Call Centres

[Androme]

Yeah, we all know they're as reliable as the Underground, but I am fed up with Freeserve (now Wanadoo). Since the take-over, the servers have gone from good to utter SHITE. Capitalised for a reason.

The thing is, I've been with Freeserve since they first became an ISP and been with the current Anytime package since it was made available - in other words, a long time. Never have I had a problem until now. The servers are busy (takes a long time now to connect), speeds are slow...list goes on. My cousin about 30 miles away is having the same problem on their ADSL line as well.

I've been ringing up the support line, redirecting me to the India call center through a 0906 support line costing me 50p a minute. They go through the most stupid crap like "Make sure your internet cookies are deleted and make sure Internet Explorer is set to default" --- "Excuse me sir, I use Firefox" --- "What's Firefox? It shouldn't be your default, change to IE" .... fs...

On the 4th day, I ask to speak to a senior tech guy - wait ages then some random dude picks up the phone and goes:

"Oh, sorry to tell you this but the problem actually relies with the server load - too many people trying to connect within your post code line. Sorry that you had to keep ringing but we can't do much on the other side of the world."

So I've spent more than half-a-week trying to sort out the bloody problem. Hooray for India

That was the last push - am now going to get 2mbps adsl from bulldog eat dog.

[Deffeh]

Maplin was selling the wannadoo Broadband packages.

They looked expensive, shite, and limiting.

[Blixxard]

I agree.
When I was on BT 56k I could not get on for days. I phoned up to cancel it on the 50p (per minute) line. Only to get some Indian bloke who obviously had no idea what was going on. It took a good 10mins to get him to do anything.

I am with wanadoo atm and tbh it's all gone tits up. I will be moving ISP's for sure. *Cringes at the thought of a call centre*

[Androme]

Yeah.

I remember once we had Barclaycard's internet dial-up anytime @ my dad's work place - same problem only it took like half-hour to connect. At least they were honest and was a call-centre that answered HERE and IMMEDIATELY with NO WAITS and a 25p PER MINUTE line as well instead - they told me the truth and said disconnect because it's not worth the money.

Bastards.

[IncubusGod]

Oh the joys of out-sourcing your call centres and tech support.
Losing jobs for your country AND ****ing your customers over meaning they decide to leave you for another company until that one's tech support or call centre gets oursourced and they move on etc.

[Ragnarak]

Any one recommend a decent dialup ISP?

Am moving into a new flat soon but contract is only for 6 months and i can live without braodband for a bit.

I was going to go with freeserve/wanadoo but this just changed my mind.

[Androme]

www.freedom2surf.com

[wu_trax]

i got dsl. reachable at least 99% of the time, if there is a problem they fix it within a day (they send someone to bring me a new splitter (if that is what those thing are called, the thing you connect the modem to) within a day when mine was broken. the price is also ok, i think. 50€ for isdn-phone, dsl and unlimited access at 128/768 (soon 128/1024)

hurrah for ex-state-monopolies \o/

[Vaio]

I dumped Tiscali after some idiot in teh Indian subcontinant told me we couldn't move our broadband account to our new house, something about the area we live in not being broadband enabled. Virgin gave me a new account and it was alll working within 4 days.

Hurrah for the beardy arsehole \o/

~Vaio~

[IncubusGod]

I work in a Call Centre, but we're general EU english language support so we're fine. However some accounts have to deal with Indian support centres between them and the customers.

The Indians are legendary in their incompetance. A mobile phone company ,which will remain nameless, has Indian first line support but us as their repair co-ordinators here in Europe .They must be the stupidest Indians around.

One guy told a customer that the bad reception he was getting was because of the clouds.
Another told a customer that he cant use his phone in a room with four walls as the "beam" has no way of "escaping".

They then started stealing our reps names. When dealing with our centre, talking to Joanne's, Carmel's and John's they started "appropriating them" when talking to customers and to us.
The head guy John received a phone call from a guy called "Akassh" (it was his line) with the words "Hi this is John here in India"..."sorry can you repeat your name?!?"...realised he was talking to the real John then called himself "Frank" instead.

Weirdos.

[Ragnarak]

Originally Posted by Androme2

www.freedom2surf.com

We offer up to 20 hours per week unmetered access to the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week

[Deffeh]

You cant hire people who dont have a decent grasp of english to do call centre work, how hard is that to understand

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by wu_trax

got dsl. reachable at least 99% of the time, if there is a problem they fix it within a day (they send someone to bring me a new splitter (if that is what those thing are called, the thing you connect the modem to) within a day when mine was broken. the price is also ok, i think. 50€ for isdn-phone, dsl and unlimited access at 128/768 (soon 128/1024)

hurrah for ex-state-monopolies \o/

48 Euros per month for 4mbit down and 512kbit up under a fair use Policy so no hard limits...
For years never had a day without internet. Even the transition to a new modem type went flawless.
@Home in the Netherlands get a from me!

I'm always surprised at the stories that Iread here about the crap internet services offered in the UK.

[Structural Integrity]

And call centres are shit indeed... both to work in as to call them.

[wu_trax]

Originally Posted by Deffeh

You cant hire people who dont have a decent grasp of english to do call centre work, how hard is that to understand

i think you can hire people who dont have a descent grasp of the subject they are supposed to help you with to do call center work.

[IncubusGod]

Apparently they are sending various Indian agents to one of the countrys billion or so Call Centre colleges now. Where they learn how to work in a call centre and how to speak with an American accent*.



*I shit you not.

[Phil^]

im on freeserve/wanadoo broadband. yeah its slowish, could be a lot better but im stuck with it as parents insist on keeping their @freeserve.co.uk email addy :/ sigh
also i got it before they introduced stupid cap-rates on what you can download ( im on 512k for at least till next march )

[Ragnarak]

We used to have anytime dialup before we got pipex.

I still have my @xxx.fsnet.co.uk email addy even though we don't have a freeserve account any more. I think they downgrade you to a normal payg account or just don't delete the email addy.

[Phil^]

i told them the same thing - though im not 100% sure on it
"tough" being the reply

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by IncubusGod

Apparently they are sending various Indian agents to one of the countrys billion or so Call Centre colleges now. Where they learn how to work in a call centre and how to speak with an American accent*.



*I shit you not.

rofl that ive got to hear
i`d probably end up laughing over the phone, despite trying my hardest to be nice

[MeridianStar]

I decided not to ever call the Virgin.net helpline again (50p per min) after explaining my issue ("I can't get my broadband to connect") and the person on the other end asking me "Oh, do you know why it's not working?". It took him 20 minutes to decide it was an issue BT had with our exchange, not the ISP.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Androme2

Yeah, we all know they're as reliable as the Underground, but I am fed up with Freeserve (now Wanadoo).

The Underground is pretty reliable.

But anyway call-centres are shit, but they're difficult to manage and while people continue to buy from companies which operate a low-cost / low-service model, they'll continue to flourish.

[Madina]

one word.....................PIPEX

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by Madina

one word.....................PIPEX

[Vaio]

Originally Posted by MeridianStar

I decided not to ever call the Virgin.net helpline again (50p per min) after explaining my issue ("I can't get my broadband to connect") and the person on the other end asking me "Oh, do you know why it's not working?". It took him 20 minutes to decide it was an issue BT had with our exchange, not the ISP.

I had a conversation with a BT monkey over a ADSL problem a year of so ago, he tried to get me to go through all these tests to see if it was my computer at fault, regardless of all my attempts to interupt him. After about 10 minutes of my saying constantly 'That won't work' the dumb arse got a bit fed up and asked me to 'explain what is wrong if you are so clever'. I gently explained to him that the modem had caught fire an hour before and had become a blackened smelly lump of plastic.

~Vaio~

[roadrunner_0]

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
nice one vaio

[Blastoderm]

Glad I quit Freeserve long before they changed to Wanadoo and made their service even shitter.

[Little Timmy]

I work in helpdesks and call centres..............its great fun going out of our way to upset the customers.

We find putting on an Indian accent the best way to really upset people

[IncubusGod]

We cant do that here, call and email monitoring. Big Brother is watching you, and he knows if you get sarcastic.

Written warnings preceed a trip to Room 101.

[G.K Zhukov]

So whats the average turnover in a call-centre? 4 persons per postion per year?

[Marilyn Manson]

I was phoned up by an Indian man the other day. He was trying to sell me a mobile phone, I think, from Orange. I listened to him go on for about two minutes, making absolutely no sense whatsoever, at which point I got bored with his sing-songy voice and hung up on him.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

So whats the average turnover in a call-centre? 4 persons per postion per year?

I'm not sure if this is a rhetorical question, but if not - then it depends massively. Some places have very high turnover (lose staff every week) - but these tend to be really bad sales based ones.

There are good (or at least better) call-centres. Mondial Assistance (based in Croydon) boasts on having very low turnover (for the industry) for instance. But they do bonuses and lots of other incentives to keep people feeling part of a team and stuff (I'm told).

[JonnyBGood]

Poor little guys must feel so alienated

[Quazi Starbucks]

NTL are are so bad they cant even outsource right

But anyway, thats one ISP that is not shipping abroad, unless you cound Wales as abroad

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Structural Integrity

48 Euros per month for 4mbit down and 512kbit up under a fair use Policy so no hard limits...

Bastard.

I'm in the UPC/Chello Zone

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I'm not sure if this is a rhetorical question, but if not - then it depends massively. Some places have very high turnover (lose staff every week) - but these tend to be really bad sales based ones.

There are good (or at least better) call-centres. Mondial Assistance (based in Croydon) boasts on having very low turnover (for the industry) for instance. But they do bonuses and lots of other incentives to keep people feeling part of a team and stuff (I'm told).

It was partly retorical. The history of call-centres are a good story about the de-qualification whos happening in the current face of capitalism. It results in higher profits for the owners (atleast temporarily), and really shitt costumer support.

I know that in Norway its not very popular to work in one. Becouse its stressfull, boring, low-paid, and sometimes the employer surveys your every move (including going to the toilet).
When you dont want it to cost anything, you end up like this.

[Androme]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

The Underground is pretty reliable

Not in London.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Androme2

Not in London.

Why do you say it's unreliable?

(And I live in London, so that's the Underground I'm talking about)

[Androme]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Why do you say it's unreliable?

(And I live in London, so that's the Underground I'm talking about)

East/South/West/North - don't say in particular, just enqeurying.

I live in the South-East of UK and south-east of London too.

They're unreliable because trains I have to take to school or to get anywhere to the rest of London or to go to Bristol (yes, I realise trains out of Bristol aren't London Underground) take nearly 3x as long as compared to bus services at similar times doing a less no. of stops and doing a further stretch of road to travel.

Trains on the Central Line fine - yeah - but the other lines aren't as good from my personal experience.

[G.K Zhukov]

Androme2, come to norway and take train/underground here.
Untill you do however, stfu up

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

So whats the average turnover in a call-centre? 4 persons per postion per year?

I brought the turnover rate up quite a bit in the callcentre here in the region. I lasted well-counted 3 days before I decided it was too shit for me and buggered off.
Hurray!

[IncubusGod]

The tunrover rate here for Customer Service/Support/First Line (non technical) staff is less than 6 months. Usually 3 or so before they have a breakdown and quit or get transfered to another account.
The pay is awful, especially for these non technical "anyone-can-do-it" jobs.

The technical is about 4-6 months, 8 at most without a promotion, most people I know leave after 6 months as you get demoralised at the low pay and shit conditions, people listening into your calls, monitoring your emails, monitoring your every move, no "real" pay rises (my first "raise" was €250 over the year, won't get another one for 9 months, it'll be the same amount again if I pass my evaluation), grief from managers, constant demands to match targets for call lenghts and for numbers of emails, demands to get the customers problem soved within your targets, being dragged over the coals for not giving good customer service even though you are told you have to only be on such a call for 2minutes at most (for example), unreasonable hours, dingy work area with no windows, mental-hospital green walls, bad PC screens, bad PC's, bad phone systems, bad headsets etc.

[Little Timmy]

Well turnover does vary from country to country and location in those countries. It also depends on how you count it.

For location, areas with a high volume of similar call centres tend to have high turnovers. The silly thing on the high turnovers is that no matter how boring call centre people claim the job to be a large proportion leave 1 call centre and join another.

In the UK most call centres aim for a turnover of 15% or lower. Most achieve 15-20%.

However, in outsourcing I have known that true turnover can be as high as 110%. Although that turnover is only reported as something silly like 30% because outsource companies often do not count temporary staff. So the trick is that you recruit all staff on a temporary 3 month contract with the promise that if they are good you will keep them.

Most temps with a little bit of intelligence get bored as a lot of outsourced work can be the boring menial tasks. So they leave before the three months is up. So the never get counted in a turnover count.

[Androme]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

Androme2, come to norway and take train/underground here.
Untill you do however, stfu up

How about "You suck" and "no"

[Tomkat]

I was with Eclipse Internet when in Exeter. It was great because they were literally down the road from me, so all calls were local. They were pretty good too

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Androme2

I live in the South-East of UK and south-east of London too.

I live in West Norwood, nearest tube stop is Brixton (then Stockwell, then Balham or Tooting probably). I commuted to University every day for three years via the Northern, Central, District and East London Lines with very, very few problems. I generally use the Victoria & Northern Lines to go to Camden from Brixton at least twice a week. I used to regularly use the District & Bakerloo lines to go to political meetings when I was a teenager and I sporadically use other lines (Picadilly, etc).

So anyway, I've used a fair number of lines on a fair amount of journey's. I don't think I've ever had to wait more than twenty minutes for a train. Average wait time is probably three to five minutes . I think I've probably faced a delay of about thirty minutes (while on a train) once, but aside from that, never more than 5/10 minutes. The trains are usually reasonably clean, the staff have never been rude (to me at least, I'm not denying there might be wider problems) and the only problem appears to be overcrowding (which is actually worse on many suburban rail services anyway). The stations are well-lit with excellent signage, reasonably easy to understand ticket information with maps everywhere.

Now, if you compare the tube's service to the general rail network (where delays of upto an hour are not uncommon) then it's ****ing fantastic. It's certainly in line with my expectations. True, I'm sure we're not as good as Tokyo or similar, that's in a completely different culture so I'm not sure comparisons can be easily made.

Obviously there are things that could be improved : They could make things cheaper & have night trains as two easy examples, but clearly that would cost a lot of money which I doubt they have.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by Androme2

How about "You suck" and "no"

Then you got no clue about how bad a subway system can be.

[Androme]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

Then you got no clue about how bad a subway system can be.

You cannot tell me I have no clue - you do not know me, know my experiences and so fourth and you do not obviously share the same opinion I have the experiences I've had therefore you stfu and learn that I've not been to Noway, in no way will I go there and lastly, I can say what I like based on my experiences you ignorant twat.

Ta.

[Androme]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I live in West Norwood, nearest tube stop is Brixton (then Stockwell, then Balham or Tooting probably). I commuted to University every day for three years via the Northern, Central, District and East London Lines with very, very few problems. I generally use the Victoria & Northern Lines to go to Camden from Brixton at least twice a week. I used to regularly use the District & Bakerloo lines to go to political meetings when I was a teenager and I sporadically use other lines (Picadilly, etc).

So anyway, I've used a fair number of lines on a fair amount of journey's. I don't think I've ever had to wait more than twenty minutes for a train. Average wait time is probably three to five minutes . I think I've probably faced a delay of about thirty minutes (while on a train) once, but aside from that, never more than 5/10 minutes. The trains are usually reasonably clean, the staff have never been rude (to me at least, I'm not denying there might be wider problems) and the only problem appears to be overcrowding (which is actually worse on many suburban rail services anyway). The stations are well-lit with excellent signage, reasonably easy to understand ticket information with maps everywhere.

Now, if you compare the tube's service to the general rail network (where delays of upto an hour are not uncommon) then it's ****ing fantastic. It's certainly in line with my expectations. True, I'm sure we're not as good as Tokyo or similar, that's in a completely different culture so I'm not sure comparisons can be easily made.

Obviously there are things that could be improved : They could make things cheaper & have night trains as two easy examples, but clearly that would cost a lot of money which I doubt they have.

Nods head.

The Central line has a few selected train services running 24/7 iirc. but are rare...?

I always just purchase the child fare and usually get away with it. Train attendants are dumb when they ask me for I.D. and I issue them with my passport.

By unreliable, I meant to the extent where trains rarely come from where I need to go from A to B - for example, if I decided to take the train home, single journey to Stratford then chang-over and those trains only come once every half-hour or so. Typically over-crowded with businessmen/women and is generally full of rubbish.

Seats are often dirty, lights often broken and I've seen many an instance of graffiti actually 'inside' the train as opposed to being on the tracks.

[Tomkat]

We don't even have trains in Jersey, so count yourself lucky you dirty dirty mainlanders.

Or shoes.