AIBU to expect calls made in quiet areas and basic details ready for contact centres?

[ZML]

do wish people when calling contact centres and other organisations such as doctors surgeries, ring them with little background noise.

My work is a mix of admin and contact centre work - probably split 1 hour on phones for every 3-4 admin work. I often have customers ringing with TV on full blast, dog barking.

Then yesterday, I took a call from someone sitting in a park and could hear loads of kids screaming and a zip wire (guessing).

Then have your various account numbers, bank card to hand. They don’t. Some companies don’t have details populate the systems when people ring.

When I do ring a contact centre for my things, I call in a quiet place and have things to hand. The agents are pleased with this then ask - do I work for a contract centre. Yes I do!

Yeah, if they'd staff then properly so I'm not waiting 30-60 min. Plus, I try to have my info ready but, especially with banking verification, I often despair off ever getting through, I don't know enough about myself apparently!

i don’t think people wait too long for taking calls.
What annoys me and colleagues is that people claim to wait 35 mins and it’s been 5. As this info comes up on our screens.

Plus get this too when our phone lines open ten minutes before

When it can take a loooong time to actually speak to a human at a call centre, up to a couple of hours for the worst offenders like utility firms and government offices like HMRC and DVLA, and typically even 15-30 minutes for the GP surgery, you really are being unreasonable to expect people to be sat in a quiet room doing nothing else whilst waiting. People have lives to lead, they have to work, they have to look after children, they have to go shopping. It's very typical to just put the phone on hands-free and get on with your life whilst waiting.

But they don't know how long it is going to be until they call, so they're "expecting" it to be a long wait, whether it is or isn't.

Re the "5 minutes", you don't know if that was the first/only call to you. They may have tried previously that day or previous days and had to wait a long time before giving up. Yes, it may have only been 5 minutes that time, but they may have been cut off (which happens far too often) or given up previously.

Not quite the same but when I was a GP receptionist (a nice one!) it never ceased to amaze me that people would call asking to make an appointment then when you started to offer them dates they would ask you to hang on while they went and got their diary/calendar!

This is why I avoid using other people's phones as I'm guessing they don't get washed along with their hands...yuk.

Edit: To be fair a scary number of people don't wash their mitts in the first place.

See also: huge shop at the supermarket, then appearing to be surprised when they need to pay (ooh where's my purse) or pack (only once everything else is done!)

This is the problem.

And you may have been logged in to various systems where your details are at the time of calling, but then it all times out!

A waiting time of just 5 mins would be amazing these days!

Oh for that to be the case.

In the last few weeks I’ve waited almost an hour on the phone to speak to someone at HMRC and longer to speak to someone at my bank.

I started off in a quiet room, but after 50 minutes on hold to HMRC, I had to take the dog for a walk. Of course they answered about 3 minutes into my walk, so they had to deal with some outside noise. After 30 minutes on hold to my bank, I started to cook dinner so they had to deal with cooking sounds when they answered. If they don’t like it, tough, they should answer sooner.

Eating is the worst
“oh sorry I’m just having my granola”
yes, I can hear it!

Well the last time I called my bank I was absolutely on the line for 45 minutes.

But when I call a call centre there's usually loads of background noise because there are lots of staff talking to callers. So it works both ways.

Yes this is what I’m talking about!

No they meant why would you be calling up a contact centre if you were already visiting your children there.

I also wondered at first until I read the rest of your post.

Exactly. I start off in a room by myself. Shut the door and have kids occupied. Pen ready and calendar etc

Thats not going to be the case if I’m bored out of my brain and same for the kids x many minutes later.

When we used to call the Gp at 8am it was also the worst time as that’s getting everything ready for school and everyone out the door and then walking to school!

Given how long it takes to get through to most places, why would I go out of my way to find a quiet place just to sit there, card in hand, for an hour?

plus if people ring from work there often isn’t a quiet option

I agree with the TV thing and the kids though. During lockdown a lot of people who were working from home clearly had small children with them while dealing with customers and it drove me mad!

YABU. When you’re on hold for 30 minutes you just have to get on with your life with the phone on hold in the background. Sure we’d all love child-free time to do life admin but a lot of us don’t have any.

YABU. That's just not always possible.

In 2021 I was diagnosed with BC. I had to have several calls with clinicians, pre-op and pre-chemo during working hours. I worked in a serviced office block in Temple, Central London.

I booked a meeting room for each call (£45 per hour). Each time, the clinician would call me early or late leaving me the choice of holding a highly personal and stressful conversation in an open office with my colleagues listening in, or in a corridor with people from other companies walking past chatting, or sprinting five floors and going out into the street with taxis and cars and lorries passing, and people shouting.

Then I had to arrange to have an ovary removed. Same issue. Everyone does the best they can, OP. They aren't trying to inconvenience you. Believe me, I did not want to share such details with strangers.

Never heard of it called a contact centre