During a break in full-time ministry, I actually worked for BT. I was part-time in a Call Centre in Glasgow where we prided ourselves on excellent customer service. It was the time where choices had become available and we had to work hard to keep our existing customer base. I hung up on nobody until they were fully satisfied. That’s how it was.
Today’s equivalent is a total pantomime, involving Indian Call Centres, invisible people, multichoice phone options when you call them that make you lose the will to live, and staff that seem to be absolutely and totally incompetent.
Request: We have a telephone line, broadband enabled in the church building. We want it transferred to the new hall we have built.
Response: They disconnected the church line.
Request: Can we have a line please in the hall? You forgot to connect us to the new premises, 6 feet away from our church building.
Response: Oops! And we’ve given your phone number back to OFTEL so you can’t have that back, unless you request it after we’ve given you your line in your hall with a completely new number.
What happens next is unbelievable. They RECONNECT the phone to the church with this new number and without it being internet enabled. We still have to see an actual person although for two days now we have had to have someone down in church before 8am.
We were told 3 times today that an engineer would come to look at our “fault” by 1pm. Nobody had arrived before 1.15pm.
Meanwhile BTCARE are following me on Twitter! Fat lot of good that’s doing! Nobody has come near the new hall. (See original request).
We have spoken to managers and supervisors, Indians, English folk, and BT Enniskillen are now on our trail, (we think), but nobody has looked at our hall yet!
We’ve lost our number, lost our internet connection, lost our faith in getting anything done, and lost the will to live. This has been a 4 week saga and has cost us literally days on the phone, or waiting for someone to come.
Talk Talk sent me a mail shot today. They couldn’t be any worse than what we have – could they?
Oh, and you forgot that their robot asked us to complete a customer satisfaction survey – and being nice people, we did. No prizes for guessing how many marks they got!
If anyone can give us 2 tin cans and a long piece of string we shall be very grateful!
Another daily complaint call this morning to BT – more apologies, robots and eventually an advisor to tell me our problem was in the telephone exchange! When I asked about the dangling drop wire and the lack of an Openreach Box on our new wall she agreed to an appointment for 8am – 1pm tomorrow 15th. But will they appear? Watch this space for the next exciting installment of ‘BT or not BT….’
Can’t wait! I’m thinking of organising a welcoming committee for the engineer. However, the thought of emailing everyone to get it all together was too much for me!