UK customer service responses

[procter]

Please find below letter sent on 11 August to which no reply.

In case anybody thinks that 15 minutes hanging on is petty I can only suggest they try it whilst watching the seconds and minutes of your remaining life tick away.

If Oceania are serious they can no doubt trace me from the post code.

 

For attention Mr Bernard Carter

Managing Director

EMEA

Oceania Cruises NE3 5 TH

 

Date 11 August 2016

 

Telephone response times.

 

Sir

I hope you are actually reading this before it is filtered off to Customer Service.

I had cause to ring your sales number yesterday and I waited 16 minutes and 21 seconds before speaking to a human being who was very pleasant but obviously harassed.

May I suggest an experiment for you now.

Put a stopwatch on your desk, hold the phone to your ear to listen to inane music and repeat every minute “your call is important to us, please hang on for the next available agent “ for the next 16 minutes of your life.

A a retail consultant charging £500 to £750 per 7 hour working day I lost a quarter of an hour of my life and approx £30 of earnings which I doubt you will recompense but may I make some positive suggestions.

 

1: Obtain today a break down as follows on an hourly breakdown.

A:: How many calls per hour?

B: How many dropped calls per hour?

C: Average call wait per hour.

D: Longest call wait per hour.

Any decent telecom software analysis should be able to have that on your desk by the end of the day and if not why not?

2: Institute a request call back option rather than have people hanging on unnecessarily. If you are unable to process these calls during quiet periods then EMPLOY MORE PEOPLE

 

3: Institute some form of regular quality monitoring and if you need someone to do it then please contact me directly and we can discuss my charges

I am sure the PR response will be

“We were experiencing unprecedented response to our amazing prices and fantastic marketing campaign on our unbeatable quality fantastic ships”

However if people cannot get through then that is all wasted.

Yours Faithfully

[ToxM]

Stick the phone on speaker and get on with what you are doing, take it off speaker when someone answers? Am I missing something here? Multitasking FTW :)

 

 

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[Earl Rosebery]

You are missing something. Even on speaker, the inane music and repetitive message are annoying. Of course Oceania are not alone. Any serious organization would have a call back system in place.

[fairbourne]

Please find below letter sent on 11 August to which no reply.

In case anybody thinks that 15 minutes hanging on is petty I can only suggest they try it whilst watching the seconds and minutes of your remaining life tick away.

If Oceania are serious they can no doubt trace me from the post code.

 

For attention Mr Bernard Carter

Managing Director

EMEA

Oceania Cruises NE3 5 TH

 

Date 11 August 2016

 

Telephone response times.

 

Sir

I hope you are actually reading this before it is filtered off to Customer Service.

I had cause to ring your sales number yesterday and I waited 16 minutes and 21 seconds before speaking to a human being who was very pleasant but obviously harassed.

May I suggest an experiment for you now.

Put a stopwatch on your desk, hold the phone to your ear to listen to inane music and repeat every minute “your call is important to us, please hang on for the next available agent “ for the next 16 minutes of your life.

A a retail consultant charging £500 to £750 per 7 hour working day I lost a quarter of an hour of my life and approx £30 of earnings which I doubt you will recompense but may I make some positive suggestions.

 

1: Obtain today a break down as follows on an hourly breakdown.

A:: How many calls per hour?

B: How many dropped calls per hour?

C: Average call wait per hour.

D: Longest call wait per hour.

Any decent telecom software analysis should be able to have that on your desk by the end of the day and if not why not?

2: Institute a request call back option rather than have people hanging on unnecessarily. If you are unable to process these calls during quiet periods then EMPLOY MORE PEOPLE

 

3: Institute some form of regular quality monitoring and if you need someone to do it then please contact me directly and we can discuss my charges

I am sure the PR response will be

“We were experiencing unprecedented response to our amazing prices and fantastic marketing campaign on our unbeatable quality fantastic ships”

However if people cannot get through then that is all wasted.

Yours Faithfully

 

Procter - it is frustrating but typical of UK companies these days - you are lucky you got through to an actual UK office, most times it's handled by a call centre in India. BT are a "great" example! Last week I left my phone on a waiting, inane music , your call is important to us blah blah blah - just to see how long it would be - I carried on doing other stuff but I gave up after 46 mins. And this is a giant telecommunications company! I seriously suggest you remove your pc from your post! :)

[procter]

To ToxM,

Thank you for that suggestion.

I would never have thought of that.

(Is there a sarcasm smiley?).

 

The main issues were/are

1: Is it acceptable to keep a customer who may be wishing to spend $20,000 waiting that long.

 

I do not believe that there will be significant surges in demand/phone calls for a year round product.

Willing to be corrected as no doubt on issue of new brochure may trigger an initial surge.

 

2: Equally surely it is bad customer relations to not even bother to reply.

 

3: Finally I left my postcode on so that Oceania can actually trace my booking if actually interested.

As to BT I still believe that there is still a nationalisation attitude

[ToxM]

It wouldn't bother me to have to wait listening to inane music for 15 minutes, most music on hold is quite inane. I'd prefer to wait 15 minutes than have to pay even more for a cruise than I do at the moment, due to them having staff waiting to pick up a call on the first ring. I agree it is bad customer service not to reply, but to be fair your letter of complaint didn't actually ask for a response, and you don't make it clear from any cc's that I can see that your complaint was going anywhere but the boss. You had a bit of a moan, told them get some analysis of their call records and pre empted their reply. I am sure there is a sarcasm smiley somewhere, maybe there's an analyst you can get to do a recce for you to find it :D I'd definitely suggest removing your postcode from your mail as well, it's rather insecure.

 

 

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