize that this is a personal preference, however, so I shan't continue on this aspect.

However, I think that the 'decline' (if there is one...because I'm not old enough to know how things WERE, back in the old days of horse and buggies and whatnot) in customer service is due to the constant changing of personnel. Many of my friends and indeed family members have gone through a fair number of jobs that by all rights are best handled by experienced individuals.

Just take a 'lowly' vocation such as a clerk (register/checkout person) at a burger joint. While it may not seem like rocket science, and I've never done it, it's certainly true that a well-experienced person could punch out orders with fewer flaws, would be able to answer more questions, and could then focus on making your time spent in line both more enjoyable and shorter.

SO...perhaps the point is that for some companies it's just less of a hassle to do things in an automoted fashion than to have to worry about plugging in another cog (that is, train a newbie) and ensuring that that cog is functioning properly.

Not to sound inhuman or cold but these are just some random thoughts on the subject. By the by, I'm not a cog. I began working at a ski resort when I was 13 years old and I'm still there at age 23 (but believe me, I'm not bragging) so I know my task well...and those of the people around me. But I've seen enough cogs to know the process of educating them is a bit of an inconvenience.

Travis

Posted by Travis at 2002/11/06 21:53:26.

Don't even fucking start me on this. NTL stands for No Telephone Lines in case you were wondering.

Posted by rowanboy at 2002/11/07 24:35:23.

I couldn't agree with you more. Essentially all the individual utility companies are just billing companies anyway.

They're always trying to convince you to go to their company becuase they're the cheapest.

Bust just think about it - where are the savings coming from? They aren't selling you "lower quality" electricity. They're cutting corners on customer service.

I went through hell with nPower recently. They might be the cheapest, but I laughed the salesman off our doorstep the other week. You should have seen him run. I think he might have though i was insane though.....

Posted by Graf at 2002/11/08 12:10:02.

I'm going to stand up for the automated system. If you have your heart set on talking to someone, then a machine is not going please you in the slightest. I can think of times when I am glad there is not a human at the end of the line.

1. RAF Henlow Switchboard. I know the extension number of the RAF Officer's Mess Accomodation booking, I don't need to ask someone to put me through. I just wait for the bleep and dial it.

2. Cinema Tickets. I know what film I want to see and I jsut need to choose the time. I could do it online, but I am on the train. Just press a few buttons and Robert's your mother's brother. Arrive at the cinema, no queuing, just stick your card in. Bosh, job done.

So, the automated customer service does work and it is good, but it is a bit overused. When you want to speak to a human, only a human will do, no monkey, no mechanical calculating machine and no damn computer.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2002/11/08 11:21:01.

There's another time you want to speak to a computer, when you phone Yellow Pages and it's Pete-doesn't-get-angry-and-is-the-most-smug-man-in-the-history-of-everything-Ganderton on the other end of the phone. You know you're going to end up parting with cash. In fact, you might want to phone NTL to listen to a machine for a bit, after talking to the king of customer service.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2002/11/08 11:22:56.

I work in a call centre. It's not as easy as you think, try before you blast.

The part where you mention someone answering the call then to be told they cant help you? That's short calling. We HAVE to answer the call for another department so people aren't on hold for ages. The info is put into an email and when the advisors are free, they open the email and get back to you. It IS stupid as we have to say 'how may we help you' for you to find we cant.

You'll also find npower (yes, i work for 'them') have a queue buster. If there is a queue you enter your telephone number and we call YOU back while the automated message keeps your place in the queue.

What annoys me about the CUSTOMERS is when they call in and go "I don't mean to get at you/be rude to you" then actually shout at us! IF you say you dont mean to, then bloody well dont! We just answered the call to help you! We can't help you if you're screaming at us before we say hello.

Work in a call centre for a week and deal with irate callers every three minutes who are annoyed we spelt their name wrong or something... then see how your rant will change.

Posted by J at 2004/10/06 22:56:09.

Hello, a really interesting experience to visit your website. For sure i will come back soon. greets to all!

Posted by Amity at 2004/11/26 05:56:15.

Why has this discussion gone dead? Call centres are still as pain in the derriere! Have a look at www.callcentrerant.com if you want to read some funny stuff and awful experiences at the wrath of call centres.

Posted by Elllie at 2005/11/03 14:50:15.

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