Not ringing back when cut off a phone call?!!

[Purrree]

This drives me insane.

Just been on phone to PIP.
45 minutes waiting. Then another 5 mins being put through to someone else. Who put me on hold whilst doing something and cut me off!

They know all my details, why dont they ring back?!

So infuriating and I sympathise. When DH and I were first together, he had debts from when he was with his ex which had gone to a collection company. It would ring for bloody ages and he’d finally get through but cut off at 60 mins (which included the ringing). The first time, we thought it was just unfortunate but after the third time we realised it was a ‘thing’.

All these sorts of places, PIP included, are bastards.

I was always told that the basic rule is that whoever made the first call should be the one to reinstate it. Maybe that's why?

Even if it takes the caller an hour to get back through and it would take the callee 30 seconds? And they know this?

The systems they use are crap and close randomly and frequently, sometimes wiping any info on the screen.
Another issue is that calls come in straight away, there is only 4 seconds between taking each call. This doesn’t give enough time for the agent to take themselves off active in order to phone back.

(I used to be a call agent on the PIP line)

Ah, OK, that is understandable then. I wish they had something in place for that situation but i van understand that.

If it is taking a call centre 45 minutes to pick up calls, then the centre is severely understaffed... which in turn means that there is no capacity in the system for the agents to call back.

Call centres are measured on call answering times - i.e. the average time that callers have to wait listening to "Greensleeves" and "Your call is important ..." before actually being connected to an agent. In turn, the agents are targeted on average talk times and number of calls answered, so they have an incentive to keep the calls short, even to the point of hanging up on the more complex calls.

In my experience, very few centres or organisations actually measure things that are important to the customer/client, such as the number of issues resolved in the initial call, or the total time rspent by a caller before actually being put through to an agent (taking into account the number of times a caller is cut off while still in the queue, or hangs up because after waiting for 45 minutes, they have to get back to work)