First Direct who I've been with for 18 years were great, the used to pick up after 30 seconds max whereas now 10 maybe 15 mins sometimes longer to get through. They say they have not cut staff but anyone else notice it
Join the queue... it's a problem across the board. 45 mins is my usual wait.
Retailers, utilities, HMRC - the list goes on; they have all cut staffing levels with the predictable result of irritated customers.
I was bumped off a call to Aviva Customer Services today without even getting to the queuing stage. I just called back and chose the option for me wanting to make a payment to them. Got through right away 😁
" 45 mins is my usual wait"
I'd be using live chat or emailing them after 10 minutes wait & asking them to ring me within 24hrs or I'd be an ex customer.
Everyone is hiding behind that - even when a business has been open 2 minutes....apparently there is a queue. Convenient excuse to use Covid to offer less.
Not much longer than normal to wait with santander - about 5mins, but boy have they surpassed themselves in incompetence - just waiting to see how long the £10k bank error in my favour sits in my account 😬
Tried the British Gas helpline for prepayment customers? 2 minutes 40 seconds of this drivel before you even get to the queue, if you can convince their voice recognition handler you have a valid reason to call.
TRANSCRIPT: Hello and welcome to British gas. British gas trading limited is an appointed representative of British gas services limited, which is authorised and regulated by he financial conduct authority for its insurance activities. Calls are recorded for training and quality purposes. Our lines are incredibly busy right now, so please help us protect our most vulnerable customers by listening very carefully to the rest of this message. We're here to help every customer who has a gas or electricity emergency, so to answer their calls quickly, we need your help. So if you're a smart meter customer and you can top-up online or on our app, please hang up and do that now, to help keep our lines free for those who need it most. If you can't top-up your smart meter online or on our app, and you need our help, don't worry. Stay on the line and say "top-up" when prompted at the end of this message. If you usually top-up at a post office or a payzone outlet, these are classed as an essential service under current government guidelines, and most of them are remaining open. Going out to top up your energy meter is still allowed under the current stay-at-home policy, so it's ok to visit a post office or payzone outlet to top-up, unless you're self-isolating for personal or family health reasons. You can search online for your nearest outlet at payzone dot co dot uk forward-slash consumers. If you can't go out yourself, please take time to check with friends, relatives, and neighbours, to see if one of them can do the top up for you. This is also allowed under the current government advice, and it will help us be there for customers who have no-one else. If your electricity meter has less than one pound left on it, or, if you don't have gas, and you need to self-isolate, for personal or family health reasons, and no-one else can top-up for you, please don't worry. Just stay on the line and we'll find a way to help you. When your call is connected, our advisor will check if your situation matches the emergency cases we're able to help right now. And if you're not someone with very low electricity credit, no gas, who's self-isolating, and with no-one else who can help you, we're really sorry but we may have to end your call, so we can be there for emergencies. We know this was a long message so thanks for your patience. Together we can protect our most vulnerable customers. In a few words, please say the reason for your call.
Website: “sorry we’ve messed up your booking, nothing you can do about it online you need to call us”
Phone auto message: “why are you phoning us up you tuckfard, just go on the website like a normal person”.
Endless impossible loop.
BA the worst offender IME.
lamp
Free MemberEveryone is hiding behind that – even when a business has been open 2 minutes….apparently there is a queue. Convenient excuse to use Covid to offer less.
YES! For too many large (and small) outfits COVID seems to be a convenient excuse for terrible customer service. Not all of them, of course, and many are suffering, but from cafes that insist you can only have 1 person in at a time (and only have 1 staff member working so it's entirely linear) to call centres that you, well, can't, it's all a bit sh*te really
Always do everything by email. That way you have a record and also no hanging on the telephone. Never found a outfit that you cannot do this tho sometimes it takes a bit of investigation to get the right email address
I tried phoning HSBC for my father, who was waiting for a replacement card. Waited 30 minutes before he insisted I hung up
Next time I phoned, the first option was to press "0" if there were financial difficulties or hardship. I pressed "0"
A human answered the phone within a minute
Don’t try calling NS&I. Larger withdrawals needs to be confirmed by an automatic phone call - I live in a remote place with a cr@p signal so the call failed. Phoning them I was put in a 45 minute queue and when I got through they’d blocked my acct and insisted my password was wrong so then spent another 15 minutes going through security. I have to make another withdrawal soon - dreading it already
Talktalk, they don't won't to.
Interestingly I’m working with a customer at the moment, who rather than reducing contact centre staff, have recognised they need to increase their numbers.
The traditional view has been when you push customer towards self service online, you can reduce call centre numbers. However, the reality is, as you provide more channels for customers to contact you (web, chat, email, voice, social) you actually need more people, and more people specifically dedicated to each channel.
As it’s part of my day job to design and implement contact centres and CRM, I find calling up anyone more of a chore because I spot all the places where they could make it easier for both the customer and their staff and it tends to grate. It does lead a to fair chunk of opportunity identification for my employer though, so not all bad!
Not necessarily cutting staff numbers, but social distancing means that a lot of those places only have a third of staff at most actually in the call centres, the rest are having to try and do it from home with dodgy connections, dodgy IT and kids/pets/partners under foot.
I know of two banks who stopped taking calls during lockdown v.1 as they couldn't cope, everything went to email/webchat.
While HMRC apparently faired better in rolling out equipment, alongside the other problems they had a big increase in call volumes to deal with running the various Covid payment schemes.
Everyone is hiding behind that – even when a business has been open 2 minutes….apparently there is a queue. Convenient excuse to use Covid to offer less.
Aye, convenient excuse...
Imagine doing anything where pretty much overnight the 'model' changed, and then carried on changing sometimes with only days notice. All the while demand shot up.
I work for a retail Bank, so seen it at first hand within our call centres etc.
One of my theories is that demand shot up because more people were at home with time on their hands and started paying attention to stuff they'd previously ignored.
And they're still at home, so able to call in where previously they were at 'work'.
It's the new norm.
I called BT yesterday to arrange a broadband connection for our next home, they answered almost immediately then proceeded to tell me it'll be February before they can send an engineer out.
Honestly, apart from the industries that are in trouble (travel, retail, etc), no-one has reduced staff permanently (there are a few cases of people not able to work through self-isolation or shielding). So why is everything taking longer? (an insider view)
More people want to call - their issues are more complex and can't be dealt with over chat, social media etc. and their calls are taking longer
More people want to call - they want to speak to a human, sometimes because they are lonely, sometimes they want the confidence that the company still exists
More people want to call because they can't/won't go into a high street premises
Calls are taking place at different times of day - used to be spread through the day, but now with many people on furlough, there are more calls during the day.
Call centres have to implement social distancing, so they can fit less people in. Less people available to take calls
But why can't everyone work from home? Call centre work is pretty low down the chain in many companies, staff aren't paid well enough to have a nice separate room at home to work in (and a few % of the workforce are sofa surfers). There may be other people at home listening into calls or disrupting them (kids home from school or flatmates). Many people don't have reliable broadband at home, especially if more than 1 person is using it. That point above about when calls are made - you can't do night shift calls if you are working from home and there are other people living there. Some companies have real (and legitimate) security concerns about people working from home that they haven't been able to resolve (are you OK if you call First Direct and you can hear someone else's conversation in the background?) .
So everything is taking longer. Some companies have adapted well, others haven't - the ones that have adapted well are generally known for good customer service already.
Always do everything by email. That way you have a record and also no hanging on the telephone. Never found a outfit that you cannot do this tho sometimes it takes a bit of investigation to get the right email address
“sorry we’ve messed up your booking, nothing you can do about it online you need to call us”
Phone auto message: “why are you phoning us up you tuckfard, just go on the website like a normal person”.
Endless impossible loop.
NT parking ...
Sign saying pay by app only but then if you lift it up there is a premium phone number on the back.
Tried the App but my phone is too old (obviously most NT patrons must be younger than me and care about the latest smartphone?)
Phoned the number:
“why are you phoning us up you tuckfard, just use like a normal person”.
if you wish to continue this will take at least 5 mins...
Wait 5 mins get automatically cut off...
Phone back “why are you phoning us up you tuckfard, just use like a normal person”.
Solution .. drive 1/2 mile and park on the street.
Shark vacuums cleaners, ours broke the wife rang them and got through in less than a minute. New one arrived a week later, they apologised for being more than 24 hours, it’s upgraded model.
Currys, they rang me after they messed up their PS5 orders console arrived right on time.
Some companies have real (and legitimate) security concerns about people working from home that they haven’t been able to resolve (are you OK if you call First Direct and you can hear someone else’s conversation in the background?)
There's regulatory issues here too. PCI-DSS for instance, to be Payment Card Industry compliant you have to do things like filtering out DTMF tones so that the agent you're talking to can't skim your card when you punch in the number. That's challenging to do securely in a controlled office environment let alone in someone's living room.
I think it should be made law that if you can take out a service online you should also be able to cancel it using the same method. None of this “you’ll need to call us to cancel” nonsense that makes it virtually impossible to stop your insurance renewal / cancel your Sky subscription / etc
I think it should be made law that if you can take out a service online you should also be able to cancel it using the same method. None of this “you’ll need to call us to cancel” nonsense that makes it virtually impossible to stop your insurance renewal / cancel your Sky subscription / etc
You'd think so and from my naive perspective contract law makes it seem like you should be able to.
How exactly you enforce it is another matter I guess.
Whilst we're on that subject,
Why can they start a contract today but need a month's notice to cancel it? Bastards.
