SOLVED- Vodafone - 1 hour plus wait and still no answer on call centre-.

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › SOLVED- Vodafone - 1 hour plus wait and still no answer on call centre-.

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#1256566 11-Mar-2015 19:27

I would guess TCL/Vodafone probably have plenty of call centre staff. Just lots of other problems, which everyone needs to call them about.
Kinda glad I don't really have that many services with them anymore.

richms

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#1256569 11-Mar-2015 19:37

Sideface:
graemeh: Size of the ISP is irrelevant.

+1 It should be.

If anything, the bigger ISPs should have more staff and better service, but the opposite appears to be true.
Smaller firms tend to give excellent service, until they are taken over by a bigger company, and then the rot sends in...

Bigger ISPs should also have more developed internal systems to make support more efficiant, and adiquite CRM systems to ensure that people are called back when a call back is promised and customers are not left chasing issues up when the staff and systems at the ISP should be keeping them informed proactivly.

Richard rich.ms

quickymart

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#1256624 11-Mar-2015 21:09

They should, in theory, but it's quite difficult when a large ISP is made up of several smaller ones, all merged together, each running their own dinky little system that - while great for each smaller ISP - doesn't work so well when married up with another ISP's system.

richms

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#1257314 12-Mar-2015 16:49

quickymart: They should, in theory, but it's quite difficult when a large ISP is made up of several smaller ones, all merged together, each running their own dinky little system that - while great for each smaller ISP - doesn't work so well when married up with another ISP's system.

A larger ISP should have the resources to replace vintage software like TP2 with new stuff that integrates with other things they sell like mobile, therefore being able to put things on a single bill and have single points of logging in to achieve interactions with the company. But that hasn't happened still. Lets just get rid of more staff when we already have call queueing times that everyone in the industry is making a mockery of.

Richard rich.ms

graemeh

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#1257610 13-Mar-2015 08:47

richms: A larger ISP should have the resources to replace vintage software like TP2 with new stuff that integrates with other things they sell like mobile, therefore being able to put things on a single bill and have single points of logging in to achieve interactions with the company. But that hasn't happened still.

If only it were that simple.....

The larger ISPs tend to be those that have been operating for many years, they often have a large number of systems that are interrelated and poorly documented. They also have a large number of old legacy pricing structures that they continue to support.

After many years of not spending any money on maintenance and on-going improvement of those systems they find it becomes more and more difficult to make changes.

The new ISP enters the market with a copper offering and has only three plans. The low and high speed ADSL and VDSL with unlimited usage. There is none of that messy usage to record and bill, there are only three options so there is much less chance of the CSR keying the wrong one when the setup the customer in the billing system.

At the end of year one the ISP connects their CRM to their billing system. The customer request via the website feeds directly to the CRM that then feeds on to the billing system. Now there is no opportunity for any mistakes.

Meanwhile in the larger ISP the website emails the request into the call centre tracking system, the CSR has to do a number of manual checks before manually creating a service order into a fulfilment system, this goes through the motions and eventually someone manually creates the records in the billing system by selecting four of 1500 provisioning codes.

I am not surprised the larger ISP is having so much trouble.

quickymart

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#1258079 13-Mar-2015 19:27

^ this.
It's not as easy as "let's just install one super new mega-system that will work for all of our customers, regardless of their historic provider". It's actually really expensive, and tricky to find one single application that will handle all of their individual little billing quirks - and still function just fine for everything else.
If you can find and sell such a system, you will become a relatively wealthy man.

DaveB

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#1258097 13-Mar-2015 19:50

richms:
quickymart: They should, in theory, but it's quite difficult when a large ISP is made up of several smaller ones, all merged together, each running their own dinky little system that - while great for each smaller ISP - doesn't work so well when married up with another ISP's system.

A larger ISP should have the resources to replace vintage software like TP2 with new stuff that integrates with other things they sell like mobile, therefore being able to put things on a single bill and have single points of logging in to achieve interactions with the company. But that hasn't happened still. Lets just get rid of more staff when we already have call queueing times that everyone in the industry is making a mockery of.

After looking at your reply (and many others in other threads in which you suggest solutions), I decided to look at your signature link again and saw this:-

Welcome to Parallels! If you are seeing this message, the website for rich.ms is not available at this time. If you are the owner of this website, one of the following things may be occurring:

You have not put any content on your website.
Your provider has suspended this page.

Please login to https://rich.ms:8443 to receive instructions on setting up your website

It's been this way for a long time. Maybe the IT industry suffers similar problems?

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richms

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#1258115 13-Mar-2015 21:02

DaveB:
It's been this way for a long time. Maybe the IT industry suffers similar problems?

Site got lost when my friend who was hosting it had the hosting company go awol on them and had to move to a new server.

As I am not currently selling anything or looking for employment a new one can wait.

Richard rich.ms

graemeh

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#1260067 16-Mar-2015 10:27

quickymart: ^ this.
It's not as easy as "let's just install one super new mega-system that will work for all of our customers, regardless of their historic provider". It's actually really expensive, and tricky to find one single application that will handle all of their individual little billing quirks - and still function just fine for everything else.
If you can find and sell such a system, you will become a relatively wealthy man.

It always amazed me that large companies would seem to be oblivious to the cost of having so many old variations of plans.

I know they are afraid of losing revenue but imagine the amount they would save if they just came up with a few "stunningly good plans" that were better in every way than the historic ones to use for existing customers only and moved all customers on old plans on to the new ones.

I used to see the same crazy behaviour in corporate mobile sales, imagine how simple life would be if the sales person was charged the full cost every time they came up with a variation on an existing plan. They would very quickly learn it is far better for everyone for them to just have their boss approve putting the customer on a the next plan up from the one they were normally offered.

Hoofhaarted

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#1261146 17-Mar-2015 15:57

graemeh:
networkn:
graemeh:
quickymart: I should also point out the call physically doesn't cost you anything as it's an 0800/0508 number.

That is only if you don't value your time. I quite like the idea of getting a credit for each minute on hold.

So let me ask you this? What is a reasonable time for an ISP this size to have you on hold?

Size of the ISP is irrelevant.

If I'm ringing someone I pay to provide a service I expect an answer within 30 seconds 95% of the time. I've said 95% to allow for times when there are major outages and large numbers of customers are calling.

Last week I rang 2 Degrees and after listing through their absurdly long IVR message I got to "press 0 to..." and the phone was answered within a few rings after I pressed 0.

The whole call lasted 8 minutes 47 seconds and that included the time at the start with the IVR along with the time for the CSR to identify the problem, fix it and issue a credit.

In August 2012 2 Degrees claimed they had over one million customers so it is definitely possible for companies with a large customer base to provide decent service.

Are you willing to pay for that level of service ?????????

People want a level of service that they are not prepared to pay for in the monthly bill. For a technical call taking on average 15 mins, taking that number of calls, you would need to employ at least twice the number of phone agents ( not to mention all the ancillary services required for support etc). But with Kiwis always wanting more, and to pay less for it, something has got to give.

JaseNZ

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#1261927 18-Mar-2015 20:02

Oh dear , I see fair go tonight mentioning Vodafone and showing a call wait time of 2 hours and 18 minutes. Not very good press at all.

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding : Ice cream man , Ice cream man

cadman

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#1262245 19-Mar-2015 11:22

richms:
Its time they start billing for support calls that could be resolved by the knowledge base. Must cost a fortune answering all those dumb peoples questions about their phones.

They do - it's part of the bill. Which is why BigPipe get my business - I don't wish to subsidise help for people who make no effort to learn to help themselves.

graemeh

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#1262286 19-Mar-2015 11:51

Hoofhaarted:
graemeh:
networkn:
graemeh:
quickymart: I should also point out the call physically doesn't cost you anything as it's an 0800/0508 number.

That is only if you don't value your time. I quite like the idea of getting a credit for each minute on hold.

So let me ask you this? What is a reasonable time for an ISP this size to have you on hold?

Size of the ISP is irrelevant.

If I'm ringing someone I pay to provide a service I expect an answer within 30 seconds 95% of the time. I've said 95% to allow for times when there are major outages and large numbers of customers are calling.

Last week I rang 2 Degrees and after listing through their absurdly long IVR message I got to "press 0 to..." and the phone was answered within a few rings after I pressed 0.

The whole call lasted 8 minutes 47 seconds and that included the time at the start with the IVR along with the time for the CSR to identify the problem, fix it and issue a credit.

In August 2012 2 Degrees claimed they had over one million customers so it is definitely possible for companies with a large customer base to provide decent service.

Are you willing to pay for that level of service ?????????

People want a level of service that they are not prepared to pay for in the monthly bill. For a technical call taking on average 15 mins, taking that number of calls, you would need to employ at least twice the number of phone agents ( not to mention all the ancillary services required for support etc). But with Kiwis always wanting more, and to pay less for it, something has got to give.

Yes I am. I get that level of service from 2 Degrees and as a customer I am paying for it.

When I was with Big Pipe I was very happy with the service and I was very happy that I could log faults via email and if we needed to have a conversation and do some trouble shooting we could agree a time to do it that suited me.

Now I'm with Mynxnet and I'm happy to pay what they charge because they have a product and service that delivers what I want at a competitive price delivered over UFB. If Big Pipe had UFB in Wellington I'd probably still be with them.

Sideface

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#1275679 1-Apr-2015 20:14

Presso: Oh dear , I see fair go tonight mentioning Vodafone and showing a call wait time of 2 hours and 18 minutes. Not very good press at all.

The sequel: on Fair Go tonight (01 April)

Fair Go reported a wait time of 5 hours plus!
To quote the Fair Go caption: "Vodafone service is cr@p"
Vodafone responded that they answer 80% of calls within 10 minutes.

On the other side of the coin, I recently phoned VF at 7am and was answered within 2 seconds.

Sideface

johnr

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#1275733 1-Apr-2015 21:33

I called the other day from my Prepay test number 0800getihug around 11am and it was answered straight away, I was expecting a to wait sometime on hold so was pleasantly surprised

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