VENT: Call Centre Managers. . .

PhylPho

. . . and anyone else running 'Customer Services' departments.

Question: do any of them ever telephone the departments they head to see if they, as a customer, can make head or tail of what's being said?

I'm now on day three of a Customer Service endurance test whereby the information I provide is repeated back to me in an accent I cannot begin to understand and the query I raise is likewise repeated back in a form that's utterly incomprehensible.

It still seems the case nowadays that excessive political correctness means no-one is ever allowed to comment on the suitability or otherwise of someone to work as a call handler.

You can complain all you want about a product that's unfit for purpose, but a person whose telephone voice renders 'em unfit for purpose. . .

Not a chance.

Grrrrrr. :mad:

Apples2

I know what you mean. If I get an Indian Call Centre I simply put the phone down, it's completely pointless for anything but the most simple of enquiries.

This will open the door for all the fcuktards to shout racist... After all, I must be a racist if I can't understand them!!

PhylPho

That's the nub of the problem. If an orchestra hires a tenor who turjns out to be incapable of singing, then nobody makes a fuss if the two part company. Then again though, an orchestra wouldn't have been stupid enough to hire a non-singing singer in the first place.

Customer Service / call centre operations, however, exist in a parallel universe: hiring people who can't communicate to be communicators seems almost the norm.

Absurd.

mrcow

What company and what accent?

You could try putting your complaint about the call centre in writing to them.

catz1ct

Most call centres don't care about the customer, its all about stats.

Esqui

It's them Northerners. They don't talk proper.

Rolandtheroadie

Would the managers/whoevers running the call centre not (very probably)have the same accent?

NGlady

Call centre managers record telephone calls and on a regular basis listen to them and relay feedback onto the staff. In my call centre, my manager is in my opinion excellent. He is a genuine customer of ours, so does have dealings with us, but he listens to our calls regular when we don't know that he is, so doesn't actually need to ring us and each month he gives us one on one time where he sits and critises and compliments the way we deal with things.
I do admit though, in a previous job my manager was below rubbish. So long as we didn't have a customer complaining to them they wasn't exactly bothered.

PhylPho

mrcow wrote: »

What company and what accent?

You could try putting your complaint about the call centre in writing to them.

Agreed. But I think that's the nub of the problem because most people, I'm guessing, don't want to run the risk of inadvertently apearing to be racist.

I could choose my words with care but at the end of the day, somebody is going to open that letter and perhaps conclude here's a guy trying to stigmatise someone else just because of his / her accent.

Gerrard_8_lfc

Its a subject thats become more than a joke but you need to be careful what you say so much now. If I need to call Virgin media I always try and call them before 8pm as I will get through to a UK call centre. I have difficulty speaking to Southerners and Welsh people to a degree but I can still know what they are getting at when you get through to india your wasting there time and yours so as suggested I now just put the phone down.

Helix

Gerrard_8_lfc wrote: »

Its a subject thats become more than a joke but you need to be careful what you say so much now. If I need to call Virgin media I always try and call them before 8pm as I will get through to a UK call centre. I have difficulty speaking to Southerners and Welsh people to a degree but I can still know what they are getting at when you get through to india your wasting there time and yours so as suggested I now just put the phone down.

I've never had much of a problem understanding Virgin Media's indian call centre. The only problem is they don't know what they are doing.

3 have to be the worst beyond doubt, you have to spell everything out to them and repeat it lots of times.