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Customer service -- Aieee

Anonymous
Not applicable
Just phoned up to ask for PUK2 for phone. Wifey went off to ask her manager.
Came back and told me that O2 don't have the PUK2, and that it's held by Nokia!
Unbelievable. Eventually selected the 'not happy with our service' option,
and got a very sensible woman who very sensibly got the PUK2 number.

Not at all impressed with the first-line customer service though -- for heaven's
sake give the poor so-and-sos some training!

James
Message 1 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Agreed...their staff are not fully trained. I'm talking about O2 mobile here and not O2 broadband.

I had so many problems in the last 2 months with my account and each time I call I get a different answer for the explanation.

One common response though is "It will never happen again. Problem sorted" but it is only a response and the problem never really went away for several weeks.
Message 2 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
"It will never happen again. Problem sorted"


I know what you mean! That is their stock response to get you to go away.

I think the call centre staff are actually encouraged to make stuff up as they go along. It's probably cheaper than training them!

When I have eventually got someone to refer to "their supervisor" it takes ages so can only guess there aren't many people around that actually know the answers.

And if you are calling in on one of their premium rate numbers there's no incentive for them to hurry.
Message 3 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Pogz,

I think your claims are completely incorrect. Advisors who work in the complaints team receive the exact same training as their colleagues in front line Customer service, in fact they are usually in the same team. There may have been a reason why the person never knew the information, for example a new advisor or an advisor who has recently came back from a long break but that doesn't mean the entire staff team is hopeless or not trained correctly.

Richard,

Why would they do that? If they were encouraged to make things up, this would usually result in another call from the customer, meaning more cost to the company. The reasons supervisors take longer than usual is they have a 24hour callback time, it's not because they don't know the answer.
Message 4 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Pogz,
I think your claims are completely incorrect. Advisors who work in the complaints team receive the exact same training as their colleagues in front line Customer service, in fact they are usually in the same team. There may have been a reason why the person never knew the information, for example a new advisor or an advisor who has recently came back from a long break but that doesn't mean the entire staff team is hopeless or not trained correctly.
Richard,
Why would they do that? If they were encouraged to make things up, this would usually result in another call from the customer, meaning more cost to the company. The reasons supervisors take longer than usual is they have a 24hour callback time, it's not because they don't know the answer.


That maybe the intention, but from my experience it doesn't look that way...
Normally I wouldn't call the call centre as I'm a fairly easy customer and usually try to work things out on my own using the WWW.

I suppose my bad experience with customer regarding the iPhone is amplified by my bad experience with their accounts team only a few weeks before.
Message 5 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Pogz,
I think your claims are completely incorrect. Advisors who work in the complaints team receive the exact same training as their colleagues in front line Customer service, in fact they are usually in the same team. There may have been a reason why the person never knew the information, for example a new advisor or an advisor who has recently came back from a long break but that doesn't mean the entire staff team is hopeless or not trained correctly.
Richard,
Why would they do that? If they were encouraged to make things up, this would usually result in another call from the customer, meaning more cost to the company. The reasons supervisors take longer than usual is they have a 24hour callback time, it's not because they don't know the answer.


What really annoyed me about this was the rep I spoke to the first time gave
me blatantly wrong information after consulting her manager. This suggests
that there are any number of people on the customer service line who don't know
this stuff. On the other hand, the woman I spoke to on the complaints line knew
exactly what I was talking about and was able to give me the PUK2 code without any
hesitation. It's difficult to believe that both people were given the
same training.

James
Message 6 of 25
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Anonymous
Level 9: Fired up
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Registered:
Scott is correct they do recieve exactly the same training. I was often working on the complaints line before moving to iPhone techincal and recieved no extra training.
It is to the benefit to the advisor, the caller and the company to get the call right first time and to reach the target time for the call. The calls to CS are also free so there is no benefit to anyone to keep you holding or wasting your time.

I think the main issues surrounding O2 at the moment is that they decided to close an under performing centre. It was outsourced staff who were not providing high customer service and due to the iPhone launch, the call queues are high. At time you may need to hold for 5-15mins at busy times. This is completely unacceptable for O2, it's all hands on deck. There is no free time for any additional training.

Before I started working for O2 I would never in my life imagine how much information you need to keep on top off. I need to know about handsets, mobile broadband, data, billing, insurance, returns/repairs, promotions, iphone's, iTunes, international/roaming, software, network issues, 14day cancellations, processes/policies...etc etc. It's an ever changing enviroment and it's exhausting at times. Very much so at the end of my 11hour shifts recieving complaint calls. I would like to see O2 hire more staff so more time can be made for advisors to come of calls and to recieve extra training, which is only a matter of time.

I get frustrated that myself and many people I work beside, work extremely hard.I personally take time out of my day that I'm not being paid for to chase up accounts, call people back etc and then customer service gets slated but on the other hand, O2 would not have 18million customers and won many awards on customer service if the majority of staff were not provided high standards of customer service, the way it should be.
Message 7 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
I was going to post a new topic up about this but I may as well add my 2 penneth!

I have been a loyal O2 customer now for some 10 years back when they were BT cellnet and for those 10 years I have been a select customer.

On the very rare occasions that I have had problems over the past 10 years the 402 customer service advisors have been excellent and have exceeded my expectations when dealing with the claims and problems etc i have thrown their way and I have always been more than happy with the service I have recieved.....

Untill today!

Today I have had to walk out of a store before I did something silly as the staff were not listening to what I was trying to explain and certainly not getting the point I was trying to calmly put across, I have had to ring 402 from my landline 6 times in total to actually get any progress with my problem, but I have had different answers to the same questions from 6 different operators and i have had to hang the phone up on one of them as I was calling from instore and if i continued the call I would have really lost my temper. Then to add insult to injury I have had to drive a total of 50 miles round 3 stores in my local area just so I could actually get a loan phone to replace the phone that they returned to me yesterday as repaired but which by the time I got it home and set it up recieved no signal and ate a fully charged battery in less than 7 hours and that was not even the faults the handset was originally sent in with.

Now I dont know if it is just me but i have noticed a real decline in the quality of customer service on this occasion compared to all my other dealings with O2. Have I missed something here? Has the company changed hands or policies in the last 18 months?

After todays debacle I find myself after 10 years looking to other service providers to take out a new contract as I have lost all faith in O2. Do other people find the same as me or am I on my own with this one. I really dont know how to describe my experience as words truly fail me on this occasion and O2 really dont seem to care that a valued customer is prepared to leave after 10 years and they really dont seem to want to help but would rather repeat the party line of they are "unable to assist me any further"

I really hope that someone can shed some light on this as I really have lost all faith in O2 at the moment. Is O2 going down the pan or have I just been really unlucky?

Looking forwards to some replies and maybe some answers!

Pete Green
Message 8 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi Pete,

I'm sorry to hear you never received the service you were expecting from O2. Sadly, as you can imagine, we aren't perfect like most companies but we do try to get it right first time. O2 has topped the EDCSM (Customer Satisfaction Polls) for a number of years.

O2 haven't done anything to change their policies, we have just been very busy but there are bigger and better updates coming from the company (more staff, more products) so we are hoping for a much better future.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here and myself or any other CS will try our best to answer them. We do these posts out of our spare time because we have a real interest in helping others at O2.

James,

As you may be aware, in most companies, managers usually take the HR role rather than a customer relation role which basically means the advisors are usually trained and developed on the products much more than any managers.

Sadly you got a person who never knew the information, but I'm glad someone on the complaints line was able to help you out.
Message 9 of 25
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the replies slight_smile

Today I am a little calmer I am glad to say so I may be able to actually speak with someone without the risk of me blowing up on them!

all the problems stem round a faulty phone that I had brand new at the end of may (o2 xda orbit 2). There are 2 niggles with the phone that cant be fixed and I can live with those but about 2 weeks ago the alarm stopped working properly and instead of going off every hour as I set it (I washaving to wake to bottle feed a fading kittenm as I breed siamese!) it was going off at random times and also despite re setting the touch screen several times it was never centred correctly and was not very sensetive and also a rubber ring fell off the navigation wheel! CS advised me to put the handset in for repair which to be honest I was not happy with due to the unit being so new but I did and then 2 days ago I get a call to say the phone is fixed! I go back to the shop to collect my handset and return the loan phone and when I get home I set up my handset again only to find that i am having trouble getting a signal and when I do get one it is for seconds at a time and then I loose it again. I manage to get a signal (albeit bad for about 15 mins) and call 402 to see if O2 are having problems as I normally get an excellent service in my area with the highspeed internet connection too. I am told of a few local (5 miles from me) black spots but apart from that everything is fine with the O2 end. I am told to wipe the contacts on the sim and battery which I do and there is no improvement. I pop the battery on charge overnight and take it off charge at 5.30am when I go to work, by the time I finish duty my battery is virtually dead flat and I havnt been able to use the phone as I have had no signal for the best part of 24 hours by this point and I have not had anything running on the handset either. To say I was a little anoyed woul;d be an understaement as the phone did not have these faults when I sent it in and as i am oncall this weekend I need to go back to the store to get a loan phone so I am contactable.

I get to the store and there are 3 people in front of me who are all not happy for one reason or another it also turns out that they have no loan phones either. The staff are not really trying to help me but are keen to put me on the phone to CS as they say that CS have more authority to allow things. I will admit by this point I am starting to get quite irate! I am a psychy nurse and this weekend my team are on call as I work on an intensive care unit and when I get a call I have to go into work as a patient is trying to kick the crap out of someone and I cant impress enough that I have to be contactable. I have explained this by this point several times and I am also wanting a new handset as to be honest I am not really trusting that the repaired handset will return repaired due to what has previously happened and the store do tell me they have them in stock if CS can authorise their release.

The CS I speak to does not seem to understand what I am telling him that I need a phone now, he does tell me he can get me a recon unit to me in 3-5 days, I do tell him that that is not really good enough as I need the phone now, am on call and cant be contacted and am also going to be charged on my tariff for the 3-5 days that I actually cant use the service! he then tells me that they will charge me for the service as if I had a handset I would be able to use, I then explain several more times as he keeps repeating himself that that would be fine but I do not have a working handset so cannot use the service that O2 are providing! After I have repeated myself about 5 times he seems to get the message and says that I will be refunded for the days I have not been able to use. He also suggests that I can use an old handset or borrow one from family or friends and again I have to repeat myself several times that if I was able to do this I would not be on the phone to him but I was not able to do that either! In the end the call is left at the point where I am waiting for this recon unit (a nokia) being couriered to my home and I am still without a phone that actually works.

I come home and call CS again as I am a little calmer and speak to a different person who explains the situation and a few things about the refurbed units that they keep offering me and to be honest I actually call a few times to see if stories are consistent, they are not but the other CS are much more polite and helpfull and call a few more local stores to see if any have loan phones that I can have. In the end I have to drive a 50 mile round trip via 2 other stores to get a loan phone to tide me over and I now have to wait maybe 14 days to get my own handset back and I hope it is repaired.

While I was out I have visited other service providers stores to get comparisons on services and handsets and am at this point not worried about paying the £600 contract cancellation fees that O2 are demanding if they cannot pull something out of the bag to keep me as a customer. I will also add that the CS's I spoke to are all aware that this is my intention and it is purley down the the service I have recieved over the last 24 hours.

One thing that one of the stores (the first I visited) did suggest was that if I claimed off my insurance i would get a brand new handset! I was actually appauled by this suggestion as the unit was not actually accidently damaged and why should I pay £20 for a manufacturing defect! The store told me that would be the best way of getting a new phone! I was not impressed and at this point I walked out of that store.

Then after getting my loan phone I returned home (by this point it was 9 pm, I visited the first store at 3pm!) I get in to check my emails to find several emails telling me that my order is being processed, pack and finally dispached! What order? i didnt order anything and am hoping that the phone they are sending out is not intended as a replacment for my orbit.

Any light anyone can shed on this would be really appreciated and I am also really sorry if I have hijacked this topic.

I look forward to your replies,

Pete
Message 10 of 25
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