How to complain to a call centre

At first glance call-centres and restaurants couldn’t appear more different, but the way I see it they’re really quite similar. Both feature itinerant workforces doing long hours with low pay running the gauntlet of dealing with the general public day in day out. Just take this article in the Guardian on how to complain in a restaurant. It could easily be wtitten about the call centre. In fact so much so that I’ve adapted many of the points as one thing I’m asked quite often is what tips I have for dealing with call centres.

Anyway, here is my adapted list for how to get customer service satisfaction:

Don’t call whilst drunk

Halfway through a bottle of wine is probably not the best time to call a call centre with that problem of yours and is more likely to end in confrontation than resolution.

Don’t ask to speak the the manager

The restaurant article makes the point that in the restaurant  bad service is usually down to poor management, training and recruitment, with staff being innocent victims caught in the crossfire. This definately does apply to the call centre where what agents can and can’t do is often rigidly defined…… by management. Added to the fact that in the call centre the manager doesn’t actually want to speak to you anyway so all you’re doing is messing up my hard-won call stats. Definitely don’t begin a call this way as it will just turn me against you

Make your point plainly and politely

This goes without saying. Quite often the agent knows what the problem is, even sympathises with you. Keep them onside and more they will do what they can to help.

Put yourself in their shoes

The trick here, according to the restaurant article, is differentiating between genuine rudeness and laziness and staff having a genuinely hard time dealing with a crisis, or a surge in demand. In the call centre this means don’t shout at someone because you’ve been hanging on the line for 40 minutes. They’ve probably been having the day from hell and as the article states “picking on people who are clearly having a hard time of it is tantamount to bullying.”

Don’t talk to people as if they’re idiots

In my call centre the chances were you were speaking to someone working their way to wards a MSc in biochemistry. Just because someone works in a call centre doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

The menu is not optional

Again, this applies equally to the call centre – in fact even more so. I once had a row with a customer because I couldn’t fit their greeting on an item within the space which the system allowed. They just didn’t understand that there was a character limit which was set in stone and thought that somehow I should be able to change this and that I wasn’t. Dealing with a call centre you really need to know

Know when to walk away

Sometimes, you will never get satisfaction. I’ve worked for companies which just did not care and would let customers throw themselves onto the rocks of frustration over and over. The customers clearly thought that in the rules of customer service land that something must give, if only their complaint would make it to the right person. This blind belief would lead to them spending hours on the phone, letter writing and emailing.

Call Centre Documentary: Help Needed

Towards the end of last year I was approached by Dragonfly Television, makers of’One Born Every Minute, who are in the process of making a new documentary series about complaints and customer service in  Britain.

Among other things they’re going to be featuring call centres and are keen to speak to people who have experienced a negative effect from working in the call centre:

We’re interested in showing just what the toll of being on the end of a barrage of abuse can result in, our episode is going to be surrounding utility companies and at the moment they seem to really be at the very forefront of people’s vitriol. So we’d like to understand just how the decisions that are made at an executive level can have a negative effect not only on the customer but also the call centre worker themselves.

If anyone is interested in sharing their story, please contact Jonathan.Skuse@dragonfly.tv

 

 

The Kafkaesque nightmare of call-centres

I had a strange experience last week, one which gave me a different perspective on call-centres – the customers view. Locked out of an online account I was in need of help so I contacted customer services…

I first tried emailing, but this met with a generic copy-and-paste response which didn’t even acknowledge, let alone deal with, my issue and directed me to the part of the website which I’d emailed to say I’d had a problem with. It reminded me of my days dealing with incoming mail in which we’d be told to just use templates in order to get through as much as possible. Didn’t even seem to matter which just as long as you got through your pile it was OK.

Frustrated by this I caved-in, I picked up my phone, and dialled customer services. Generally I don’t like calling call-centres, in fact I’d go as far as to say I hate calling call-centres. Mainly because my experiences of working in one have given me such a low expectations – though I have on occasions been pleasantly surprised – step forward NatWest and Southern Electric, but I knew this wouldn’t be the case the instant the automated voice-menu kicked in…. are you calling  to place an order please say ‘yes’. If you want to make a payment say ‘yes’… 

Once I’d negotiated this labyrinth of self-consciousness another automated voice warned me I’d be in for a long wait as ‘all our operators are currently busy’. Really? On a weekday afternoon? I waited… listened to a sales pitch…and waited… listened to some muzak..and waited..

Had someone answered at that point I’d have been angry, very angry. In fact I’d have been just like one of those people I used to hate….

Me; Hello CG speaking how can I help?

Customer: How many people do you have there? Whatever it is it’s not enough. I’ve been on this phone for 15 minutes and I gave up after 20 minutes yesterday it’s disgraceful.

Me; OK how can I help? [now that you’ve successfully wasted 40 seconds in which I could have been dealing with your issue, and therefore holding up the next person in line]

Funnily I always used to think customers exaggerated here, either for effect, or because when you’re hanging on the telephone there’s a sort of Narnia effect where what feels like three years is actually only three minutes back in the real world. I don’t know how long I was hanging on, maybe 10 minutes, probably only three, but I could take no more and hung-up…

I decided I’d call back late on a Sunday evening. My inside knowledge told me that call-centres are usually open for longer than most people think. The phone was ringing, then answered – I was right  After some fun with the automated system, which wanted my date of birth but kept getting just one digit wrong each time, I got straight through.

I explained my problem; that somehow I’d been locked out of my account and the password reset didn’t appear to be working. I was told that this was because they had a different email address for me, but As I didn’t know what this was apparently I failed a security question. I was then told by the operator that they couldn’t help me as they seemed not to believe I was who I said I was. I asked how I was meant to settle my account if I was locked out. They said they understood, but could do nothing more thankyougoodbye.

Click. Gone.

Suddenly I began to feel like a character in a Franz Kafka story.

Call-centres. Love ’em.

I know it’s not your fault, but….

Like many people I’m no fan of bankers right now, but I can’t help but feel sorry for Natwest, or rather the people who have to work in their call centres.

These are the people who are on an annual salary a city banker wouldn’t blink about blowing in a weekend, yet they are the people who must deal with the anger, panic, the hate, and the fury directed at the bank over issues they have had no part in, or any control over.

One Natwest worker I spoke to summarised their ‘stressful’  week by repeating a phrase they had heard again and again – one which every call centre worker will have heard, and may well make them shudder; “I know its not your fault but…”

It’s a phrase that brought back unpleasant memories to me of when I had to deal with wave after wave of anger, frustration, and disappointment on a daily basis; all the times 4X made mistakes with invoices, or sent out a thousand parcels to people who didn’t order them, or the time a client ran out of refund cheques over the Christmas period, or the times when flowers sent for birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries and Mother’s days turned up at their destination a day late, disheveled, with a miss-spelt greeting, or some such combination of these, and not forgetting the time just before one Christmas when a shipment of personalised children’s books and toys was grounded in Chicago because of snow and ice.. “I know it’s not your fault, but..”

If you call Natwest please go easy on whoever answers the phone – It’s not their fault.

The great escape

Last week I bumped into an old colleague who mentioned that life in the call centre had become more stressful as the downturn has affected many of our clients – particularly the smaller mail-order ones.  Apparently most of the calls the call-centre is dealing with now are for 4X- a sizable multi-national company, in the business of subscription ‘collections’, whose infamous incompetence results in a never-ending stream of angry customers all queuing up and eager to have a go at you – before leaving with a chunk of your flesh between  their teeth.

This person was probably one of the best, most experienced people at dealing with unhappy customers I’ve ever worked alongside – in fact she was the only person left standing from the whole ‘Team 4X’ experiment, but now, she confessed to me, she was finding it too much and longed to escape. She fancied a career change and had been applying for teaching assistant jobs. I really hope she gets one and manages to escape like I did. Not having to deal with angry people day-in day-out is a pleasure as one of my other colleagues said after leaving “at least I don’t have to deal with (expletive deleted) 4x customers anymore”

We also spoke about another call-centre colleague who had an upcoming leaving-do. This person had opted for the more dramatic option of a one-way ticket to Australia. They were following in the footsteps of another colleague who two years ago, on the cusp of turning 30, felt the need to escape the slog of the call-centre signed up to a life-guard course at the local swimming pool, got a work visa for New Zealand and after a year then hopped over the Tasman Sea to Australia without once looking back.

So that’s two people I’ve worked with who have literally fled to the other side of the world to escape the call-centre. Good luck to them.

Bullying at work

Today, thankfully, I’m not in the call-centre. Recently it has become far more stressful than usual. I have come to the conclusion that my manager is actually bullying me. To say it seems bad, humiliating even. I wonder how could I allow this to happen to me?

Earlier this week I was dragged into an office for ‘a word”. When I stepped inside there was an array of printed sheets laid out on a desk. One was an email from a customer complaining that they felt I was ‘too laid back’ and had not been helpful, another was an enquiry form I had completed which was annotated with ‘operator seemed defensive’ and finally there was a list of my log in times with one marked out in garish pink highlighter.

I’m not claiming to be the best CSA in the world, or even the office for that matter, but I’m certainly not the worst. Unlike some of my other colleagues I rarely get into any confrontation with customers even the difficult ones.

Just to cast some light though the first issue concerned me not being able to provide the customer with an offer code for a web based promotion as it had not been made available to me. Apparently I had also failed to apologise for the problems they had encountered on the web site which I can’t comment on as I can’t remember at all though I’m sure I would have done all I could to help. The second issue concerned a customer who I’d noted on the same enquiry form was ‘agitated’ the reason being that there order was not on the system and someone the day before I spoke to them had apparently promised them a call-back that day. The customer became aggressive towards me and I simply told them that I was trying to help them. This led to them mentioning that I had been ‘defensive’ to the manager who at my request had called back.

Maybe some things could have been handled better I offered, but that’s part and parcel of the industry not every customer will be happy. My manager retorted that she felt every customer should feel I had done all I could for them. I suggested we listen to the calls and then discuss, but was told that no recordings of the calls existed… so my manager had decided I was at fault based purely upon the customers accounts. After the meeting I also recalled her dealing with a complaint about another member of staff, though she had been stood nearby for part of the call she had not heard the whole call and simply told the customer when they indicated they wished to make a complaint that she felt my colleague had handled the call appropriately. No further action was taken.

You may feel there is an element of me being defensive here, maybe so as no one likes criticism, but complaints are an occupational hazard in customer service and I’ve never been dragged into a room in all my years in the industry. Right now I feel that I just don’t have any support and am vulnerable to the next angry customer who by chance gets put through to me.

I just get the feeling that I am being singled for different treatment. Likewise with the log-on times. Many people, by their own admission, are not ready to take calls at their start time yet no-one else has been spoken to about this only me. The day after my talking to a colleague told me they had overslept, texted the manager on their personal number, was told ‘it’s ok” and then “fell back asleep”. They eventually came in half an hour late and were casually making their pre-log on cup of tea whilst telling me the story. Again no further action.

Maybe it’s just me

Hanging on the telephone

This may sound strange, but sometimes I’m secretly pleased when I get a shouty customer. It can be just the thing to break the monotony of order taking allowing me to lean back, give my fingers a rest from the key board and surf the wave of rage.

I was also delighted this week my ‘Hello XXXX inc call-guy speaking how can I help?’ spiel met with a furious response. It was like opening an airlock door the anger pouring into the empty space knocking me slightly off balance….. ‘Oh thank you I’ve been waiting for 20 minutes to get through to you and I’ve been trying to get through for three days now, what is going on there, why don’t you employ more staff if you’re so busy?’

I wish I could tell the truth; that a supposed cash flow crisis has led to us having our hours cut despite us being busy and even though we are being worked mercilessly by management who are piling on the pressure on us to make up for their mistakes we have no chance of keeping up with it. That to top it off we get the flack from customers angry at having difficulty getting through. I have however, developed a strategy. What I do is to agree with the customer, very loudly placing emphasis on certain points “yes, yes I’m so sorry you’ve been WAITING 20 MINUTES and I will happily pass on your comments to my managers that WE NEED MORE STAFF, yes, you can be assured I will” I say as I look towards my manager sat in her position facing us her eyes, as usual, glued to her stats feed.

It’s not just for my managers benefit either. I know some of our clients listen to recordings of the calls so I want to draw out as much as possible “you couldn’t get through on Tuesday you say, so how long were you waiting on the line?” Enough of these and surely they would be demanding my managers get more people on the phones pronto.

And so it appears to have proved. I got a call from my manager on Friday afternoon “just to let you know after next week we’re back to normal” First thought is great, second thought is what about my holiday and all the arrangements I’ve made, we were told this situation would be until the end of August and I’ve planned accordingly. I know a few other colleagues have been enjoying having a day off each week and don’t want to go back to their old hours.

In other separate, or possibly very related developments Big Al and Steve-o were dressed in their finest business garb, all pin-stripes and cuff links, for a meeting on Tuesday with two mystery men who seemed to be taking a good look around after they emerged from the office in the far corner of the centre. Now, a couple of weeks ago the firm was also been giving away stationery with our logo the official story being it was a warehouse clear out and in addition to this I have learnt Big Al has dissolved some company names relating to us which he had held. Looks like our company name is surplus to requirements. My money, as it had been right at the start, is on a take-over.

Play it cool

Today I got called “supercool” by a customer. It happened late in the afternoon and the customer had called about some issues with a company which is pretty notorious for its cock-ups. Generally speaking you know you’re in for one of those calls when the customer begins by recapping all their past bad experiences with the company so I adopted my usual settle back in my chair position switching onto half-listening mode.

This helps me get enough of a grasp of what is going on to sort out the issue, but gives me a sense of detachment. Often I hear colleagues rushing to the defence of our companies and subsequently become embroiled in arguments with customers over various minute details; the danger of over-engagement being a loss of perspective. Anyway back to the customer. Their main issue today was that they had ordered an item and had been waiting some time for this; where was it?

Unfortunately no order was on the system. It’s a strange thing about customer service that this is a code red situation. My worst calls have been where something isn’t on the system and I’m still haunted by my worst ever call. When there are no details which pop up on screen the customer always assumes that it is because you have done something wrong “but there must be something on there I placed an order” they say. If you ask them to repeat their details such as their name, first line of address, customer number, or postcode they will invariably do this loudly and in a tone which  insinuates you are stupid. If following this the details are still not forthcoming then to the customer this confirms hypothesis A.) you must be stupid and just can’t find the order whilst hypothesis B.)  no really the order doesn’t exist, is cast aside.

Paradoxically the answer is not to search too hard, don’t ask to reconfirm all their details instead authoritatively present the lack of existence of an order as a fait-accompli. This way the customer feels better able to forget the problem and move forward to the solution. Detecting the customer beginning to snarl I put this plan into action offering the solution of creating a new order. “You seem supercool said the customer.” My response was “I’ll take that as a compliment” to which the customer laughed.

The thing is though to me that is a compliment my aim is to be cool, calm and detached; to attain the cinematic coolness of a Nouvelle Vague film all sunglasses and cigarette smoke.  Today I think I achieved that goal.

Crazy caller of the day 3

As previously mentioned things have been difficult in the call centre lately; despite it now being busy once again we have been told that the period in the doldrums has resulted in a cash-flow crisis and that to avoid layoffs we will all (at least us ordinary workers) have to take a 20% cut in the hours we work for the next 3 months right up until it all goes mad for the  Christmas build-up.

So against this backdrop some light relief was welcome. Fortunately one caller was happy to oblige. I sooooooo wished it was me who’d taken this call as it is the most crazy to date, but I had to just content myself with overhearing it….

A lady had called to complain on the line of one of our clients which deals with gifts. The lady had been sent a box containing a set of bath bombs. To anyone not in the know these are solid concoctions which you throw in your bath they then dissolve and release a fragrance or somesuch thing. Often these days they are made to look a bit like sweets………

And this is where our callers problem lay…..

They explained to my colleague that in their excitement upon receiving their gift they had taken a bath bomb and assuming it was a chocolate had taken a big bite from it…. It had they said tasted bitter and left them with a sore throat.

Their first reaction was to pick up the phone and contact not a medical professional, but us to  complain that it was not made clear enough that the bath bombs were not in fact chocolate.

As my colleague pointed out this was an issue that has never been raised before

Part of me feels bad, but I’m still laughing now!

Customer Service vs the Aberdeen Angus Philosophy

Today was another busy one in the call-centre  with some of my customers telling me they had been waiting on the line for upward of 20 minutes to get through. On days like these I  sense the tension as soon as my auto-answer kicks in and the first words I hear are a gasped ‘finally’ or ‘at last’. Most people leave it at that, just happy to have finally got to the front of the queue, but some go into full-on rant mode releasing like some overwound clockwork chattering teeth. As I told one customer today I’m really not the person to be having a go at as I’m the one desperately trying to get through all the calls as quickly as possible without taking a breath. I’d dearly love there to be more operators too and in any case having a rant at me is only causing the queue to back up even further. In the meantime as this was all going on management were breaking open the sandwiches and lemonade for some visiting dignitaries.

Thankfully, unlike yesterday, things did quieten down by late morning. Around 11.20 my call display was empty save for the time and my name which it always shows as long as I’m logged in. One of my supervisors, who unlike the more senior management is always there on the front-line, unhooked herself and handed round piles of mail for us to start responding to. It was optimistic as the island of calm didn’t last long and soon I was pitched back into a melee of disgruntled customers.

I only managed to respond to two letters, both using the standard templates we are encouraged to use – writing a bespoke response being seriously frowned upon as being a waste of time and in any case it’s hard to keep track of in the short gaps between calls. This means that even though customers will often  write voluminous tomes explaining their circumstances we without really looking at them will just send a short nondescript letter with a statement of account attached and that’s if they’re lucky as some just get shoved in the bin. It hardly seems like customer service to me.

The third letter I picked up, but didn’t get round to dealing with, was one which was achingly familiar – similar ones have been coming in as long as I’ve been at the firm and you will find several in each bundle of letters we each received. It concerned a dispute over an account. The customer pointed out that previous letters they had written to resolve the issue had not been responded to and that they had got nowhere by calling us. They believed they did not owe us the money we said they did and that furthermore they felt our administration systems and customer service was appalling. They will never use the company again and if we do not resolve this issue they will also go to Watchdog.

The customer right when they question the administration. The company in question has appalling accounting systems and is constantly sending out items to people who didn’t order them (by mistake I must point out here) or else upselling people without them being fully aware (the jury’s out on this one)  then sending the unpaid disputed accounts to a debt collectors so I wouldn’t be at all  surprised if the customer was wholly in the right and did not owe anything. In its defence the company would probably eventually clear the balance, but only after the customer expends a huge amount of energy. Some people I’m sure just pay up to end the hassle.

If you’re shocked by this you may think that if not karma then the law of market economics would catch up with a company so determined to upset its customers, but still new orders pour in and the company which operates across Europe has been going for decades. It all reminds me of a recent column by comedian David Mitchell who wrote this about the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse chain:

These restaurants are unique to British culture and yet they’re under threat. Not for them the business model of repeat custom, these steakhouses’ fortunes rely on the much tougher technique of trying to dupe everyone once. It’s harder and harder for them to do, as the British tradition of culinary incompetence is eroded by pressures from abroad. When even Little Chef is recruiting Heston Blumenthal, these restaurants, now rarer than the Siberian tiger, are all that we have left of a proud heritage of serving shoe leather with Béarnaise sauce to neon-addled out-of-towners.

This made me laugh as I remember my first ever visit London sometime in the late 1980s ending in one of these places and my parents being very unhappy with the fayre we received for the huge amount of money they parted with. Maybe as the Aberdeen Angus experience shows the market does catch up with firms eventually, but to me its scary how firms can survive for so long whilst treating their customers so badly.