I'll warn you now: this week's blog could turn into a bit of
a rant. It's about a subject that we all hate but which has sadly become a fact
of twenty-first century British life. I'm talking about business help desks
that are manned at foreign call centres.
I know that it's unrealistic and commercially unviable to
expect companies to employ hundreds of knowledgeable people on their
switchboards, just waiting for customers like you and me to ring them. I
suspect that this didn't even happen in the mythical golden days of my youth
but surely we should be able to expect better service than the current system
of "Press one to be cut off; press two to hear the complete works of
Vivaldi; press three to listen to a repeating message telling you how important
your call is to us"?
With this in mind I'd like any business leaders reading this
to treat it as a blueprint for the kind of service that we, the customer,
really want. After all, we're the ones who are ultimately paying for it. And
for your wages.
1 - Don't force me to make any more than two multiple choice
phone presses. Each time you give me another set of preference to pick from my
anger levels rise a little more until I'm in dangerous 'Hulk' territory.
Eventually I'm going to 'go postal' on one of your poor employees and you'll be
responsible.
2 - Don't just tell me that my call is held in a queue - I
already know that. Tell me how many other callers are ahead of me and what the
average wait time is. And definitely tell me how much per minute the call is
costing me. That way I can work out for myself whether I want to wait or not
and maybe save both me and your call centre operative some time.
3 - Better still, make it a Freephone number. After all, if
your service was as good as it should be, I wouldn't need to ring you in the
first place.
4 - If my wait is likely to be a long one then give me the
option of leaving my contact details so that you can ring me back at a time of
my choosing. You can be sure that it won't be during my mealtime, which is when
you usually seem to want to have a chat with me.
5 - Don't spent the first three minutes of the call telling
me about the exceptional benefits of your online service and the wonderful
things that I can find on there, especially when that same webpage has said
that I should call this number for further details.
6 - Don't have your call centre staff use silly names like
Danny or Sarah when it's obvious to us that they're really called Atul and
Smita. I'm a grown-up. I know that it's cheaper for you to outsource this kind
of work to Indian staff. Giving them fake names is an insult to them and me.
7 - Drop the light jazz elevator muzak! If you must keep me
on hold for half an hour or more then at least give me a chance to pick what I
listen to. The news, perhaps, or an archive recording of the Goon Show. I can
only take so much Dave Brubeck.
8 - Don't tell me that my call is important to you when it
quite clearly isn't in the slightest. If it was that important you'd have
answered it.
9 - When "Danny" has been of no use whatsoever to
me then instruct him to change his script. One of the things that's guaranteed to
wind me up is the person at the other end of the phone finishing the call with
"Is there anything else that I can help you with today?" when he's
not been of any help already.
10 - Let me pick my own security password that doesn't have to
fit the format that your I.T. staff decided was secure. I understand that 'G7w%98£R' is an exceedingly secure
password but I've got no chance of remembering it unless I write it down -
which you've told me not to do. I have to pick something works for me, not you,
and my cat's name doesn't include any numbers.
That's it, my top ten improvements to call centres
conversations.
Now is that so hard?
© Shaun Finnie 2013
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