StarBlazer: Saw this on Stuff

I guess this is a sign of the times where more people need help as things get more technical, and we own more technology.

I think it's a cop-out for what is poor customer service and poor delivery/quality of products.

If things work as they are supposed to, and admin don't cock up your bills, then we don't need to call. When a company (eg Vodafone) is complaining that they have overworked and under resourced staff, wait times are going to increase, which unsurprisingly will result in more complaints and customer churn. I've found it easier recently to deal with non critical issues by email. I don't want to use Facebook to complain or ask for help. How do you feel about using social media for getting customer service. I've also used live chat on websites for assistance, this I like.

This is not specifically a whinge at Vodafone (I've done enough of that already recently) which is why I've put it here. I've heard and had some good call centre stories and some bad.

Let's keep this constructive, if you've had good call centre experience, share it. If it's bad, what could be done different.

EDIT should have proof read my own post.


This is one of the reasons why we don't even offer call centre.

People prefer email/online support - so that's what we prioritise.  

Helps us and our customers, since we can prioritise urgent issues - so whilst it might take us 24 hours to get back to you about a bill query (not really a major problem), we get back to you very quickly about connection problems.  

As of right now,  average response time for connection issues is 44 mins (with a 2 hour SLA),  and non-urgent is about 10 hours. (with a 24 hours SLA).

Whilst 44 minutes might sound a lot, it's time you aren't waiting on hold listening to music, and typically for connection problems there isn't much that can be done within that time anyway (most often it's a chorus issue that requires a truck roll - so answering within 5 minutes won't get it fixed any sooner). It also includes the time it takes for our CSR to look at your account, find out what's going on, run some diagnostics etc, and, if possible fix it straight away - and that isn't normally counted when you talk about 'wait times' with other ISPs, since it typically happens after the call is answered, but you're still stuck on a call for that time.



As an added benefit, both to us and our customers, it means every single interaction is in writing - so there can never be any complaints about who said what to whom - no need to 'record calls' since you have everything in your email inbox - everything you said, and everything we said.