topic Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not. in Plusnet Feedback

Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

Loombucket — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:03:26 GMT

Now this DID surprise me.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7923636.stm
....apparently Plusnet are rated worst for call queueing times in this recent survey.
I wonder how accurate this is, how relevant, and whether anyone from Plusnet can comment on this?

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey?

James — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:08:35 GMT

Sure.
During February, I believe that our average wait (over the *whole* month) was under two minutes.
Also over the whole month, the longest time that any customer had to wait was 15 minutes. Which, I (we) appreciate is too long and we've been working to make this shorter, whilst also dealing with a higher number of calls resulting from our recent product launch.
You can also see our realtime call stats here:
http://csc.plus.net

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey?

Loombucket — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:15:07 GMT

Hmm..... so much for surveys then.
I thought it sounded so unlikely that a check-in with PN would be worthwhile. It looks like this one is the usual load of boll... er.... bullsh... er... rubbish then.
I'll go back to sleep now.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

jelv — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:18:11 GMT

I suggest Plusnet should make an official complaint to the BBC about that report. It begins

Quote
A survey from Which? Computing has found that most internet service providers are using premium rate numbers for their technical support.

Further down it says

Quote
Plusnet customers have the longest average wait - at nearly eight minutes.

It should be made clear that although the average wait they recorded was 8 minutes, Plusnet's help line is NOT a premium rate number. In fact it is local rate number and is free to many users.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey?

Santiago — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:22:40 GMT

I made three calls to plusnet on Monday evening, two of which I waited in excess of 15 minutes to be answered. The third call I abandoned after ten minutes.
The previous occasion I had to call plusnet the call was answered immediately.
I called the geographic number which is not premium rate but not free either

Edit, corrected number of total calls

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

mal0z — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:15 GMT

I'm sorry to say that I have found more than a few Which surveys - of equipment or services to be rather questionable - on subjects that I have knowledge of- to be rather inaccurate - on a technical level.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

Kirkmichael — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:59:01 GMT

Unfortunately if my experience of dealing with Plusnet over the last few weeks is indicative, the problems mentioned in the BBC article are totally justified.
Let me start my saying I am not a newbie, I have been with Plusnet almost from the beginning and was so impressed by my early experience that I recommended them to many friends and now use Plusnet at two different locations. However, four weeks ago I started a house move and tried to contact Plusnet to arrange the cease of my old account and its transfer to my new house.
What a disaster!
I have had to ring Plusnet several times trying to get this sorted and on every occasion have spent well in excess of 10 min just trying to get through. On one occasion I waited 15 min. I have only once managed to speak to someone who I assume from his grasp of English was based in the UK. On all other occasions I have had to struggle to explain the problems to people with a very poor grasp of English who I imagine are in an overseas call centre somewhere . Every few min they would ask me to hold to get advice before coming back to me with a standard reply to a question I had not asked.
Frankly the service I have received to date is appalling and Plusnet deserve anything the BBC has written. It is now four weeks since I asked for the changeover and whilst my telephone is working my broadband is still not. To make matters worst I get emails today telling me my new telephone number (I have had it already for 10 days) but referring my broadened order back for re-submission with no idea what that means or how long it will take.
Dear Mr Hambly,
I have tried contacting you today. we have had to resubmit your order as your new number is [Removed] i am sorry for the delay on this order if there is any problems with this ring us on 08451400200
The next action on your Help Assistant Question is due on Friday 13th March at 9:00am. This Question will remain open with the BOT - DSL Provisioning until this time. Additional information is provided below:
Kind regards,
link:CSA Removed
Of course you could not contact me Robert,, like most of the population I work during the day.
GET your act together Plusnet, this is not the way to retain customer loyalty.
A very fed up and angry
Michael Hambly

[Moderator's note by Barry Zubel: CSA Agent's full name removed as per the link:rules. Personal telephone number also removed.]

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

techguy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:16:13 GMT

Just to input a little here as someone who works as part of a twam providing telephone tech support behind one of the hated call queuing systems (though we have a standard geographic number) I'd like to say that sometimes an extended wait is unavoidable as I'm sure as in a lot of similar tech support roles the priority is to work through procedures to resolve the issue and confirm it is resolved first time and it is not always possible to gauge demand to ensure enough staff are on the phones all the time, particularly as technology often has a mind of its own
I do think PN do provide quite a good phone based tech support as on the few occasions I've had to contact I haven't been waiting long and I usually raise a ticket in preference to phoning so that they can look at any issues and then respond as opposed to being put on the spot as is the case with a telephone call.
As regards the comment above, I will generally try and phone a customer if the problem is more complex and follow it up with a mail if the customer was not available by phone as like me, the customer may work shifts so I'd cut the guy some slack on that.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

Be3G — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:29:42 GMT

As it happens, just looking at the link James provided earlier, the current longest call wait is 7 minutes and 10 seconds... so perhaps the Which survey wasn't that off the mark after all. Of course, PN's average may be very low, but that average might be somewhat deceiving owing to the fact it'll also include calls made at, for example, 3am when there probably isn't anyone queuing at all. Which probably carried out their survey at 'fairly' peak times - i.e. the times most customers would phone their ISP - which, like right this minute, might have quite long waiting times attached.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

techguy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:45:24 GMT

Thing is though, it can also depend on the complexity of the problem presented as I'm sure anyone would be upset if they got the impression that they were being hurried so the agent could get onto the next call.

So unless you have huge call centres it is not always possible to avoid long waits, personally I'd rather wait a little to get an issue resolved first time rather than someone pick up the phone in 30 seconds who hasn't got a clue.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

Anotherone — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:15:51 GMT

Better ring up now folks, zero calls waiting, average answer time today 32 seconds
Edit: someone did, it's now changed - 1 waiting, longest call waiting now 2m 32s, average today 3m12s.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

James — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:04:15 GMT

Just to add to what I was saying yesterday - We've got a bunch of new staff in training at the moment, as we've had an influx in calls recently, mainly in customer services and sales.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

scootie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:49:36 GMT

to right on the sales front.
ive bein keeping an eye on the graph that shows how many routers are connected and downloading to gague how many sign ups the products bring in and so far there are an extra 10,000 routers conected at peak times since the day of the launch.
thoe not acrute it does show the punters want the the new products
http://www.plus.net/support/network_performance/broadband_bandwidth_usage.shtml

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

Santiago — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:05:32 GMT

From TBB forum

Quote
I have given up.
Abandoned my first call to tech support after being on hold for 14 minutes and tried to resolve my query regards setting up an email address POP3 account.
I have been given a username and password by an employer and am trying to set this up, but Plusnet have a wierd way of managing domains, where I need to put domain.co.uk+myusername as the authentication address or something like that - their site is unclear in its description.
So I called Tech Services again - and was on hold for 16 minutes before giving up again.
Is it normally like this here?

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

artmo — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:06:20 GMT

I've called PN twice this week on behalf of a friend who is having problems. Minimum wait was about 10 minutes. I think when James quotes 2 minutes this must take into account callers in the middle of the night.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

prichardson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:34:55 GMT

Indeed it does. The average wait in calculated over a 24 hour period from midnight to midnight. The exception to this is the portal which shows the period of midnight to when it is generated.
Overnight calls are a minimum though and will have very little impact.
All calls between 9am to 10am will have a higher statistical impact than the entire nightshift statistics of midnight to 7am.
Only actual calls count towards the statistic as well, so total wait time devided by total calls offered. Hense why the period of actual call numbers have little impact.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

hadden — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:22:10 GMT

I made a call to CS about lunchtime today. After about 1m 30 seconds of automated number choices, the automated system then said that the queuing time was expected to be 10 minutes.
However the call was answered by a human about 15 seconds later.
After the call I checked the call stats page, where it said average call waiting was 17 seconds.
So, maybe the quoted PN call stats only start counting after the customer has already spent 1 1/2 minutes listening to an automated voice.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

artmo — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:50:40 GMT

I've never been that lucky Maybe PN need to look into this. When I've got through though I've always had good service.

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

James — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:30:28 GMT

I think the "timer" starts as soon as you hear "Welcome to Plusnet".

Re: Plusnet worst in phone queue survey? Thought not.

pjmarsh — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:09:43 GMT

James, if that's the case, then how is it possible to get an average of anything less than about 30 seconds? The welcome to Plusnet message takes 14 seconds, and then you are given the 1st set of menu options, which if you listen to them is 32 seconds from the beginning of "Welcome to Plusnet". During the initial 14 seconds you can't press any option, so the very minimum average would come from everyone pressing a button at the very beginning of the options after the Welcome to Plusnet message and getting straight through to an operator. I'm sure that is extremely unlikely, so the timer mustn't start then.
Phil