(no subject)
Dec. 3rd, 2005 03:32 amSure, people don't like IVRs, but to get you to the right call center it is kind of required.
"For Cable Internet related issues please press one. For Cable TV or billing issues please press two"
This simple choice separates calls from my call center (Internet) and the other call center (billing and CATV). Not the hardest choice in the world. And I am not even bothered by the customer who occasionally make the wrong choice. I can see where the confusion might come in with an internet account billing issues. So, I just transfer them to the billing department. Hey, it helps my call time, I don't care.
Except last night I pick up the phone as as I do on the other forty some odd calls I get in a day I ask for her UserID. And immediately I am being yelled at because I am stupid because she doesn't have one. Once she is done yelling at me for that one she stars to demand I tell her who there is in charge of the ratings for TV programs. I kindly inform her that she has reached the Internet Center and that we just handle issues with the cable internet and not the cable TV and that I can kindly transfer her to Customer Care since it was a Cable TV related issue. But instead she decided to yell at me and call me stupid again because I couldn't answer her question. The she demands to know who is legally in charge or rating the internet. I tell her that the internet is not rated. Then she replies it legally has to be and she wants to know who is in charge at our place for the ratings. I once again explain the internet has no ratings and there is nobody in charge of rating the internet. She says that TV shows have ratings and somebody must be in charge of that at our place. At this point I have to explain to her that the internet is not the same as TV and that I can transfer her to the TV department to answer her question.
Now I am apparently a "total moron" because I don't know who here is "legally in charge of rating TV shows" and she wants to talk to my manager. This is coming from the person who had issues with the one and two button on the phone. She does not believe that she hit the wrong button and knows I know the answer to her question and I am lying to her. I let her know I could transfer her to a supervisor, though he won't know the anwser to the question either, since it is a CATV related question. But she doesn't want my supervisor, she wants the call center manager and she gets even madder to find out that he isn't in. Because you know, at 9PM on a Friday night the one manager of the call center is going to be there. At this point she finally gave up and was willing to be transfered to Customer Care since it is a CATV issue and I am now a "fucking moron" who doesn't know anything. I transfer to the end of a 20 minute queue.
Now I don't know much about cable TV. But I am pretty sure it isn't your cable company that decided the rating on TV shows. But that isn't my job to tell her that. I had to suffer through this idiot, someone at Customer Care needs to as well. My guess it was some cranky mother who uses TV ratings to decide what her precious little kids can watch and got angry when the rating didn't fit her moral believes and somehow her cable company needs to be held legally responsible for this. Either way, I really don't care, I got the retard off my phone and onto someone else's.
"For Cable Internet related issues please press one. For Cable TV or billing issues please press two"
This simple choice separates calls from my call center (Internet) and the other call center (billing and CATV). Not the hardest choice in the world. And I am not even bothered by the customer who occasionally make the wrong choice. I can see where the confusion might come in with an internet account billing issues. So, I just transfer them to the billing department. Hey, it helps my call time, I don't care.
Except last night I pick up the phone as as I do on the other forty some odd calls I get in a day I ask for her UserID. And immediately I am being yelled at because I am stupid because she doesn't have one. Once she is done yelling at me for that one she stars to demand I tell her who there is in charge of the ratings for TV programs. I kindly inform her that she has reached the Internet Center and that we just handle issues with the cable internet and not the cable TV and that I can kindly transfer her to Customer Care since it was a Cable TV related issue. But instead she decided to yell at me and call me stupid again because I couldn't answer her question. The she demands to know who is legally in charge or rating the internet. I tell her that the internet is not rated. Then she replies it legally has to be and she wants to know who is in charge at our place for the ratings. I once again explain the internet has no ratings and there is nobody in charge of rating the internet. She says that TV shows have ratings and somebody must be in charge of that at our place. At this point I have to explain to her that the internet is not the same as TV and that I can transfer her to the TV department to answer her question.
Now I am apparently a "total moron" because I don't know who here is "legally in charge of rating TV shows" and she wants to talk to my manager. This is coming from the person who had issues with the one and two button on the phone. She does not believe that she hit the wrong button and knows I know the answer to her question and I am lying to her. I let her know I could transfer her to a supervisor, though he won't know the anwser to the question either, since it is a CATV related question. But she doesn't want my supervisor, she wants the call center manager and she gets even madder to find out that he isn't in. Because you know, at 9PM on a Friday night the one manager of the call center is going to be there. At this point she finally gave up and was willing to be transfered to Customer Care since it is a CATV issue and I am now a "fucking moron" who doesn't know anything. I transfer to the end of a 20 minute queue.
Now I don't know much about cable TV. But I am pretty sure it isn't your cable company that decided the rating on TV shows. But that isn't my job to tell her that. I had to suffer through this idiot, someone at Customer Care needs to as well. My guess it was some cranky mother who uses TV ratings to decide what her precious little kids can watch and got angry when the rating didn't fit her moral believes and somehow her cable company needs to be held legally responsible for this. Either way, I really don't care, I got the retard off my phone and onto someone else's.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 11:03 am (UTC)I don't drag myself into work every day to be actively insulted by anyone, let alone someone who can't even figure out how to operate a phone.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 11:36 am (UTC)I don't know how companies can justify them, especially somewhere like London, where you have all the accents of the world in that place, not to mention the English varieties. I can't imagine phone system that would understand Geordie.
Sorry about the rant, completely off-topic. Something pushed my buttons... ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 12:26 pm (UTC)Our IVR script was written by a retard, and our misdirected calls and numbers of confused people has risen around 2000% since it was put in. No-one in our team or any of our bosses has the authority to get it changed and even if they did it would cost us five thousand dollars because instead of using our multibilliondollar organisation's inhouse resources, we're renting space on a system owned by the local telco.
This has been going on for over a year.
Additionally, we get a handful of staff a day who send email to us in error. Most go away when they get a standard reply with my handy-dandy list of IT teams in HQ, what each one does, and how to contact them. But occasionally we get some nutball who keeps mailing us over and over getting pissed that we won't make some blatantly idiotic and horribly complex change to some system we've never heard of, and won't take subtle hints like "Piss off and never email us again, you retarded blob of fungus."
It's more irritating when these people are managers in their own right.
What we tend to eventually do is assign one of our own managers to be responsible for answering anything that comes in from the drooling waste of oxygen, just to avoid half our staff exploding into a homicidal rampage on seeing something in the team mailbox with the name of the brain-damaged slime as the sender. It's the closest compromise we're allowed to come to automatically filtering to /dev/null.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 01:11 pm (UTC)It anoyed me that the only way to get a person (in India, naturally) on the line was to enter an invalid number (at least as far as I could tell).
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 03:52 pm (UTC)But I do hate IVRs that require you to enter an account number that could be 20 digits long and if you don't have the info, there is NO way of reaching anyone live.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 08:01 pm (UTC)*click*
no subject
Date: 2005-12-03 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 03:55 pm (UTC)