First Direct Phone Service

Grumpy_chap

I don't understand why First Direct phone service has dropped so much - there is always a wait now and it did not use to be like that.

Maybe they reduced staff to drive people to use online services instead - unfortunately the FD online service is really poor.  I cannot use the FD online service - I don't even have a card to draw money at the cashpoint that ever worked.  I do have a Barclays account also, and the online service there is brilliant.  The difference between the two levels of online service is remarkable - with Barclays I have not needed to use a branch or phone call for as long as I can remember.  With FD, I can only use the phone service.

I think FD were really ahead of the game when the started out with the 24-7 always open phone banking and have simply fallen behind as the rest of the pack advanced past them.  Now, the phone service is also declining.

adamp87

Not going to deny phone usage to companies may have gone up during the pandemic, but that surely has dropped back down you'd have expected.

Companies forget that prepandemic (not FD it doesn't seem) but many including Banks would have you waiting for ages to begin with. Covid now seems to be used as an excuse across the board for every company. Some automated systems can take nearly 3 minutes before you get into the right department waiting queue. 

It seems with First Direct they've cut staffing down as a result of the past year and can't handle the influx of calls and are panicking as this is the USP for their entire business model. Perhaps they should stop trying to poach new customers with their switch incentives currently until they can actually handle & serve the customers they currently have to the standard they advertise.

born_again

Grumpy_chap said:

I don't understand why First Direct phone service has dropped so much - there is always a wait now and it did not use to be like that.

Maybe they reduced staff to drive people to use online services instead - unfortunately the FD online service is really poor.  I cannot use the FD online service - I don't even have a card to draw money at the cashpoint that ever worked.  I do have a Barclays account also, and the online service there is brilliant.  The difference between the two levels of online service is remarkable - with Barclays I have not needed to use a branch or phone call for as long as I can remember.  With FD, I can only use the phone service.

I think FD were really ahead of the game when the started out with the 24-7 always open phone banking and have simply fallen behind as the rest of the pack advanced past them.  Now, the phone service is also declining.

If you read the letter, the answer in in there.
Same number of staff, but more people calling in.

You can not drag someone off the street and say "Here's a phone get on with it" it takes weeks to train staff to know just the basics. And many months before they can grasp many issues.

Thankfully now work from home is become a new norm, that expands the pool of people they can employ. And not just the area's around their buildings.

SebH

It sounds like they haven’t reduced staff in absolute terms, but have reduced the staff to customer ratio so, as a result of acquiring more customers, now have a larger number of customers spread across the same/similar number of staff as before.

Inevitably, this put pressure on staff and increased waiting times.

KitKat_Shuffler

I've only ever called FD on their 0113-2345678 number and they usually answer within 5 seconds, but in recent weeks it can take up to a minute now!