Broadband with UK based call centres.

acrmnsm

Klaxon - No racism please.
I am currently with talk talk, but their phone line based internet is being very flakey and I fell for a seriously cheap 100mb offer from virgin, on the assumption that cable internet is more stable.
Anyway they have failed to install 3 times over the last month for various reasons, and I am getting v frustrated with 50minute holds only to be presented with someone in a far away land, who often I cannot understand and they don't understand me, and no one seems to have any idea how to fix the install issue. 
However, whenever I call talk talk to make sure that they won't drop my line as virgin have told them I am leaving, then I get through to a Brit, who understands my issues quickly and they are normally v helpful, if somewhat constrained in what they can do. They are offering true fibre to the house though at 150mb.
Is there a correlation between crap service and offshore callcentres? Conversely do onshore call centres equate to better customer service?
I do feel there are language and cultural barriers, I had a guy from Virgin today who I had to ask to repeat himself 3 times, followed by asking him to slow right down. Then he didn't seem to get what my issue was and it all ends up being very frustrating. 

Neil_Jones

Realistically off-shore callcentres tend to attract criticism more so because their job is simply to "put you off" as it were, since they tend to attract the sort of calls with questions that are already answered on the website (as in "I joined two weeks ago and you've taken two months of payments in one go, why?"  "read the T&Cs sir, that's how it works").

But on the other hand if your issue isn't on their list of pre-prepared questions and answers they may not know any more about the problem/situation than you do.  Its sort of a six of one and half a dozen of the other situation.  At the end of the day its all about cost saving, and and if you farm it off-shore, people are happy to work for relative nothing compared to the cost of the same operation in the UK, since the minimum wage costs you gross at least £320 per person per week or £17k a year at 37.5hrs a week.  10 people that's £170k a year just for the workers never mind all the other legal requirements and what not.  Go to another country (say, India) where the minimum wage in Mumbai is something like 350 rupees a day, which at today's exchange is about £3.50 per day, £1200 a year.  You can see immediately why this is attractive to companies.

CKhalvashi

In general, the issues arise when you're dealing with someone who doesn't want to be there in the middle of their night.

Our Customer Service centre is in Poland, where we find there aren't such issues, mainly due to deep ties with the UK, a high level of English and dividing everything up into specific teams, ensuring that 99% of the time, the customer will deal with someone who knows what they're doing.

More expensive than many countries, but completely worth it IME.

acrmnsm

Neil_Jones said:

Realistically off-shore callcentres tend to attract criticism more so because their job is simply to "put you off" as it were, since they tend to attract the sort of calls with questions that are already answered on the website (as in "I joined two weeks ago and you've taken two months of payments in one go, why?"  "read the T&Cs sir, that's how it works").

But on the other hand if your issue isn't on their list of pre-prepared questions and answers they may not know any more about the problem/situation than you do.  Its sort of a six of one and half a dozen of the other situation.  At the end of the day its all about cost saving, and and if you farm it off-shore, people are happy to work for relative nothing compared to the cost of the same operation in the UK, since the minimum wage costs you gross at least £320 per person per week or £17k a year at 37.5hrs a week.  10 people that's £170k a year just for the workers never mind all the other legal requirements and what not.  Go to another country (say, India) where the minimum wage in Mumbai is something like 350 rupees a day, which at today's exchange is about £3.50 per day, £1200 a year.  You can see immediately why this is attractive to companies.

Let me be clear its not the call centre workers fault, its the operators. The reasons you describe merely serve to back up my point, they put me off calling by turning it into a kafkaqsque nightmare just to receive some useless platitude. Seeing as my service hasn't started yet, this is a pretty good indication of how much of a damn virgin give.. 

Note talktalk are more expensive than  Virgin, I expect this may be why, and might be a good reason to not leave them after all. 

JJ_Egan

ZEN or A&A are UK customer services with excellent reviews in many ISP reviews .

Cheap cheap ISPs are far more likely to have poor CS .

BT don't think they are 100% UK based but over many years i have never spoken to an overseas CS .

onomatopoeia99

I use A&A, they are based in Bracknell in Berkshire and that's where their tech support is (or was, pre-pandemic, I guess they're working from home now).  All the people doing it know their stuff and in my experience very good at getting Openreach out to fix line faults.

mohammed1111

Sky and NowTv both UK / Ireland based customer service, but they're cr*p see their trustpilot

Teapot55

Having once had our neighbour’s isp call centre put the phone down on us we’ve always been glad we were with BT and had many a pleasant conversation with someone in Bangalore whilst getting our technical problem sorted. They often ask about cricket and are at a loss to understand our lack of interest in cricket 😊

Mickey666

When people chase the cheapest possible deals don’t they ever think about where the costs savings are being made?

onomatopoeia99

Mickey666 said:

When people chase the cheapest possible deals don’t they ever think about where the costs savings are being made?

Nope.  They prefer to get the cheapest price possible then complain when they get a service reflecting the price they paid.

Zellah

OP, TalkTalk use UK based support centres (Salford/Warrington based) for their FTTP (Future Fibre) customers, unlike for their xDSL customers. Also worth remembering that with FTTP, its very reliable so chances of requiring technical support are less. Btw I'm with TalkTalk on their Fibre 900 service (FTTP) and no issues at all