Call centres should move with the times

Poor service from providers makes getting basic IT services into a new home the bane of modern life.

I have recently moved house and discovered just how much work needs to be done to get basic IT, such as internet service and multi-channel TV, into a new home.

Dealing with contact centres is the bane of modern house-moves. In 2004/5, there were about 2.5 million moves in England alone. That adds up to a lot of angst simply to do with shifting electrons around, let alone the furniture.

I last moved about nine years ago, and customer service in contact centres seems to have grown worse since then. I make no complaint about BT’s broadband centre in India, where it is obvious one is speaking to graduates, even if their pronunciation of “ethernet” sometimes sounded like “internet”. I’ve had similar problems with the thick Scots brogue at Sky’s contact centre.

Making it even harder to understand what’s being said, the hubbub in the background at Sky is huge. Sky is not alone in this, and its people can be courteous. But a noisy contact centre does not inspire confidence.

Nor do the constant requests, from all IT providers, to repeat one’s phone number, first line of postal address, post code, user name, password, mother’s maiden name, and so on. You might dial a special phone number to get broadband, but they say they will have to transfer you. Then the repetitions start. All this not to borrow thousands of pounds, but just to watch a soap or surf the web. It’s security gone mad.

I ring to say I have an appointment for installation but have been told that an earlier slot might become available. My respondent says, “So you want to change your appointment?” I reply: “No, I’m just asking if an earlier slot has opened up.” Then someone probably 30 years younger than me is correcting my English. It appears there’s little sense of the customer always being right.

BT drops me in mid-call, but still sends a broadband router that works with little bother. Sky graciously concedes that this unexpected turn of events is a fair reason for cancelling the broadband I thought I would have to buy from the Murdoch empire.

However, I send an email to my old ISP asking for a Migration Authorisation Code, and am asked for my account number. I’m on the move, so I send my user name and password instead. Days later, there’s no reply.

My moral? The best contact centres are about language, acoustics, staff intelligence, and that old-fashioned notion of keeping a central database of customer records that works for whichever operator one is talking to. Is that too much to ask for in 2007?