I've just come off the phone to an unnamed supplier; called their support line at 9.00am sharp, was in a queue until 9.25am. I thought I'd take this opportunity for a bit of a moan.

If the queues are normally that long, why the hell don't they do the following:
(1) Get more staff on the case, and
(2) Give me some indication of where I am in the queue. All I got was 25 minutes of bloody Enya*! Arggghhhhhhh!!!!

Surely the design of this call centre, belonging to a company whichI won't name-and-shame (for now), could quite easily have included some useful feedback to its 'users' - after all, it's frustrating just 'hanging on' (and Enya only adds to the misery in my humble opinion ;-)

So, let's list the things we'd liketo avoid in call centres. My number one is the no-feedback-queue. Number two is Enya!

Jim

What is wrong with Enya?

One thing that really annoys me is the out of hours message you get before the offices open and after they close, e.g. "Thank you for calling, our offices are now closed. Our hours of Business are 8am to 10 pm" and it is5 past blimin 8 in the morning……

Charlie wrote: "What is wrong with Enya?"

Well, if you have to ask ;-)

Sorry, I'm just pulling your leg.

Charlie wrote again: "One thing that really annoys me is the out of hours message you get before the offices open and after they close, e.g. "Thank you for calling, our offices are now closed. Our hours of Business are 8am to 10 pm" and it is5 past blimin 8 in the morning"

Yeah, I can sympathise - that seems to happen a lot. Whenever I personally need to call a call centre (say, like my previous example), I try to do it as close to their opening time as possible (before any queues build up) and quite often hit against the problem you mention. A bit of a bummer, eh?

Then there's the call centre operators who pick up the phones out-of-hours, just to tell you that the computer systems are down or whatever. That gets me too... makes me mad - I need to lash... lash... lash...

Jim who needs coffee fast

Easy now, Jim, keep taking the medicine

I think Jim should spend another 20 mins with Enya.


No your absolutely right. I used to work for a company who's systems closed @ 22:05.
They decided to open 24 hours. I took them about a month to extend the systems operating hours andthe paper work that it created and possible lost revenue was tremendous.


:-)

Charlie> I think Jim should spend another 20 mins with Enya.

Oh dear, don't much like the sound of that, CHarlie. All that etherial music can do strange things to a man on the brink :D

On your point about 24 hours working, I think you're implying that call centres (and other businesses) often pursue the dream without having the resources to back it up (eg. 24 / 7 working and so on)

Jim

"call centres (and other businesses) often pursue the dream without having the resources to back it up (eg. 24 / 7 working and so on)"

I wonder why everyone is so big on 24/7 these days - I mean, is it so difficult to arrange yourself so that you can call during (say) an 8am-8pm timeslot?

Unnecessary 24/7 just increases costs which are inevitably passed on to customers...

Bob

Costs are inevitably passed on to customers, personally I feel its not the business that are to blame. It's just the life styles that we all live.

For example, typically a bread winner work between the hours of 8am to 6pm. You add a couple of hours onto that for traveling and then you are out side most of the operating hours of the contact centres you wish to call.

Technology is there to help, ie voice mail, email and the internet. But these technologies tend to cost money, they dont come for free. Also people are "scared" of technology and dont want to speak to a "recording"....

The reason you will get a closed message at 8:05AM, is due to the fact that all clocks are not on the same time. There is no big master clock that all computers synch to, and even if they did synch to NASA or whoever, do you synch your pocket watch to it?

(Sorry to be touchy, but this is a complaint I often hear.)

As far as Enya goes, I don't recommend calls going for more than 45 seconds without at least a 'Take you for your patience.' And there is no such thing as hold music that everyone will like. :)

Regards,
Marianne

Each week I ensure that the time on the Call Centre Server (Symposium), wall boards, PBX and Network are all within a few seconds. Until PBX manuf's build NNTP services into the switch it will stay manual.

I am in a luck position in that we have some strange agents who actually arrive early, so on the whole our lines tend to be open before they should. But dont quote me.

This topic has been dead for a while, but does NTP work?