Average wait times for customer support

[Tilt]

Bit of Sunday fun. What's your average wait time to speak to customer service? I'll go first

Attempt 1: 47 minutes (Lunch break ended so couldn't continue)

Attempt 2: 68 minutes (Line disconnected)

Attempt 3: 72 minutes (Line disconnected)

Attempt 4: 55 minutes (Line disconnected)

Attempt 5: 81 minutes (Line disconnected)

I'm up to about 5 hours 30 minutes. Can anyone beat that?

[Sambathedog2020]

don't use phone but chat up to 2 days

does that count?

Andy

[Jomodu]

Well ... I rang last Tuesday at 8.20 in the morning aiming to discuss a new contract as my current deal ran out at the end of November. I dreaded making the call after reading all the posts on here.

My call was answered by retentions within 2 mins. Is this a record? 

[gary_dexter]

There’s no SLA time for residential contracts

[Tilt]

I think you've somewhat missed the point there, Gary. 

[gary_dexter]

Not at all

[Juventino]

Whilst I agree that nothing about those wait times constitutes any kind of customer service, the lack of SLA's means Virgin can't be brought to book for pathetic response times. If there were SLA's on residential contracts I fear Virgin would be found guilty on several counts per day of breaching their SLA's. Unfortunately customer service is a cost centre or burden on resources and so rarely lives up to expectations. 

[spgray]

it's all relative.

"Back in August 2020 Ofcom, the broadband and telecoms regulator, reported that Three UK now had the worst call waiting times of any other mobile operator at an average of 2 minutes and 37 seconds. On top of that the regulator found that they also had the highest proportion of customers with a reason to complain (6%) and the lowest overall customer satisfaction (89%)."

[Tilt · Accepted solution]

"it's all relative" - What complete and utter nonsense. Straight out of the Trump playbook of Whataboutery. This isn't about 3, it's about Virgin.  

That said you've heavily cherry picked the OFCOM report. It's actually been updated and the latest version is from September 2020 looking back over the past year. The waiting times you refer to are purely for those calling customer service numbers (in Virgin's case 150) from mobile phones. In that same report Virgin came bottom of: complaints per 100k customers, customers with a reason to complain, overall satisfaction with complaint handling and...for every service apart from mobile...average waiting times. In fact Virgin's wait times are 25% longer than the nearest competitor.

The entire data set on call waiting times can be found from page 18 here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/201434/comparing-service-quality-2019.pdf 

Interestingly Three apologised for their wait times and scrapped the contract with Capita as soon as this was released. 

Moving on, I get the point about SLA's but nobody is saying Virgin are under a legal obligation to reduce times. However it doesn't take a genius to see that people are getting cross with the waiting times and that will have an adverse affect on retention. You can claim they don't care or it won't make a difference but when even the BBC's technology journalist is tweeting about how bad it is (see tweet from 9/11/20), people will notice more and more. In an increasingly crowded market these sort of things make a difference. 

It seems relatively easy to at least reduce the frsutration:

1. Fix the bug or fault that disconnects people around the hour mark
2. Implement a message stating what number people are in the queue so that there's a feeling of progression and you haven't been forgotten
3. Change the music so it's not just 6 highly annoying pop songs
4. Fix the text service so people get a response
5. Put a sticky on the forum apologising for the long wait times with an assurance you will get a response (even if that's a lie)

I'd also crack down on the users with the high post counts on here who get extemely agitated when anyone criticises the customer service. It reflects very poorly on Virgin media. On some threads some indivduals seems to be one reply away from screaming FAKE NEWS I CAN'T HEAR YOU when someone politely suggests they're not happy with the service. It's not helpful, it clearly provokes the person starting the thread and it's so far removed from the reality of what's happening that's it's embarassing. We are in the middle of a pandemic; people are relying on Virgin to provide vital infrastructure. It's paramount any faults get sorted as quickly as possible. It's not hyperbole to say livelihoods depend on it. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

[spgray]

TL:DR

however it's not complete and utter nonsense. it is all relative in that 2-3 minutes is classed as the worst possible in one market, and 1 hour is classed as the worst in another.

however there was no cherry picking at all, the source is from here https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/11/three-uk-scrap-capita-call-centre-outsourcing-deal-2-y...and dated november 7th.

and i made no comment either in support or otherwise about virgin, strange that you came that conclusion though.