Terrible customer service

[hattie43]

I have tried 4 times to get through to Barclays Bank customers services with no success .

Today I was on a mission . Held on one hour 15 mins , heard the music the whole reel and then a voice says we cannot connect you please try later .

AIBU to think something is going badly wrong at the moment . Why are customers treated with such contempt by some companies . I'm sure Barclays isn't alone .

Surely answering the phone is a basic .

Would it be easier to go into a branch?

You should try queuing at the pharmacy counter in Boots. Jeez. If they went any slower they'd be going backwards. And that's not just one branch, but three in the last fortnight.

Where are you phoning? Thr branch or thr call centre? The call centres are probably busy af.
Hardly contempt.

Argos...... ordered garden furniture. Was cancelled. I rang up asked why, she said not in stock. I said I'm on your website now and it is in stock, she said reorder. I said I ordered with 20% off garden furniture, now that offer is done. She said 'yeah often happens'. I complained. She said I'll send you a code for discount. Code never arrived by email. I rang back new woman said we don't give out discount codes and basically tough shit I lost the 20% saving and hung up.

I phoned Barclays last week. I was on hold for 14 mins but got through…to the wrong department! so they transferred me to the right department by adding me to their hold queue 😂 it was only a few more minutes though and I did speak to someone. My app currently says it can’t log me on now so I need to phone the helpline, I’m glad I haven’t bothered again though if that’s how busy they are!

I don’t see it as being treated with contempt though, they are busy with calls and possibly have people off sick so there are less people to answer those calls. Could be worse, imagine being stuck in an airport unable to go home because there are no staff due to illness! We have had several people off with Covid recently, all really poorly despite vaccinations. Add people off on holiday too & there’s less cover than ever (can’t take on more staff as building full to capacity & no more rooms/desks/phones for any more). It doesn’t mean people that are trying to get through to us are being treated with contempt, it’s just circumstances.

I know I'll get hate for this but it's the working from home effect. Trying to get through to any company since covid started has been a nightmare.

Best to try later in the week
I work in a contact centre and Monday's are crazy. Lunch times also busy and after work, I would try between 10-11 and 2-4

Actually I agree that things seem worse after the pandemic

@hattie43

I agree - I feel like customers are treated with barely disguised contempt these days.

Lloyds we’re utterly useless repeatedly, IKEA have completely muffed up an order, Vodafone need to get in the sea, dealing with the incompetence is turning me into a cunt and I hate it.

I had to call a few companies for my dad over lockdown. Halifax was bad but it got sorted in the end (I had to drive him to town to go to the branch 3x). The worst was ID mobile: there is no way at all to speak to an actual person. I had to involve the ombudsman in order to get anywhere because they were threatening him with bailiffs for a £42 debt. Bloody ridiculous!

why would you get hate for it?

I won't bother engaging on the phone with WFH if I can hear tv or kids etc in the background. No thanks.

Not just because of the agents, I’m sure it’s the customers wfh as well.

I worked in a contact centre recently and a lot of calls from lazy people who just be bothered to do what they needed to do themselves

It's not the poor sods in the call centres who are 'contemptuous' - but some big orgs definitely seem to have lost the plot on customer service. Going into a branch might be better if you've got one anywhere near you (my nearest would be ~20 mins each way plus car parking charges in town) ... and even there, the branches often have too few staff available. I spent ages going through the automated phone system trying talk to someone at Barclays, only for it to tell me to use the help system in the app and kick me off. I'd phoned because the app appears to be a not very good bot, but eventually I asked it something (i think which implied I had money to invest...) which got the attention of a human who was able to answer my question.

Some companies do have good customer service - and/or websites which are easy to navigate so you don't need to talk to anyone. They'll win out in the end, I hope.

I don’t think so. It’s more down to a lack of staff. The Brexit effect and the pandemic leading companies to cut staff — now demand is back they don’t have the people to cope.

YANBU even the inhouse support service at work is now almost wholly automated. Almost all options urge you to hang up and use online self service. When you occasionally reach a person, lots of things they used to be able to do have been stripped away and made automated. They no longer offer solutions or answers over the phone- stuff gets posted on an automated system.

This would be fine if I didn't have a problem with my account set up denying me access to a huge chunk of the system; I couldn't get through to a human to help me fix my non cookie-cutter- solution problem. I ended up signed off with anxiety & a breakdown last year as due to that and a lazy, buck passing horror up the line, I couldn't meaningfully talk anyone to help me correct a monumental balls up I wasn't even responsible for but got repeatedly bullied over. Covid has been treated as a lovely excuse not to pick up the phone or claim ignorance.

Weirdly the best phone service I've had through the pandemic was the dvla.

His telephone is tiny. No wonder.

111 is much worse...

Because so many people claim they can work just the same from home. But can't.

For a good many years now, customer service has been abysmal. So much so that when you DO get good service you end up elated.

If the product or service you’ve bought is no problem, you never of course realise that that company also provides appalling customer service. E-on, Skoda, Nationwide banking, Aviva, etc, etc.

It will never change now because they care about money, not customers.

Sky and Virgin are constantly crying out/advertising for new customers. Guess why? Because they’re haemorrhaging customers due to constant bad service.

CareCo - I bought a product to replace the broken one that I already had, can't get from A to B without it. It lasted one full charge and then refused to start despite following all the instructions for troubleshooting. Tried contacting Careco by phone and email for 9 months - I had no mobility device for 9 months. They finally sent out a technician who said it was the battery, they're always shit and never last 3 months, they don't come under the 1 year guarantee and so I'd have to pay for a new one despite trying to contact the company for months!

Banking?
Try First Direct. They win all the awards for customer service.
Transfer over & get £ cash reward.

It really really depends
But a contact centre is not one of the places you can skive so if you're ringing one of those, WFH probably isn't the issue

I WFH. My manager can see my screen, listen to my calls, see whether I'm on a call/on hold etc. My breaks are timed, my lunch is timed, if I go to the toilet I click a specific button
So whether I'm sat at home or at work, I do exactly the same amount of work because I'm sat taking calls for 9hrs a day

However we have had staff leave, the call volumes are up and customers keep insisting on ringing on a Monday for things that could wait until another day and then complain it's busy - that's because everyone rings on a Monday! Ring us on a Friday or Saturday or Sunday and there's no queue

The only people you'll get hate from are those not back in the office, the rest of us struggling every day trying to seak to people to carry out even the simplest of tasks will agree with you I bet 😊

The sooner big companies and govt departments realise this the better imo