Orcon's call centre only wants to speak with people who are not their customers!!!

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Orcon's call centre only wants to speak with people who are not their customers!!!

friendlymonkey

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#99803 27-Mar-2012 20:06

If you are an Orcon customer have you tried to get in touch with them lately?
IT APPEARS THEY ONLY WANT TO SPEAK WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT THEIR CUSTOMERS ALREADY

If you ring 0800131415 you have to wait 15+ mins for anyone to answer, because I was re signing I decided to hang up after 15 mins and try their 0800 JOIN US number and blow me down someone answered in 1 single ring!!!

I needed to ring for something else (kind of to do with signing up, changing services to a new name/changing plans?) and the same thing happened on their normal number. So i tried the Join us number again, once again answered after only 1 ring!!! This didn't help me though as they had to transfer me to a different "team" which involved being put on hold for 14 minutes.

You would think Orcon would have the correct capacity at their call centre before signing up new customers.

It appears ORCON DOES NOT CARE ABOUT ME, A PAYING ORCON CUSTOMER!

Oh their staff also need more training, you get put on hold after every second word to their representative.

ORCON REMEMBER : I HAVE A CHOICE WHEN IT COMES TO ISP'S

johnr

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#600960 27-Mar-2012 20:26

The 0800JOINUS calls may only be passed to reps trained on signing up new customers and they may not have the skill set to help you

John

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#600980 27-Mar-2012 21:01

As John said....

You dont expect the receptionist at the local garage to repair your car do you ? :)

Be patient, someone does get to you and theyre usually pretty onto it.... however some cases may take longer than others to resolve etc.

XPD / Gavin

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#601003 27-Mar-2012 21:32

That's pretty normal with the larger ISPs, they have to split their call queues to the strengths of the staff they have. Smaller ISPs have it a little easier in that typically all their helpdesk staff are training in all areas, whether it be sales, provisioning, troubleshooting or hosting etc.

The problem for the larger ISPs is that it is that it's REALLY difficult to find staff for the more technical troubleshooting roles who can communicate fluently in English, and are willing to work for the going hourly rate.

friendlymonkey

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#601017 27-Mar-2012 21:58

xpd: As John said....

You dont expect the receptionist at the local garage to repair your car do you ? :)

Be patient, someone does get to you and theyre usually pretty onto it.... however some cases may take longer than others to resolve etc.

Why not treat everyone who calls them equal? surely staff can be trained in most areas. This was not a technical problem

johnr

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#601018 27-Mar-2012 22:01

friendlymonkey:
xpd: As John said....

You dont expect the receptionist at the local garage to repair your car do you ? :)

Be patient, someone does get to you and theyre usually pretty onto it.... however some cases may take longer than others to resolve etc.

Why not treat everyone who calls them equal? surely staff can be trained in most areas. This was not a technical problem?

Were you joining Orcon? If not you should be expected to be passed to customer service

xpd

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#601022 27-Mar-2012 22:07

friendlymonkey:
xpd: As John said....

You dont expect the receptionist at the local garage to repair your car do you ? :)

Be patient, someone does get to you and theyre usually pretty onto it.... however some cases may take longer than others to resolve etc.

Why not treat everyone who calls them equal? surely staff can be trained in most areas. This was not a technical problem

Give someone a job they dont know/like, and they wont do it basically.... I hated dealing with account queries during my time at two different ISPs... if someone excels at tech support by dealing with 20 customers an hour, dont hold them back with account calls etc which they may only do 3 of.

XPD / Gavin

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Kyanar

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#601102 28-Mar-2012 09:34

You can also sometimes get your call answered in less than a couple of minutes if you have a business connection and call the business team. I presume corporate customers just call their account manager though.

You're always free to pay more to get business support...

Nebbie

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#601333 28-Mar-2012 14:58

friendlymonkey:
You would think Orcon would have the correct capacity at their call center before signing up new customers.

If you graph all calls inbound of any ISP call center in NZ it looks like a EKG graph all over the place... its very hard to get the right amount of staff to answer calls fast. Just about every ISP will answer Sign-up calls in under 20 seconds for a number of reasons:

One: Signing up someone is rocket science it doesn't take a smart cookie to do that job.
Two: Company's often offload their customer sign's overflow to external company's thus accounts to why they have no access to help your problem.
Three: Any Company wants to sign up their users quick as possible.
Four: Derp!

---------------------------------------------------------------
Nebukadnessar

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#601349 28-Mar-2012 15:28

Nebbie:
friendlymonkey:
You would think Orcon would have the correct capacity at their call center before signing up new customers.

If you graph all calls inbound of any ISP call center in NZ it looks like a EKG graph all over the place... its very hard to get the right amount of staff to answer calls fast. Just about every ISP will answer Sign-up calls in under 20 seconds for a number of reasons:

One: Signing up someone is rocket science it doesn't take a smart cookie to do that job.
Two: Company's often offload their customer sign's overflow to external company's thus accounts to why they have no access to help your problem.
Three: Any Company wants to sign up their users quick as possible.
Four: Derp!

I agree.

particularly with point 4

rphenix

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#601356 28-Mar-2012 15:45

friendlymonkey: If you are an Orcon customer have you tried to get in touch with them lately?
IT APPEARS THEY ONLY WANT TO SPEAK WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT THEIR CUSTOMERS ALREADY

If you ring 0800131415 you have to wait 15+ mins for anyone to answer, because I was re signing I decided to hang up after 15 mins and try their 0800 JOIN US number and blow me down someone answered in 1 single ring!!!

Quite common. the join number would be considered a sales call, the other is a support call, welcome to profit vs cost centers.

jpod

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#612515 20-Apr-2012 17:17

I have been an Orcon customer for the past 12 months or so and have never had a reason to grizzle and really liked the fact that when I signed up plus called for other reasons, I only ever got a Kiwi person on the other end that I could relate to...

Shock horror I called Orcon this afternoon and god dam it, what do you know but nothing less than a Manila call centre when the call was promptly answered...

Being really disappointed at first thinking that the Orcon brand had now been bastardised, I quickly changed my mind on things when realising that the call had been picked up after one ring at a quarter to five on a sunny Friday afternoon...

Apart from being put on hold for a number of minutes to deal with my not so run of the mill account requests, the service and overall experience was surprisingly good.

I have traditionally HATED overseas based call centres with a passion... but this time around I can only applaud Orcon for doing the opposite from what I would have expected if they were going to go down this cost cutting route.
Cheers,
Pizzle

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Kyanar

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#612533 20-Apr-2012 17:45

jpod: I have been an Orcon customer for the past 12 months or so and have never had a reason to grizzle and really liked the fact that when I signed up plus called for other reasons, I only ever got a Kiwi person on the other end that I could relate to...

Shock horror I called Orcon this afternoon and god dam it, what do you know but nothing less than a Manila call centre when the call was promptly answered...

Being really disappointed at first thinking that the Orcon brand had now been bastardised, I quickly changed my mind on things when realising that the call had been picked up after one ring at a quarter to five on a sunny Friday afternoon...

Apart from being put on hold for a number of minutes to deal with my not so run of the mill account requests, the service and overall experience was surprisingly good.

I have traditionally HATED overseas based call centres with a passion... but this time around I can only applaud Orcon for doing the opposite from what I would have expected if they were going to go down this cost cutting route.
Cheers,
Pizzle

Just to address one thing, Orcon actually added the Manilla team as an addition to their existing call centre. You still may end up talking to someone in Albany when you call, just that they now also have people overseas as well. I can't say how their call routing works, it's possible it tries NZ first then sends you overseas, or maybe the other way around, or maybe NZ is only Level 2+ support.

mattwnz

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#612535 20-Apr-2012 17:50

jpod: I have been an Orcon customer for the past 12 months or so and have never had a reason to grizzle and really liked the fact that when I signed up plus called for other reasons, I only ever got a Kiwi person on the other end that I could relate to...

Shock horror I called Orcon this afternoon and god dam it, what do you know but nothing less than a Manila call centre when the call was promptly answered...

Being really disappointed at first thinking that the Orcon brand had now been bastardised, I quickly changed my mind on things when realising that the call had been picked up after one ring at a quarter to five on a sunny Friday afternoon...

Apart from being put on hold for a number of minutes to deal with my not so run of the mill account requests, the service and overall experience was?surprisingly?good.

I have?traditionally?HATED overseas based call centres with a passion... but this time around I can only applaud Orcon for doing the opposite from what I would have expected if they were going to go down this cost cutting route.
?Cheers,
Pizzle

I thought their news article on that said the overseas call centre was only going to be used for billing enquires?

I am not a fan of overseas call centres because it means that NZers are not being employed, and often the people at the other end of the line can be very difficult to understand and the call quality poor. Sometime they can also be quite cold and abrupt, but that could be a cultural thing. NZ call centre workers tend to be warmer and more friendly I have personally found. That however may just be a personal thing.
Sure a company could say that they haven't decreased their NZ employees. But other ISPs may have decreased their NZ employees as they have lost customers to those growing ISPs, so it could be a net loss of NZ jobs.