There seems to be a received wisdom that these are not good.
I’ve had occasion to deal with the call centres of a couple of mobile phone companies recently. The ones in the UK (judging by accent of course) were curt and generally unhelpful.
The ones in India (judging by accent of course) were helpful, polite and efficient.
I am concerned about the longer term effects of exporting all of our jobs overseas, but based on my limited experience of these call centres, if I refused (as I’ve considered) to have anything to do with companies with overseas call centres (in an attempt to protect UK jobs), I’d be cutting off my nose to spite my face (and not for the first time).
Monday, October 31, 2005
Virgin Trains Entertainment system
3.5mm Jack sockets between each seat, with channel and volume controls. The sort of things you’d have been lucky to find on a plane not all that long ago. Nice idea. For me, I’d love to listen to radio 4 on my current 2hrs 40mins each Monday morning. According to the in flight, er sorry in train magazine, I can – brilliant – you couldn’t even do that on a plane.
Except that radio 4 is very rarely actually available. On one train it cut out whenever we slowed down (if I didn’t think it was preposterous I could have sworn it was each time the driver used the brakes). Best of all, when it is on, it’s always interrupted by the RDS travel alerts. You know - the ones you get on a car radio if you use the TA/TP button that tell you about the jam you joined about an hour ago and then let you listen to s story about a bloke in Cheltenham’s recollections of the war because they’ve forgotten to press “off” in the local radio studio.
You have to smile - I took the train so I didn’t have to worry about that stuff. I thought it’d be something simple like a note to train managers/whoever turns the radio on – something like “there’s a grumpy old git who listens to radio 4 who keeps using our trains – please turn it on and press the TA/TP button to turn off the traffic news, otherwise he’ll send us another e-mail” but apparently, it’s more fundamental:
Thank you for your email. I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused to you as a result of the audio system not functioning fully when you have travelled with us. We are aware that there are some problems on Voyagers with the audio equipment.
We have a Defect Auditor travelling on Voyagers everyday, and he is checking and reporting any defects with the Audio equipment which in turn will be repaired. At present the Audio system is not as reliable as we would hope, however, Bombardier will be conducting a campaign on the entire Voyager Fleet and carry-out repair/replacement on all audio systems that are defective, at present materials are on order.
This should see an improvement on the Audio Systems. Once again please accept our apologies, however we are aware of the problems and the solutions we have planned should see a much improved reliability. Thank you for your time
Anyway, I’m glad a Defect Auditor is on the case. There I was thinking there would be a TA/TP button and an "on" button.
Except that radio 4 is very rarely actually available. On one train it cut out whenever we slowed down (if I didn’t think it was preposterous I could have sworn it was each time the driver used the brakes). Best of all, when it is on, it’s always interrupted by the RDS travel alerts. You know - the ones you get on a car radio if you use the TA/TP button that tell you about the jam you joined about an hour ago and then let you listen to s story about a bloke in Cheltenham’s recollections of the war because they’ve forgotten to press “off” in the local radio studio.
You have to smile - I took the train so I didn’t have to worry about that stuff. I thought it’d be something simple like a note to train managers/whoever turns the radio on – something like “there’s a grumpy old git who listens to radio 4 who keeps using our trains – please turn it on and press the TA/TP button to turn off the traffic news, otherwise he’ll send us another e-mail” but apparently, it’s more fundamental:
Thank you for your email. I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused to you as a result of the audio system not functioning fully when you have travelled with us. We are aware that there are some problems on Voyagers with the audio equipment.
We have a Defect Auditor travelling on Voyagers everyday, and he is checking and reporting any defects with the Audio equipment which in turn will be repaired. At present the Audio system is not as reliable as we would hope, however, Bombardier will be conducting a campaign on the entire Voyager Fleet and carry-out repair/replacement on all audio systems that are defective, at present materials are on order.
This should see an improvement on the Audio Systems. Once again please accept our apologies, however we are aware of the problems and the solutions we have planned should see a much improved reliability. Thank you for your time
Anyway, I’m glad a Defect Auditor is on the case. There I was thinking there would be a TA/TP button and an "on" button.
Lucky me
I work for an organisation that is largely uncluttered with stupid meaningless phrases borrowed from management gurus (and reinterpreted to render them worthless). We just do our job. We aren’t pestered for paperwork any more than strictly necessary (The paper in paperwork is finally starting to become a misnomer anyway, about 15 years after I first promised someone that we’d be doing away with it).
Many of the organisations we work for cripple themselves with internal politics and crazy management – we just get to laugh about it in the pub. We occasionally have to tell them something is mad or won’t work, but because we’re not part of the apparatus, they usually listen to us. If they don’t – we still get paid and we can go and work somewhere else next week/month/year.
The organisation I work for doesn’t make you into a “manager” before you can get a pay rise. You can get a rise because you (and/or the firm) is/are doing well. My experience of being a manager was that it involved listening to staff and customer complaints all day, going to see your boss about them and being given a load of new directives from on high that seemed to have been specifically designed to generate more staff and customer complaints.
Overall I am extremely lucky.
Many of the organisations we work for cripple themselves with internal politics and crazy management – we just get to laugh about it in the pub. We occasionally have to tell them something is mad or won’t work, but because we’re not part of the apparatus, they usually listen to us. If they don’t – we still get paid and we can go and work somewhere else next week/month/year.
The organisation I work for doesn’t make you into a “manager” before you can get a pay rise. You can get a rise because you (and/or the firm) is/are doing well. My experience of being a manager was that it involved listening to staff and customer complaints all day, going to see your boss about them and being given a load of new directives from on high that seemed to have been specifically designed to generate more staff and customer complaints.
Overall I am extremely lucky.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Vodafone
Didn't want to give me a PAC code, it seems. I was getting more and more fed up with them. In theory I should be their dream customer - spend quite a bit on monthly contract and tend to be an early adopter of new stuff I find useful. I tried their 3g datacard in my lappy for a while - but any time I had a query (not too often) I had a choice of talking to "helpline" folks who didn't know anything about the card or service (not their fault), or filling in a web form. On the web form, one of the compulsory fields was a landline phone number - which was daft as I was trying to do without a landline and give Vodafone my entire phone/data business.
Anyway, finally got a PAC code at third time of asking.
Then they phone and write to ask me not to go.
Maybe if they'd been a bit more help in handing over the PAC code, I might have listened - but to provide rubbish service and then suggest I stay for more of the same?
Anyway, finally got a PAC code at third time of asking.
Then they phone and write to ask me not to go.
Maybe if they'd been a bit more help in handing over the PAC code, I might have listened - but to provide rubbish service and then suggest I stay for more of the same?
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