Call Centres

[djchewie]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6353491.stm




my mate goes out of his way giving Call Centre staff a hard time.

esp if he's been put on hold for over 30mins...

 

[dam0]

makes me laugh that correcting a mistake makes a good marketing campaign


Some unfounded comments at the bottom of that page though. Josephine Boyd is straight in there with the race card. Its true that many overseas workers are very well educated and may have a better understanding of the english language than the average joe in the UK. However, this doesnt mean they can seperate english dialect easily nor speak with an accent which is clear to the majority of callers. Call Centres were traditionally placed in areas of the country which had the clearest and friendliest accents. This notion seems to have been dropped at the expense of customer satisfaction.

Another plight of Helpdesk Implementation/Project managers is that they may not have served any time on the helpdesk themselves. This can lead to setting the wrong goals in the attempt to achieve good customer service.

 

[Morbyd]

I think this comment sums up how I feel about it:

I feel that the worst part of dealing with call-centres is not the fact that the person on the other end is in Mumbai, London, Edinburgh or Swansea but that they are hamstrung by their role. Bad experiences I have had with call-centres have stemmed not from the person's accent or nationality but the fact that they just did not have the authority to step out of a pre-determined script to address my particular problem. Large companies employ under-trained staff to simply try to plaster over issues rather than trained & experienced problem solvers.

 

[ibiza_lou]

Totally agree with that comment you posted Morbyd....

I have had some terrible experiences with overseas call centre staff but I couldnt help laughing when one poor chap kept repeating to me...."Computer says no" "Computer says no"

 

[dam0]

Agreed. I have worked in a technical call centre and experienced such issues from the other side of the phone. A common problem is high staff turnover causing a lack of experience in the team. This reduces call closure on first point of contact and increases the back log of unsolved cases. The backlog requires a dedicated team of more experienced staff to pick up these cases and resolve them. The main cause of high turnover is due to the low wage attributed to call centres.