"We'er currently experiencing very high call volumes.."

olias

I was up late one night and rang a customer service line (can't remember the company) at about 3am. Got a recorded message - 'You've rang at an extremely busy time, we are experiencing a high volume of calls right now...........'

You couldn't make it up!

Olias

scheming_gypsy

Outpost wrote: »

Some of the technical terms escaped me but it's interesting to know how these call centres operate.

i got dumped right in the deep end with it; a £500,000 system and 3 days training on a course that thinks you were already a telecoms engineer to start with... so i pretty much taught myself but it is pretty easy once it starts to make sense. In fact it's a lot easier than you'd imagine. The 'step' is simply that; it's a list of commands so if something say 'goto step 12' then it's just saying to go to line 12 and do whatever that tells you to do.

olias wrote: »

I was up late one night and rang a customer service line (can't remember the company) at about 3am. Got a recorded message - 'You've rang at an extremely busy time, we are experiencing a high volume of calls right now...........'

You couldn't make it up!

Olias

That could be something a lot simpler than it sounds. The call centre i worked at would have a handful of staff covering the night shift so a 'high volume of calls.....' would be a lot less than during the day. If the call centre you phoned had 3 staff then a high number of calls could be 4 queuing. There could be one person on a call, one having a pee and one on their break.
Could also have a manual over ride as well where you log a fake agent in that has a specific skill set that plays a message. We did that when there was an evacuation; rather than letting the calls queue we logged an agent in with skill 99. In each call queue was a step that said 'go to vector 99 if agents in skill 99 > 0'. So if an agent with skill 99 was logged in all calls would route to a message informing that there was a fire alarm and then disconnect the call.

bluenoseam

Nah the worst for it are Sky, when you phone up to report a problem with their BB service you get the "tonal noise" (or what they'd claim to be music) punctuated every 30 seconds by alternate messages of "did you know Sky were named top BB supplier 2010 by Which magazine" or "if you are experiencing a problem with your BB, did you know you can find helpful hints & tips at www...." - IF I WASN'T HAVING PROBLEMS WITH MY INTERNET I WOULDN'T BE ON THE BLOODY PHONE YOU CLOWNS!!

the "tonal noise" though, is it just me or does that make everyone else want to punch someone in the face?

GordonGowk

A few additional points -
Most of these call centres are on 0844/5 or 0870 numbers costing an absolute fortune and not in pricing plans.
The work experience chap and the dog don't speak English
They're probably raking in the cash from your call on some of the numbers.
Clydesdale Bank Mid Calder branch has achieved 100% 'all lines to the branch are busy just now' on every time I have tried them in 8-10 years - do they have any lines from the call centre to the branch?

Yodel - mostly can't get onto their phone queue. When you do they say your call will be answered within 12 YES TWELVE minutes - yes minutes, not seconds! It wasn't answered after 20 minutes. Later I tried and was put through by the automated system to a speaking clock. How very helpfull? The speaking clock will surely answer all my questions about when the parcel will arrive.

wimblewomble_2

re: those damned 0870/0845 numbers can be beaten! (sometimes)

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

treasuretiger

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

(taken from my experience of doing 6 years as a telecoms department in an 800 seater insurance call centre, on an Avaya digital and then IP system)

Most call centre work on targets, % of calls answered and answered within x seconds so for their internal reporting / shareholders etc they need to try and keep to those.
They usually calculate their staffing levels from projected call volumes and obviously due to costs they can't have loads of people sitting there doing nothing.

When agents start at the company they'll have training for their relevant department, so not everybody can do any job although some people will be cross trained through promotion or department changes. That just means they can do the job, not that they will.

So on each call it comes in on an internal extension which may have an IVR with x amount of options, each of those options then goes to another internal extension and each extension has a skill set assigned.

So when a call comes in on extension 12345 and has 3 options it'll have a routing command such as:
if digits = 1 goto step x
if digits = 2 goto step y
if digits = 3 goto step z

step x - route to number 11111
step y - route to number 22222
step z - route to number 33333

if 11111 has a skill set of 4 assigned and 33333 has a skill set of 5 assigned etc, then only agents with those skill sets can answer the calls. If the customer services line is 11111 and it's queuing then it means all agents with skill set 4 are on calls. When you call the sales number you could be going to a completely different office, building, town or even city so they don't always have visibility of the calls on 11111 or agents with the skill set to take the calls.

That's also why banging 0 or # to get around the system and speaking to a human is pointless. The system is expecting one of the options it gave you; if you hit a different key it it doesn't recognise it and presumes you don't have a touch tone phone and transfers you onto the next step.
So instead of banging # 28 times and thinking you're bypassing the system, you might as well just press 1 once and wait in the queue.

oh mannnnnnnnnn i've worked in a call centre way too long i actually understood all this lol:rotfl: