To wonder if any call centre is not "busier than normal at the moment"??

[CollieFIower]

Or "experiencing a higher number of calls" or whatever chirpy message they play on repeat. I actually cannot remember the last time I had to ring any customer helpline for any business or govt department and didn't get told some version of the above!

If you're always that busy then no you're not busier than fucking normal, this IS YOUR NORMAL and you might as well just stop trying to gaslight your customers into thinking otherwise.

And breeeeeeaaathe. May as well settle in for some yoga with Adrienne while I wait for Royal Mail to answer

I got four calls from Virgin Media about why I had left AFTER spending three hours in the queue to have my cancellation processed.

It's called purposeful friction.

And I told her what I thought of their having the resources to call me four times after keeping me waiting so long. And if she wanted my feedback, well, I'm paid for my feedback elsewhere. So why give it for free?

Yeah! You really showed her! Woo!

This morning before 9am I spent 10 minutes in total phoning Virgin. In that time I pressed numerous buttons, avoided the link they text me and also ignored the app they tried directing me to.

I then spoke directly to a human operator who dealt with my query and resolved it to my satisfaction. No music was involved throughout the duration of the call either.

10 minutes! I thought that was pretty good.

Every single bloody big company has this crap on their system. Sky is the worst so patronising.

It's just an excuse for not employing enough people to answer the phone

Gives me an idea for my answer-phone message

I agree with pp that it’s preferable to know which number caller you are in the queue.
you can then decide at least, if you happen to be caller number 9, to hang up and try later.
or if you are lucky enough to be caller number three or less, you know it’s worth hanging on.
one of my pet hates is when you dial the company and an auto voice asks you your name, emsil address a brief reason for calling, and what you had for breakfast (joking on that last one lol) and then finally when you speak to an actual b person, they ask you for all the details that you had previously been asked for and given… it’s enough to drive a saint insane.
it makes me feel that after sometimes up to twenty minutes/half hour, that my time is not valued at all.
I know it sounds daft waiting that long, but it troubles me to think that if only I’d waited that extra minute, I might have got answered 🙄
Another bugbear is just about arriving at my hospital appointment on time, then the two receptionists at the department entrance insist on finishing their chat about last nights episode of eastenders without even acknowledging you are waiting….. then being told “oh you’re a few minutes late” ….. really? Well I was on time before I had to listen to you tell your colleague all about Whitney, or Zac, or some other character….. Arghhh!

Companies want to hire the right amount of people, but its an extremely challenging recruitment market at the moment and it's impossible to actually fill all the vacancies and retain all the staff.

Its not just big company call centres too - most hospitality venues are significantly short staffed - there just isn't the workforce to man them anymore after covid for various complex reasons.

And staff leave more often because of the customers and how they are treated than because of the company.

Yes. We have been with First Direct for years and have always found their customer service to be excellent. Even these days.

I have sometimes felt like I am losing the will to live trying to get through to Aviva, and when you do it is nearly always to someone who is the sort of first line of enquiry who doesn’t actually know any more about the subject than you can find out yourself from the website. However you have to go through the whole thing with them before they admit they will have to put you through to another department. Then it is never quite the same one as the last time you rang so you have to go through everything again. And so on.

@PenguinLove1 I agree about the recruitment market. That does not excuse saying 'busier than normal' when it is not. 'Busy at the moment' or 'apologies for keeping you waiting, we'll speak to you as soon as an operator is available'.

Well On The Beach simply never answered and had no email so I couldn't cancel my flights... £400 down the drain.

This is why house admin takes soooo long to sort. I renewed my DD's car insurance over a week ago, on hold for 45mins as another families details had been added to our policy. I spoke to a lady who was very nice but agreed it was very odd and she couldn't help resolve the issue. I had to email them with a screenshot of the policy. So 7+ days later I've not had a reply which means another call to try and sort it out.

All companies are like this now. And don't get me started on getting messages by WhatsApp, they take ages to reply, don't understand your query when a simple call would be so much easier and at I time convenient for me.

@thecatsthecats Are you related to my DH? This would be his response too.

Yes. They still using covid as an excuse to not go into the office it seems. Why did we have all these jabs if life can't get back to normal?

Our doctors surgery hold message is "we're extremely busy at the moment and in a great deal of demand"

It's been like that since 2013 😂😂😂

Been on both sides of this fence and the view is equally frustrating either way.

Dealing with bereavement admin is the worst as you get passed from pillar to post through various departments until you hit the right one. Insurance companies seem to be the worst. Very sympathetic handlers when you do get through but after 45 minutes of Greensleeves on pan pipes booking a double plot starts to look ever so appealing....

I did two years soft calling insurance which wasn't too bad when advised selling was a thing, but when the company I worked for was bought by Americans restructured I had to find another job.

I lasted three months doing car insurance renewals before throwing in the call centre towel. Long before Covid, so no issues answering calls. The biggest problem was customers screaming at us because they'd had a massive hike in their insurance but if they went on the website they could get a much lower premium. It was ok to adjust it but it couldn't be done without tracking down the team leader to do various button pushing beyond my remit, and said team leader was usually engaged in organising some morale boosting forced fun elsewhere...... which involved leaving incandescent customer on hold and scouring the large open plan office to find where Stacey was stuffing this weeks unicorn piñata with miniature vodka bottles or something equally less likely to improve morale .

Nuts. It was all nuts.

I am the Queen of calm with most call handlers, and often acknowledge the difficulties of the job. When I can get to speak with one. But give me five minutes in a room with whoever does the organisation prior to getting through and I might be a tad PA.

I work in a call centre and I call them as a customer. That message is incredibly frustrating.

The business has changed for sure, calls used to be a lot quicker than they are these days. If we answer straight away customers complain we have answered too quick and they don't have their details ready so we have to wait for them to look them up. If they are on hold before the call is answered they start doing something else and then don't have their information ready. They might be brushing their teeth, eating their lunch or running water meaning they can't be heard and have to be asked to repeat themselves. They may be pissed off they have waited and not want to spend an extra second confirming their postcode as well as the first line of their address although that is needed to clear security. They may have googled for a free telephone number or pressed the wrong options then are annoyed at the person answering when they can't help as it's the wrong department. Or they want you to email them a phone number or a phrase they could jot down easily themselves. Call centre workers are a rarely given time to do this as funnily enough they are paid to take calls. If it takes along time to get through customers seem to want more of your time when they do which creates a knock-on effect. There is responsibility on the customer too, be ready, answer the prompts or questions asked and don't start giving advice on how to run the business as you can be damn sure the person you're speaking too isn't the CEO.

There are some very rude comments on this thread. There is no script where I work and it's quite an educated workforce despite the low pay and having every second of your time monitored. Please be respectful and courteous and please don't call at 9am on a Monday unless it's urgent and you aren't going to complain about it.

However annoying or long I've had to wait I wouldn't blow my top with whoever answers but can imagine it can be a depressing and stressful job when you are dealing with irate customers all day, day in snd day out.

Unfortunately it always seems to be the front of house staff - often at the bottom of the chain, as it were, that bear the brunt of people's frustration.
Problems with the trains - station staff get everyone shouting at them, bad traffic - bus driver gets aggro, bad food in a restaurant - the waitress gets whinged at, faulty item - a retail assistant or cashier gets blamed. None of them are actually responsible but they're the most easy target

Seriously?! This is a major problem with some people! Who do you think deals with these complaints!? In majority of places it will be the member of staff you’re speaking with and each complaint takes time to register and close therefore they can’t deal with the next call waiting. Your advice to log a complaint each time you have to wait is ridiculous ! I think a lot of people are entitled these days and expect a quick service and that is not always possible. The place I work for is constantly recruiting and we can’t get the staff and some of the ones we get are sadly not up-to the job and the turnover is ridiculous. I have worked in a call centre for 20 years and love speaking to people and I enjoy my role in customer services. I do log complaints and there are many that are completely justified and mainly on the back of errors or incorrect information and I give them all my time and attention. Ones like yours about about wait times just having me rolling my eyes because you’re complaining about having to wait in a queue, you get through, you’re not kind to the call handler, you waste more of your own time getting worked up, you get your query resolved and then waste more time whilst your complaint is logged and get a few ££ to cover your inconvenience. There is more to life….

@User129867588 my health insurers can't wait to open a complaint every time I mention a small problem like a mistake on a claim. I presume it's because they want to pass the buck to someone else. As a result I am currently on a three-week estimated wait to correct three errors (all of which will work out in my favour, because I know the system, I know my benefits and I know when they are wrong). Most of the time i don't even want to complain, I just want them to either do their job correctly in the first place or (second best) correct their error corrected as quickly as possible.

They are also guilty of that chirpy message saying 'the quickest and easiest way to contact us is via our app...'. So irritating because it's a big fat lie - takes 48 hours to reply to a simple message and more than a week for emails!

(This is international health insurance that is meant to be used and is the only way to access local care, by the way, not optional U.K. health insurance.)

It's a difficult industry to recruit for. I've got a friend who manages a small customer service call centre team, and she says the average life span of a customer service officer is 1-2 years because they just get so sick of it. Unfortunately it's a vicious cycle: the worse the service gets the more vicious and nasty the customers get the harder it gets to keep knowledgeable people in the roles the worse the service gets... And on and on.

One of her staff had a breakdown the other day because a guy came on the phone after a 25 minute wait and spent 10 minutes chewing her out, calling her worthless, swearing at her and abusing her... None of which is unusual in these jobs sadly. People seem to have become ruder, meaner and more entitled and it makes recruiting for these roles really hard. My friend is constantly recruiting but can barely keep up with the rate people are leaving. When one in one hundred people you speak to is a twat it's bearable, but when one in five is a twat... It's soul destroying.

Definitely

I had a customer that told me I deserved to be spoken to like shit (I ended the call after that)
And I'm not unhelpful or rude, I get told every single day that I'm the most helpful person they've spoken to and I've worked in call centres for 18 years now

I'm technically not complaints/customer service but the longer you spend complaining about the queue, the longer the queue gets... can deal with most calls in under 5 mins

HMRC. On hold for one hour 15 mins, repeatedly told to go on-line, yes I know that, it tells me to phone..... Your call us important to us. Is it. Is it really. One hour and 15 mins I tell you. What then happens.

We are sorry we were unable to answer your call. Goodbye. Arrrrggghhhhhh.

Ha, phoned a VOIP company yesterday, they answered immediately and knew what they were talking about. Goodbye BT 😁

It’s interesting because the bank I work for has many long serving staff like myself with 15+ years in customer services. It seems to be the newer (mainly younger) staff who come into the role and can’t handle it and leave within the first year.

My team alone is made up of 12 and most of us have been doing the job many years. We’ve seen it all change, there was no apps, no web chats, no bots, and no automated payment lines when I first joined the bank over 20 years ago. We don’t take abuse and we can speak up for ourselves on the call if the customer is threatening or belittling us. We can also take additional breaks after a particularly bad call or a heartbreaking call which is happening more and more at moment 😞