Is there any company out there that actually employs enough people in their call centres? Anywhere? Surely, somewhere, there must be one…

Having spent aaaages last week trying to get through to EDF (“We are currently receiving unprecedented call levels”… like bollocks you are, you’re just too cheap to employ enough people) and now I’ve been here for 45 minutes trying to get through to the people who make Quo because their stupid system won’t activate some maps I bought yesterday.

Why?! I thought there were loads of people unemployed out there? It can’t be hard to find call centre staff?

HELLO! I’M TRYING TO GIVE YOU MONEY, BUT I CAN’T IF YOU DON’T ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE!!!

Wwwwwhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyy???!!!

“We’re very sorry for the delay…”

AAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHH

…

the worst thing is when they cut the music and your heart lifts as you think ‘at last’ and then you just get the bleeding recording again – like you’ll have forgotten about the unprecedented demand since the last Phil Collins track started.

Good Energy, smile.co.uk, and oddly enough Yorkshire Water. I have never had to wait more than a few seconds whilst calling those companies, at all sorts of times.

BT, on the other hand, are **** awful, the only thing that’s worse than sitting in their queues being shouted at by their pre-recorded announcements for hours is when they finally answer and you have to speak to the gibbering imbeciles in their call centres.

Yes, I do keep a list of these things. No, I don’t think that’s weird at all, shut up.

Thank you for your post. Your post is very important to me and I will reply to it as soon as I become available.

This thread may be recorded for training purposes.

*tinny soft jazz*

True, Smile didn’t make me wait long; they did however send my bank details to random strangers and vice versa so I won’t let them off the hook.

Still waiting…

Actually all local councils I’ve had to phone have been very good, and they must surely get loads more calls than some random map program people, surely?

Given up. Bollocks to the lot of them. Digital maps are infuriating in that once you’ve started you’re stuck with one single vendor; after this experience however I won’t be giving Quo any more money.

The problem is Phiiil that call centre demand varies a lot. If you employ enough people to answer the peak demand, you’d have loads of people sitting about doing nothing for most of the time which would be very expensive and push up prices. So you employ a middling amount of people to handle the calls MOST of the time and anyone who calls at a spike just has to wait.

Seems fairly obvious to me. It’s what all customer facing businesses do. If you go to the supermarket when it’s rammed, you would not be surprised to have to queue for a bit would you?

Phone these places up early doors, whenever their call centre opens up. Nay worries then 🙂

First Direct.

And also my Post Office branded credit card, which actually goes to a call centre overseas. But as it’s Ireland and i go all gooey when i talk to irish ladies, I’m prepared to shelve my concerns about lost jobs.

Ah, go on go on go on…..

I was just about to say first direct. Don’t think I’ve ever had to wait more than about three rings.

I understand demand varies a lot, but so much that when contacting a fairly small business I should be on the phone for nearly an hour and a half before giving up? For larger businesses like EDF surely the massive number of customers should largely cancel out any random spikes, and if they haven’t got enough people to cover the entirely predictable 6-to-8-pm-everyone-has-just-come-home-from-work peak time then by saying they’re having “larger than expected call volumes” many days in a row they’re just outright lying.

I suspect these lot have all gone home but didn’t bother to change their phone message; their “head office” phone just rings out without an answer too. So my maps will have to wait until Monday. I should have just bought paper ones and drawn lines on them the old fashioned way…