28 Minutes on Hold, and counting...

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › 28 Minutes on Hold, and counting...

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Indio

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#1541374 24-Apr-2016 22:06

Jase2985:

loceff13:

Jase2985:

im not sure what your point is? its reasonably common these days to have a long hold time, and compared to others 29 mins is actually a short time.

there could be any number of reasons why its so long

Is it? Maybe for voda and slingshot but most providers it's far better

spark slingshot and vodafone have a large holding in the broadband market and they all have long wait times. for a lot of smaller providers its likely to be better.

it also depends on when you ring, is there a major outage and everyone is rining? is it lunchtime, end of work etc they all contribute to when call times could be longer

You read like a professional apologista....

tdgeek

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#1541380 24-Apr-2016 22:33

Indio:

Jase2985:

loceff13:

Jase2985:

im not sure what your point is? its reasonably common these days to have a long hold time, and compared to others 29 mins is actually a short time.

there could be any number of reasons why its so long

Is it? Maybe for voda and slingshot but most providers it's far better

spark slingshot and vodafone have a large holding in the broadband market and they all have long wait times. for a lot of smaller providers its likely to be better.

it also depends on when you ring, is there a major outage and everyone is rining? is it lunchtime, end of work etc they all contribute to when call times could be longer

You read like a professional apologista....

He is just being reasonable. Telco's can easily employ enough call centre staff to manage low wait times. Easily. But, who is prepared to pay for it? Its highly competitive

Jase2985

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#1541430 25-Apr-2016 07:00

Indio:

Jase2985:

loceff13:

Jase2985:

im not sure what your point is? its reasonably common these days to have a long hold time, and compared to others 29 mins is actually a short time.

there could be any number of reasons why its so long

Is it? Maybe for voda and slingshot but most providers it's far better

spark slingshot and vodafone have a large holding in the broadband market and they all have long wait times. for a lot of smaller providers its likely to be better.

it also depends on when you ring, is there a major outage and everyone is rining? is it lunchtime, end of work etc they all contribute to when call times could be longer

You read like a professional apologista....

Realist is the word you a looking for

you cant realistically expect a telco to have enough staff to cover the amount of people that could possibly call during an outage during their call center opening hours

maybe be a bit more reasonable in your expectations

Linuxluver

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#1541466 25-Apr-2016 09:11

Indio:

Have now been waiting on the phone for anyone from Slingshot's activation team to answer...29 minutes now and counting!!

Pathetic customer service!!

Having worked in Customer Service the long hold time could be due to support people being expensive, combined with a delivery process that too often results in support calls.....combined with customers who don't have a clue and who love to chat.

Each element can add minutes to each call. Like when people call to ask how to activate a thing and the word ACTIVATE is - literally - the largest font on the button in the email they were sent to perform activation. "Oh! I didn't see that!" (but had 35 minutes to sit on hold to be told to click on a thing that in front of your face).

"Stupid" (in a flawed or fragile delivery process and among customers) eats time like nothing else. Especially these days when multiple independent organisations are typically trying to work together via interlocking service agreements to get a thing done. Designed to fail.....but it's (supposedly) cheaper. I doubt it.

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NonprayingMantis

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#1541596 25-Apr-2016 12:07

Linuxluver:
Indio:

Have now been waiting on the phone for anyone from Slingshot's activation team to answer...29 minutes now and counting!!

Pathetic customer service!!

Having worked in Customer Service the long hold time could be due to support people being expensive, combined with a delivery process that too often results in support calls.....combined with customers who don't have a clue and who love to chat.

Each element can add minutes to each call. Like when people call to ask how to activate a thing and the word ACTIVATE is - literally - the largest font on the button in the email they were sent to perform activation. "Oh! I didn't see that!" (but had 35 minutes to sit on hold to be told to click on a thing that in front of your face).

"Stupid" (in a flawed or fragile delivery process and among customers) eats time like nothing else. Especially these days when multiple independent organisations are typically trying to work together via interlocking service agreements to get a thing done. Designed to fail.....but it's (supposedly) cheaper. I doubt it.

This is true - and certainly doesn't absolve the telco. They intentionally target these kind of customers (just look at slingshots recent tv adverts - very clearly aimed at non-tech savvy people) and then instead of investing in intuitive and good support systems, they invest in discounting their products to get more customers. ($65/m for unlimited ADSL - new customers only!)
They do this because it works. They milk existing customers for all they can, keeping them on higher prices and u der-investing in customer service. Existing customers might moan a bit online if they have to wait on hold in a queue behind people with idiotic questions, but on the whole they just stick around and keep paying for substandard service.

If you are happy with a telco that does this, then by all means stick around and hope things will improve. Or look for a provider who actually wants to give existing customers a good experience.

If people actually switched when they got bad service, telcos would soon learn that they need to keep existing customers happy, and start investing in better service. As it is, people mostly only switch for price, which means telcos who discount and give bad service will beat the telcos who are a bit more expensive but provide better service.

Indio

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#1551090 11-May-2016 19:13

On the subject of Customer Service performance...

On Tuesday, I had occasion to contact Cash Passport NZ Ltd after the funds I had loaded on my daughter's CP Card failed to materialise. Tried again yesterday and then went to our business account manager from our bank to help sort it out.

Daughter and her friend left for a well-earned holiday to Hawaii last week. As usual, Dad was called on Friday to load more money on said CP card which dad dutifully did! Money had not appeared by Tuesday morning NZT so I called the NZ 0800 support number, which was answered by some Philipino with a bad fake American accent in - you guessed it! - the Phillipines. Couldn't get any sense from him so I called the UK number which - was answered by another PwabfAa - in the Phillipines, after a 25-minute wait. No sense from him, so called Travelex (Cash Passport Agent) in Australia and - call was answered by yet another PwabfAa (unless he was an Aussie pretending to be a PwabfAa!!)...

Ended up getting our a/c manager to use their internal resources to track down the funds which, by the time I arrived home were loaded on my daughter's card! I would hate to have to report a stolen card to these cowboys - I would never recommend Cash Passport to anyone!! It turns out they don't have anyone in NZ....

AliExpress

Shop now on AliExpress (affiliate link).

dumptydo

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Wannabe Geek

#1563322 31-May-2016 21:28

I feel your pain. I should upload the 254 minute Iphone screenshot call to them a few days back.

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