Enough of this "Your call is Important to us, An agent will be with you shortly"

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Enough of this "Your call is Important to us, An agent will be with you shortly"

rippernz

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#299206 20-Aug-2022 18:25

/rant

if i was that important to you, you would have more CSR's on the phones to answer calls, currently been 57min and the poor quality hold music.

I don't care about the price change, i don't want to go to your website to learn more about it.

All i want to do it to see what you can offer me before my plan expires next month.

At this rate its not going well.

woop, now im told there are 3 calls ahead of me, for the first time, would be good know right from the start.

might get this done and dusted before they close for the night

/rant

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#2957050 20-Aug-2022 18:35

They are are advertising for more staff maybe you should apply?

Gordy7

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#2957056 20-Aug-2022 19:05

Not an ISP, but another public phone service...

You are in position 7 in the queue... please wait to be connected.

After 30 minutes and unable to use the phone while waiting...

You are in position 1 in the queue....

Our phone system is overloaded please call back in 5 minutes.

Call back:

You are in position 11 in the queue.... please wait to be connected.

Gordy

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Scott3

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#2957163 20-Aug-2022 21:39

Lol.

Made the same call yesterday. Likewise approaching contract expiry, and had a previously negotiated discount, that drop's off when the contract ends, so needs to be re-negotiated.

43 mins on hold. Not too bad, as I leave one headphone in and do normal household things. But would be easy to improve this experience:

Add a call back service.
Get rids of the regular voice prompts. The discount I was after is not available on the website, No need to tell me the same thing every few minutes.
Avoid the need for me to call at all. Don't have negotiated discounts expire. Offer consistent prices to your new sign ups and existing customers...

nzkc

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#2957204 21-Aug-2022 09:10

It's just become a standard excuse and is lazy by the businesses. We are all at fault for allowing it to become normalised. Everytime I call any business with a contact centre it now opens with this.

Beyond more staff, things I'd like to see are stating the wait time and giving me an option for your staff to call me back so I don't have to waste time on hold.

scuwp

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#2957213 21-Aug-2022 09:55

Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer to call it selective participation

xpd

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#2957239 21-Aug-2022 11:48

scuwp:

Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

This bascially.

Also OP, I take it you're the type to start moaning because every time you go to the supermarket you have to wait in line at the check out ? Or at the takeaways ?

No provider of any service can make the impossible happen......

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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xpd

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#2957240 21-Aug-2022 11:48

BTW, I got my plan renewed etc by messaging them through Twitter, didnt need to talk to anyone via voice.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Ge0rge

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#2957246 21-Aug-2022 12:17

xpd:
Also OP, I take it you're the type to start moaning because every time you go to the supermarket you have to wait in line at the check out ? Or at the takeaways ?

No provider of any service can make the impossible happen......

Sorry, but both are your examples are bollocks.

When a queue develops at the supermarket, within a very short period of time you'll hear an announcement over the tannoy and another checkout will open to speed things up. You can also see what's happening, see how many people are ahead of you with what quantity of product, and make a choice of which checkout to join.

As for the takeaways - you call, they answer almost immediately, take your order and then give you a decent estimate of the time until it's ready. Likewise if you order at the counter.

In neither situation are you milling around with no idea how long before you'll be served, all the while being patronised with "you are important to us..."

Ack, companies are short-staffed. Absolutely no excuse not to use technology such as callbacks etc to show your customers that they are indeed important.

richms

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#2957265 21-Aug-2022 13:47

xpd:

scuwp:

Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

This bascially.

Also OP, I take it you're the type to start moaning because every time you go to the supermarket you have to wait in line at the check out ? Or at the takeaways ?

No provider of any service can make the impossible happen......

It is quite clear that this is not going to resolve with people suddenly prepared to work in unpleasant jobs for cheap rates, and the companies have had 2+ years to develop processes to take the need for those jobs away with functioning online service, working ticketing systems, have staff work longer hours.

Hell, even working CRM systems so that they can put you thru to someone else who will have some notes seems rare at many places.

I am just glad that so many places give me clear permission to record the call when I ring them that I have records of how crap they are that they cant whine when I tell them I have.

Richard rich.ms

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#2957271 21-Aug-2022 14:05

Ge0rge:

Sorry, but both are your examples are bollocks.

When a queue develops at the supermarket, within a very short period of time you'll hear an announcement over the tannoy and another checkout will open to speed things up. You can also see what's happening, see how many people are ahead of you with what quantity of product, and make a choice of which checkout to join.

As for the takeaways - you call, they answer almost immediately, take your order and then give you a decent estimate of the time until it's ready. Likewise if you order at the counter.

In neither situation are you milling around with no idea how long before you'll be served, all the while being patronised with "you are important to us..."

Ack, companies are short-staffed. Absolutely no excuse not to use technology such as callbacks etc to show your customers that they are indeed important.

ONLY if the supermarket has staff available. If they don't, you wait. (I worked at one during lockdown to help out) - got plenty of people going "need more staff so the queues are shorter"... yeah, wasn't going to happen.

I'm pretty sure if there was a way to do it, supermarkets would have a "thanks for waiting" announcement.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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#2957294 21-Aug-2022 15:57

scuwp:
Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

None of that is the OPs problem. It’s up to the ISP to solve its staffing problems or stop taking on new customers so it can adequately serve its existing ones.

The only thing that gets this fixed is customers churning and telling them why.

mattwnz

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#2957410 21-Aug-2022 21:46

scuwp:
Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

Or in other words living costs are too high for people to afford to do low paid jobs.

scuwp

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#2957414 21-Aug-2022 22:45

Handle9:
scuwp:
Everybody is short staffed, I expect call centers are exactly the same. There is a huge labor shortage out there, sorry correct myself, there are a huge number of low payed jobs that no one wants to do our there.

None of that is the OPs problem. It’s up to the ISP to solve its staffing problems or stop taking on new customers so it can adequately serve its existing ones.

The only thing that gets this fixed is customers churning and telling them why.

You must have been living under a rock the last 2 years. Correct it's not the OP's problem, but it is part of a challenge everyone is facing. You can't just say 'fix it' and it's done. The world doesn't work like that. More patience and tolerance, less entitlement is needed.

Lazy is such an ugly word, I prefer to call it selective participation

Handle9

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#2957419 21-Aug-2022 23:09

scuwp:
Handle9:

None of that is the OPs problem. It’s up to the ISP to solve its staffing problems or stop taking on new customers so it can adequately serve its existing ones.

The only thing that gets this fixed is customers churning and telling them why.

You must have been living under a rock the last 2 years. Correct it's not the OP's problem, but it is part of a challenge everyone is facing. You can't just say 'fix it' and it's done. The world doesn't work like that. More patience and tolerance, less entitlement is needed.

Why should the OP be patient? They aren’t a charity and they aren’t getting a reduced cost for a reduced level of service.

If 2degrees service is junk they don’t deserve loyalty, they deserve to lose customers. There’s plenty of other ISPs.

New Zealanders are far too accepting of not getting what they paid for.

Scotdownunder

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#2957504 22-Aug-2022 08:59

To address the issue outlined in the title, perhaps these companies who are having staffing issues should change their messaging. What pisses me off most is the “We are experiencing higher that normal call volumes …” bullshit you get every time you call, regardless of time of day, or day of week. Reasonable if its an ISP and there has been a significant outage say, or an airline with major cancellations but other than that its just dishonest.

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