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Regards

Z

[Edited by JTC, 070904/0914 to make clickable]

While I don't deny that there are certain elements of call centre service that can be frustrating, reports like this (or at least the report on the report, not having read the primary material) in my view are unhelpful to everyone, not least the consumer.

It overlooks the fact that in may of the instances cited, people are already disatisfied or frustrated about something. Even so a lot of the elements of call centre contact contain just hygiene factors; the experience ranges from disatisfaction to no disatisfaction (and never satisfaction). And if people are expecting a frustrating experience, I would suggest that their zone of tolerance is further reduced.

And while it is certainly not the level of service most centres aim to deliver, having customers holding (it costs them more than the customer!), there is often a higher actual and opportunity cost attached to other routes (eg the cost of public transport and the time to go in to an office or shop)

It's good that people want excellent service, however I don't see that reports like this that provoke a defensive reaction (from me at least!) really act as drivers for this.

Rant over!

Z

I agree with Zoe's comments. It is very frustrating that customers do not seem prepared to make value decisions based on an honest assessment of their priorities.

A typical example is Internet banking - customers use Internet only banks (e.g. cahoot) because of the excellent interest rates their products offer. They then complain that at their old bank they could have a personal individual adviser, face to face contact, a physical branch they could go to, etc. Why do they seem unwilling to make the leap that says "the only way my bank can offer me 2-4% higher rates than any high street branch is because of the virtual bank set up and contact centre service".
It is interesting to note that although frequently threatened with "I'll close my account" no one actually seems inclined to return to the high street rates, so when pushed the priority is easy enough for them to recognise.

The problem for the contact centre industry is not so much the level of service contact centres are able to deliver, but more the consistent failure of many contact centres to deliver their published offering, and a tendency for commitments not to be adhered to coupled with a lack of ownership.
But these issues are not inherent in the principle of contact centres, these issues are caused by inadequate systems, processes, management, and resourcing; none of these issues are unique to contact centre operations and none are insurmountable.

When one looks at the contact centre servicing model effectively servicing the business, the advantage to customer, supplier, and distributor are numerous. It appears the only way to convince the world contact centres remain the future is to start providing a high level of professional service. This is especially important in countries such as India and the Philippines where international opinion is already firmly formed against their ability to deliver standards acceptable to the general public - you can keep piling in the work but until you really build an industry to be proud of you will always be facing a finite source of work - sooner or later companies will find there own middle ground between cost & service that satisfies their customer/distributor/supplier base, and there will be no point in off shore outsourcing.

I dont understand how it now takes 7 days to for electronic funds transfer (or balance transfer)given its all ELECTRONIC. 20 years ago it took 3-4 days to clear a cheque.

What went wrong with the world???

I beleive this subject was covered off on Brassed off Britian.

Simply the banks make to much money from the interest they obviously get by keeping there hands on our money.

The UK Banks will not change, however in Sweden they changed it years ago.

This is what gets me!

If I go to Barclays and it says I have £200 in there I take it out and get a letter 3 days later saying, Dear Mr Dickson you have gone overdrawn and for that we are charging you £30. Now tell me if I'm being stupid here but did they not say I had £200, If I didnt have £200 in there why did they say I had and give it to me, so when they take the £30 is that not obtaining money by deception.

The reason BACS takes 5 working days (quoted as 7 days) is that this is the period in which BACS make their money. The entire BACS proposition is based on the interest accrued during this period. BACS holds the funds for 3 days, and has a day either end to process the transaction in & out.
Telegraphic Transfer (TT) costs between £10 - £25 depending on the bank. The actual cost to the bank is around the £10.
People often think of BACS as a service provided by their bank, and do not realise that it is an independant profit making business.

An IT guy I used to work with (who will remain nameless), previously worked for the Alliance & Leicester, he was tasked with patching in some new kit over the weekend in the main server building for them.

Now to use BACS, you have to have a main connection into your system and a backup connection, once a week the backup connection is used for a whole 24 hours to verify it is functional and also to allow maintenance, this is part of the rules for having BACS I am told.

So as he is setting up the new kit, he contacts the central IT team to get 6 port numbers he can use to connect up the new server, which the central IT team give him, he queries this as there are cables in there, but they asure him that they are not being used for anything, so he un-patches them all and adds in the new server, all works and everyone is happy...

.. That is until Thursday, when at midnight the BACS system swithces to the backup server, which is running fine and is showing up on the network as fine!
However the 6 cables on the floor in the comms room are not receiving anything from the outside world, resulting in all oayments inbound to the A+I failing and no person getting paid or any money arriving, when this is picked up the bank discovers that they are now missing a 7 figure sum of money from their accounts and a huge amount of interest has been lost.

The weekend after the entire companies network was re-logged correctly.

Finally they addressed this rip off

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4575049.stm