Does anyone Work for British Gas in CS?

hermum

A friend has the assessment & long interview next month following their telephone interview last week. Does anyone work in their customer service section?
If so have you found them good to work for, or is it really high pressured to get as many calls answered in as short a time as possible IF & I know at the moment it is an if, if they are offered a job they wouldn't want to leave their current one if a lot of people have had bad experiences with them.
Also any idea why they do a credit check for working in a call centre?
Thanks all

scooby088

Had no experience of working with them, but i imagine they do a credit check as i assume you will be taking customers bank details...but i'd be rather put out as if you have a bad credit and were refused a job because of it, to me it saying that those with bad credit are going to steal..

alexlyne

My wife worked for BG in CS, and lasted about 3 months. She said it was terrible. Luckily she was able to go back to her old job afterwards (in companies house). Can't remember now what the reasons were though morale was low, training inadequate (hence why customers spend hours on phone waiting for staff to get information), she couldn't hack not being able to help people, and then get abuse from them. They've been on Watchdog about it in the past, and say they are always striving to improve customer service etc etc.
Unless things have changed at all (which in 3 years I'd hope they had), then I would think the turnover is so high that a monkey could get a job there.

hermum

scooby088 wrote: »

Had no experience of working with them, but i imagine they do a credit check as i assume you will be taking customers bank details...but i'd be rather put out as if you have a bad credit and were refused a job because of it, to me it saying that those with bad credit are going to steal..

The credit check is a concern as hers isn't brilliant, due to being made redundant a while ago and it was a while before she could get another job.
She doesn't want lots of credit checks being on her file.
I would have thought that if someone's going to steal they'd do so before they get into the mire.

alexlyne wrote: »

My wife worked for BG in CS, and lasted about 3 months. She said it was terrible. Luckily she was able to go back to her old job afterwards (in companies house). Can't remember now what the reasons were though morale was low, training inadequate (hence why customers spend hours on phone waiting for staff to get information), she couldn't hack not being able to help people, and then get abuse from them. They've been on Watchdog about it in the past, and say they are always striving to improve customer service etc etc.
Unless things have changed at all (which in 3 years I'd hope they had), then I would think the turnover is so high that a monkey could get a job there.

We've googled & there does seem to be a lot of complaints from customers about the lack of CS.
I expect that most of the calls are from people with problems so it could be a pretty stressful job, especially if the training isn't brilliant.

Cyril

I went through the interview process having got through the telephone interview and it was ridiculous. They did role plays on the telephone and got managers to play the part of customers. Well you didn't have any chance at all of controlling the call as all they did was shout at you, yes seriously everytime you tried to get across the detail they wanted they shouted you down.

After they said this was because this is what their real life customers are like. Says it all really. The customers are totally fed up, on the tour around the staff looked totally demoralised.

Not good and I wouldn' t want to work there. They have a high turnover for a reason.

hermum

Cyril wrote: »

I went through the interview process having got through the telephone interview and it was ridiculous. They did role plays on the telephone and got managers to play the part of customers. Well you didn't have any chance at all of controlling the call as all they did was shout at you, yes seriously everytime you tried to get across the detail they wanted they shouted you down.

After they said this was because this is what their real life customers are like. Says it all really. The customers are totally fed up, on the tour around the staff looked totally demoralised.

Not good and I wouldn' t want to work there. They have a high turnover for a reason.

I did think that it would be a pretty tough thankless task, best she stays where she is then.
Especially if there's a high turnover of staff.
If she hadn't started something else last week it may have been worth a try but not to give up another job.

sharloid

I work at a BG call centre. You do have to pass a credit check. I handed my notice in yesterday after 5 months. You do have to pass certain targets, though these aren't about answering as many calls as you can. I struggle with the sales targets, ours is 5% conversion at the moment which is pretty hard to meet.
The job isn't bad providing you have a good team and you're a confident salesman!
I wouldn't say it was stressful; just boring.

alexlyne

Oh, yes I remember now, the sales targets... getting a thoroughly !!!!!! off customer to buy additional insurance or have their boiler replaced... gotta love it eh?!

shikoku

I used to work in the call centre of a German owned utility company, people were not credit checked then, maybe they are now, I do remember periodically seeing people being escorted off the premises with a police man either side although this tended to relate more to giving friends and relatives unjustified refunds and 'compensation' payments, although there were some credit card issues at times too.