Uk Online

[bob_tenor2]

Hello!
Let me tell you how your favorite ISP (UkOnline) works

Why every times you try to reach us you are waiting so long ?
Number one, only one telephone number, always the same. Why ? It's not our interest to let you speak to the right department directly. Money at stake !
To ease the fµ** we will, in the name of the security, fisrt of all and according to our guidelines simply check your identity and repeat or make sure what you are asking: acknowlegment. Result: you totaly agree and happy to see how we take care about you. Intresting thing. You ve just lost 2 minutes charged at local rate. You would say that's not so huge...

After the briliant preliminary, let's transfert you. (I will talk about technical support later...)
Hey hold on. Today the operation manager has decided that every transfert will be warm. Warm hey? It means that we do not have to put the customer throught whithout getting in touch with the next agent and mostly whitout advising him about the situation....He has the right to refuse of course (higher levels mostly do)
Of course, silly I am, I can be wrong and transfert a cancellation request to the sales department. Hundred of my collegues follow the same guidelines all over the week, monday to sunday.
Very first consequence, when I wait to get my poor collegue you wait. Can you imagine the situation when it is scored by hundreds people ? An average wait of 20 minutes. Surelly we can do better, 1.5 hour for a cancellation!
Can we call back the customer? I would say, yes. It depends of the operation manager instructions in reallity. Can you speak to a supervizor?
Pragmatically, here in Belfast, the seconds and lead agents do not care about what could happen. They are supposed to deal those problems obiously but instead of that they prefer let the first line agent get insulted, scored badly, and be on break or in meeting everytimes they may need.
Even worst, they refuse or ignore the first line agent, pretending that they can not be concerned by the current problem. Naturally, it's the fist line agent to announce the brillant answer to the customer...
Why you ve not been called back? Why your are not advised about general failures on the network? Now you got your answer. That the way it works here in Belfast call center.

And what about the technical support? The worst ever ever !
Fisrt of all, quite none of the agents are It skilled. The lead agents like the quality agents are absolutely not...Brilliant! How it is cheked ? Just thanks to some guidelines supplied by UkOnline...What about the training ? It's done by the quality agents only teaching those guidelines and showing us how the internal troubleshoot software may work...Like my team leader loves to say 'you do not have to be It qualified to do this job, just follow the guidelines ! And can I score you ? Yes, because I just been trained a little bit more than you! It s easy!!'

When the problem goes tricky, the first line agent has to transfert or raise the issue to a tiers2 agent. Here we are! How does it work hey? Fisrt of all it's a warm transfert (you already lost 30 minutes). The tiers 1 announce to tiers2 the ticket number.Tiers2 will check the ticket done by tier1 thanks to it software if every troubleshootings have been done.
If yes, he will accept the call, perform a woosh test on your line and then raise the issue to Bt or to a tiers 3 agent in Shepton. Sometimes he may give you a gift.
If you were away from the internet more than 7days and asking for a compensation, he will give you a free dial up account to wait. Of course you will need a dial up modem...But that's the very rare case.

Generally the tiers 1 raise the issue because he has detected something wrong on the line (no dial) or on the exchange port realtime info (too much noise for exemple). At this point, for a normal person, there is no sense to insist.
Do you have to try the so called test socket behind the telephone socket cover ? Is this because of the DNS if you cannot get your DSL signal? Is this serious to ask a customer to 'ping' Google in a such situation?
I would say no, but the Tiers2 agent will ask to. And he won't tell it himself naturally...Thank you tiers1!

That the way it works in Belfast...