Call centres
Today I have been on the phone (on and off) for around 2 hours trying to sort out a mortgage with Northern Rock.
I actually already have a mortgage with the people - so you’d think it would be fairly straight forward.
Now I understand why they may need to speak to my accountant to get information about my company - when you are a director of a small business, nothing to do with personal finances is ever simple - so I’m not really complaining about their need for information (although, it’s pretty bloody obvious what I earn, so I don’t understand why they want so much detail… hey ho). No, what I am literally sitting here in a state of boiling frustration is their call centre.
Every time I phone in, I have to answer the same set of questions from an automated voice recognition system. Based on my answers, it then routes my call to an operator who then asks me exactly the same questions (except this time in a northern accent). This operator then passes me on to the home-mover team.
The home-mover team person asks me the same set of questions again. Then asks what he can do for me. At this point I ask to speak to the last person I spoke to (I always write their names down now).
The last person I spoke to is now gone. I will never speak to this person again. I will, however, have to explain at some length, the story so far - this takes about 5 minutes. At the end of the story the new call centre person assures me that they will sort it out, call me back etc etc. They never do. What I wonder is, do they have some kind of giant call centre droid dispenser, like some kind of huge pez machine, popping out new call centre droids ad infinitum?
All this made me think back to the days pre-call centers. Things seem complicated back then. You had to actually visit the shop or branch that provided the service and deal with a person. They would sit there with you until it was all sorted out.
Then the first telephone call centers started appearing. At first they seemed great. You could get your bank balance over the phone or pay for things with credit cards. Then, over time, things shifted. Now we are at the point where you HAVE to go through a call centre. In fact you have to go through an automated system before you ever get to the call centre. In some cases (BT are the best for this) you go through the automated system, only to be told at the end that you need to re-dial using another number.
Companies are not set up to deal with the inevitable complaints and frustration. There is never anyone to complain to, and if there is a person to listen to your woes, they will dutifully make notes, apologise and placate and do nothing.
Companies measure ‘customer satisfaction’ on numbers like - lost calls - people giving up whilst on hold and complaints - foolish people (like me) who get so wound up they ask to speak to a manager. Who doesn’t exist by the way.
We have lost something. In the beginning it looked like we had gained more choice. We had new way of interacting with our service providers and shops. In reality, however, our love affair with conducting our lives by telephone has led to a huge decrease in almost every large company’s ability to keep it’s customers happy.
We are in the thrall of the call centre. There is practically no other way of dealing with our banks, telephone suppliers, electricity and gas suppliers - even Domino’s Pizza has outsourced. Efforts by (for example) banks to differentiate themselves from the herd at best consist of quicker and more efficient call handling and at worst boil down to a choice of British (good - we are told) or Indian (bad - apparently) call centers.
I wish I could end this rant with a simple solution. There is one of course - close the call centers and concentrate on providing local, people centered service. I doubt this will happen - we’ve gone to far now.
To provide some contrast, and to end on a high… I went into a bank today. I asked the customer service person if she could provide a printout of a specific statement for an account I closed over a year and a half ago. She was more than happy to help and I left 5 minutes later with a print out of the information I needed. There’s probably some kind of moral here.
Written by exmonkey on June 14th, 2006 with 5 comments.
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