Customer service call wait times

[sunnydaytoday0]

Is it just me finding that wait times for call centres/customer services across various organisations are excessively long at the moment? I know you have to be patient and it's normal to have to wait, which has always been the case, but it seems a lot worse at the moment . An hour on hold here, over an hour on hold there, really adds up when you're having to call lots of places.

Is it simply down to staffing or other reasons?

It'll be staffing. Everyone is under the cosh at the moment so call volumes are up, add that into staff retention issues and it's a perfect storm.

I find everywhere has changed their menu lately and actually getting to the queue requires hanging up and redialling several times while noting the correct menu options and listening to minute after minute of pre-recorded irrelevant slosh while waiting to get to the option to get to the queue.

Its like a bad text adventure that no one wins.

I work in a call centre and our main issue is staff retention. We're treated like shit, with our company constantly taking on new contracts, thus increasing call volumes and workload without caring if it's manageable for the employees.

Most new recruits last 6 weeks tops. Answering back-to-back calls from irate customers for 12 hours per day is utterly thankless, so I can't say I blame them.

What do you think the other reasons would be?

of course it’s down to staffing

I've given up and gone back to the high street now, where possible, obviously . Just went to high street to get car insurance for the first time in 10 years. I am sick to death of robots.

I am currently in a customer service role. From 9am until 5.50pm, the calls are constant, relentless even. We have a call handling target, call time targets, hold targets, after call targets (we do our notes in call). Often customers have complex issues that cannot be sorted in 5 mins flat.
Its a staffing issue and I think that many companies haven’t recovered from the whole lockdown things.
Our place is aggressively recruiting. If others are, that’s got to help, however many are not and working with the staff they have. The folks manning the phones are doing their best.

Customer Service in call centres has gone downhill since Covid and never really recovered. Understandably companies and staff took time to adjust to the sudden move to WFH in lockdown but they should have adapted and recovered by now. It is also evident that lots of staff are inexperienced, lack training, are often WFH with little support or senior colleagues nearby to call on for help. This just makes their job even worse as it leads to frustrated customers. I am always conscious that it is not the persons fault on the other end of the phone.

Not only are there less staff but you'll also get people spending time, once their call has been answered, telling the call handler how long they have been on hold and how terrible it is etc before they get into their actual issue. This ironically adds to the call waiting time for other customers as a 5 minute call then becomes an 8minute call which leaves other customers waiting an extra 3 minutes, which they will then comment on when their call is answered.

Yes a lot of it is due to staff retention and levels but sometimes customers don't help either as they waffle on with irrelevant information dragging the call out or call up to enquire about their account but have zero account information to hand when asked because it hadn't occured to them they might need it ...

I work very closely with the senior managers of our companies call/contact centre

It's extremely tough
The expectations of the role are hard
Call after call after call
All levels are under extreme pressure

Bring in new staff train them- weeks if not months till they are skilled (it's quite a unique product every persons product will be different so no standard approach)
Hope they stay and learn the role

Then use these people to train more staff so less people on phones again

The whole world seems to be short staffed

But the flip side is and I say this from the "inside" pushing extreme growth through sales and not having the technical back up to self service is a massive fail

It's dreadful.
My bank is the worst. Bank waiting times were featured on rip off britain yesterday.
Need many more staff answering but probably don't want to pay them. Some companies just get too big.

Part of my company has a call centre attached. We are a seven day a week organisation.

We cannot recruit and keep staff. We find that either people want a few days a week to fit around their kids, or people don’t want to work weekends, or people don’t want to work 8 or 9 hours on the phone. You get 5 or six in post and they leave within a year.

It’s not a particularly shocking organisation either, more than living wage, annual rises and bonus, generous pension, lovely team to support, ample sick leave - similar to old council terms.

I don’t just think the world shifted from a company perspective during covid, I think people’s lives and priorities shifted, and that makes recruitment at the bottom of the hierarchy even more difficult. Zero hours contracts suddenly have a place - pick and choose your hours to suit. Casual contracts have a place - school holidays off? Not a problem.

And then because you can’t recruit, you’re over a barrel - I don’t want to work that evening, if you don’t like it fire me. What are you meant to do when you know it would be crippling for the business.

I absolutely agree with the person saying complaints make it worse, I think 75% of the type of person who calls our call centre are people who just want to talk to a person and they want that interaction and if I’m being honest they’ve got the time to burn. There’s a means of communicating and assisting with their query in other ways but they want to ring up.

So calls last longer and longer. By the time you get to someone, you’re angry, and your trust that they will do what they say has gone. It’s harder and takes longer to restore. Even though they could’ve just gone on the internet and booked what they wanted there. There does seem to be a reluctance to look for information too, we quite often see clients who ask basic information, it’s available online, you had to listen to it to speak to our team, but they ignored it and carried onto customer services anyway.

The other thing I find is an unrealistic expectation that we will respond to everything within ten minutes. We get people emailing at 7.30 and they’re on the phone by 9.10 because no one has responded. They’ve just doubled the workload. If you’ve multiple people dealing with inboxes, Facebook messages, voicemails and incoming calls you have literally wasted everyone’s time.

Yes, call centres are crap. Yes, they have got worse, but I would say 40% of enquiries are utter nonsense that could’ve been completely avoided if people read or listened to the information available or had a bit more patience.

My company has a call centre. The staff there also handle online query forms. Most customers are busy, active people who hammer out an online form with their query and go about their day. However, those customers who choose to phone sometimes have time on their hands and tend to have no qualms about clogging up the lines. There is a high staff turnover so many colleagues don’t have well-developed call control skills - they don't know how to act politely but firmly to get the question answered and the waffly person off the phone. Not all callers are like that, but too many are. And they can be unprepared too - not having critical info to hand, or scrabbling around for a pen etc. It is a frustrating job, I’m told.

I think that lots of people don’t want to work evenings and weekends. Youngsters these days have other options and there are plenty of jobs about, so if they’re told they can’t have the Friday evening before Christmas (for example) off, they’ll just quit or they’ll take it as sick leave and find something else fast.

Aldi etc pays more. A number of older staff have taken early retirement and gone to a supermarket part time, with none of the stresses associated with call centres, call times, targets etc.

@Spandang While I agree there are instances where people can go online or elsewhere for answers but not all companies websites are easy to navigate to find information, not all the answers are actually on there and sometimes people just want to hear it from a person as they are not confident about what they are seeing online. It is also assumed that everyone has access to the internet which is not the case especially for older people. I feel sad that they are being marginalised by being pushed to do absolutely everything online.

I work in home insurance I’ve never known it to be so busy. With us it’s staffing and the fact that understandably everyone is trying to save money and not automatically renewing.

That’s a prime example we used agency, lots of young people the day after black eye Friday (Friday before Christmas) went drinking and just didn’t turn in for there shift the following day. No phone call or anything.

That ^^
I do about 130 calls in 7hrs

My bank is the worst. Bank waiting times were featured on rip off britain yesterday.

I saw some of that, and it's worrying that some people are having to face a long wait when ringing to report possible fraud or being a victim of a scam. Yet the same banks say to report this to them immediately.

I was caller 292 yesterday to British Gas. Just put the phone down. Feel so sorry for call centre staff, it must be relentless.

It’s a high pressure role for very little money. A friend recently took on a role from home, 6 hours phone and 3 webchat/email.

Contact targets are crazy. She had a week’s training on the systems with a lot to remember, a week live with someone else on hand by chat to ask questions of. Then expected to do everything herself.

Some of the systems they’re using are 20 years old and ridiculously clunky, you can’t even copy and paste between them which slows the agent down.

Then you get customers coming through who think it’s okay to rip her a new one because they weren’t home to take in a delivery from a courier and they have to wait another day.

She has been doing it for a month and is the most unflappable person I know. She’s already looking for another job.

The thing that gives me the rage is a recorded message to tell me that my call will not be answered quickly because staff are WFH.

I have no issue at all with WFH but companies have had over 2 years to get infrastructure in place to support WFH. I recently wasted 2 hours on the phone with LV= trying to change the address on my insurance, holding a newborn baby, because the first call yielded an agent who couldn’t take my payment for the new address. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Yep, the call centre I work at is experiencing call wait times of about 40 minutes pretty much from opening time till closing time and EVERY single person complains.

What I really feel like telling them is "we have the highest rate interest products on the market in years, over 2000 unread emails for a team of approx 20 people to go through, staff leaving or going on the sick because its been over 6 months of non-stop madness, the Government changing the base rate which means our rates have to change, non-stop customers acting like twats calling up and screaming down the phone at us, more new staff than old staff that aren't being trained properly and making loads of mistakes and we are all having to stay well past our finish time every single shift all the while getting treated like crap, with crap pay and no respite-give us a bloody break! "

And breathe!