topic Re: Call wait times in Plusnet Feedback

Call wait times

RobertJPreston — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 11:38:44 GMT

Enough is enough. Over the last two months I have regularly had to wait 15 minutes before getting answered. I have delved into Erlang B and the following is revealed. For a call hold time of 8 minutes and 40 operators and 296.5 calls per hour (the maximum is 300) the mean waiting time is 900 secs (i.e. 15 minutes) The probability of having to wait is 91.4%. Now the 8 minutes might be wrong and so may the 40 operators, but it must be in the right ball park. Now, if the number of operators is increased by only 3 to 43, for the same offered traffic, the call wait times go down to 67seconds, and the probability of waiting reduced to 49%. For other businesses using call centres an acceptable call wait time is 10 to 20 seconds, so the 67seconds above is not unrealistic.
Come on PlusNet, get your act together and recruit more staff. The service you are offering today is not acceptable.
Bob.

Re: Call wait times

All4One — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 12:20:19 GMT

Any reason you care to share why you've needed to call multiple times? Anything which can be resolved through the portal or via their new webchat?

Re: Call wait times

RobertJPreston — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:08:29 GMT

I have had an intermittent noisy line since mid March 2015 and to a letter degree the year before. I call the faults team as a specific person has been signed to solving the problem. Some times I call twice a day to check on progress, else less frequently when I know what BT has agreed to do next. Currently I am waiting for a few hundred meters of cable to be replaced. I know the piped music too well.
R

Re: Call wait times

adamwalker — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:06:11 GMT

Hi RobertJPreston,
I'm sorry about the waits, however I feel it best to be realistic in saying that sometimes there will be a wait of a few minutes to get through to us.
We're recruiting again currently so we hope to see things improve.
FYI in case it helps we publish our average wait times here: http://csc.plus.net
With regards to your particular issue I've chased this and there's no set timescale for the repair work as yet. However our faults team are on top of this and will keep you updated.
Hoping to see that fixed soon.

Re: Call wait times

RobertJPreston — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:25:23 GMT

Dear Adam,
It all depends what a "few" minutes are!
And I'm glad you are recruiting and I appreciated finding appropriately qualified staff is not going to easy.
Thanks for the pointer to Average Wait Times, today for me it was 10 minutes, yesterday it was more like a quarter of an hour.
With respect of the fault, it would be a lot better if Openreach was more organised. This morning we had some contractors arrive who filled in the hole where the joint was made and buried it which should have been protected with a surface mounted box; and this afternoon, some different contractors arrived to do the ducting which was done last week.
Shortly, I will be escalating this issue through your management team as the time to solve this has taken some three months which is much more than your Service Level Objective of seven working days, I must be nearly 60 working days.
What do you think?
Regards,
Robert.

Re: Call wait times

All4One — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 16:06:27 GMT

I can appreciate the frustration slightly (slightly because I've never had a severe problem like you have), but raising with Plusnet's management team for issues out of their hand as it's down to Openreach processing all the work...what are you hoping from it? I'd say aim it at Openreach, but then I don't know where you'd go apart from Ofcom?

Re: Call wait times

adamwalker — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 16:18:31 GMT

Quote
I will be escalating this issue through your management team as the time to solve this has taken some three months which is much more than your Service Level Objective of seven working days, I must be nearly 60 working days.

My genuine response is that it won't get things moving any quicker.
I know that's probably not the response you may have been hoping for but I feel it best to be open and honest with you.
Management are here to manage staff and not handle orders so they won't be able to push things through any quicker.
I'm an experienced member of our customer relations team that handle complaints, forums and social media so I'm very aware of what options are available to us as a company to move things forwards.
With that in mind what we can't do is force our supplier's hand as much as we'd like to for getting the cabling work done sooner.
what we can do is have myself offer end-to-end ownership of the problem, meaning one point of contact chasing our suppliers often and keeping you updated, following which I can arrange a good will gesture to hopefully make up for the delays and inconvenience in the meantime.

Re: Call wait times

skipper — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 16:34:05 GMT

regarding the wait time for calls to be answered, last Sunday i was on hold for almost 40 minutes, once Plusnet were excellent at call response time but of late standards have slipped.
if callers could be informed of the expected waiting time or position in the queue it might help

Re: Call wait times

Lorian — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:56:27 GMT

I'm in the residential que now. Currently been waiting 61 minutes!!!

Re: Call wait times

Oldjim — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:03:00 GMT

Average answer time today at 22.89
51 minutes and 42 seconds
Absolutely unacceptable

Re: Call wait times

alext05 — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:09:23 GMT

This is actually shocking.

Re: Call wait times

Gina — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:24:51 GMT

I am at this moment still waiting for an adviser, I have been on the telephone for an hour now. In 2013 I had the same problem and was told they were addressing the issue with a new call centre. Um, I don't call this addressed!!! I'm getting more annoyed by the second.

Re: Call wait times

Lorian — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:36:53 GMT

I can only offer you a glimmer of hope, that after 65 minutes I was answered by someone called Chris (do delete the name if its not allowed) who was very helpful, and we got my problem solved quickly.
I have some further feedback though.
1) The music - it varies in loudness so much that you have to keep moving the phone to avoid being deafened
2) Each song should play-out, each time you cut to a new song I sounds like an adviser connecting, causing me to and pick up the phone unnecessarily
3) please PLEASE announce the position in the queue periodically!

Re: Call wait times

ITWorks — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:47:18 GMT

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_
I feel it best to be realistic in saying that sometimes there will be a wait of a few minutes to get through to us.

If we are been realistic , it should say, most times there will be a wait of over 15 mins to get through to PN
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,140069.0.html
At 10.45 PM
Residential call stats
Current calls waiting Longest call waiting now Average answer time today
7.10 Currently unavailable 1 hour, 3 minutes and 28 seconds
Unacceptable
Regards
Mike

Re: Call wait times

Anotherone — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 22:53:37 GMT

And will it improve with this? I can't see that it will

Re: Call wait times

pwatson — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 23:20:41 GMT

Yes, the call waiting time at 10:45PM will be zero, so a marked improvement.
In fact as there will now be 9.5 hours where the waiting time is zero, the average waiting time will be reduced as well
It's plainly daft that there's a waiting time of over an hour at 22:45 when PN claim that this is 'off peak'...

Re: Call wait times

spraxyt — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 23:33:56 GMT

Since Plusnet staff tell us that agents don't have any "waiting for calls" time during their shift how will handling the same number of calls with the same number of agents, but in fewer hours, help to reduce waiting?

Re: Call wait times

avatastic — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 23:36:48 GMT

I choose to believe that all the people who worked the night shifts have found homes in Leeds and will now be operating that call centre (the one that will solve all problems with call waiting times) during the day, rather than twiddling their thumbs at night.
Maybe the crusty die-hards should start playing the Euromillions so we can buy Plusnet back from BT and restore it to its former glory...

Re: Call wait times

Anotherone — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:20:36 GMT

Quote from: pwatson
Yes, the call waiting time at 10:45PM will be zero, so a marked improvement.
In fact as there will now be 9.5 hours where the waiting time is zero, the average waiting time will be reduced as well
It's plainly daft that there's a waiting time of over an hour at 22:45 when PN claim that this is 'off peak'...

Well surprise surprise, it's a new day, there are 0 calls waiting (Residential or Business) and the average answer time is 0 seconds

Quote from: Oldjim
God - you are even more cynical or is that jaundiced than me
Even I didn't think of thst one

I reckon neither of us thought of this one.

Re: Call wait times

scargill — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 06:44:37 GMT

First of all, NOT everything can be resolved by the LIVEPERSON system - which only operates at certain parts of the day.
Last night I tried that system and the time taken to get through was so long I kept forgetting about it. When I eventually did get through they could not give me all the answers I wanted about upgrading - or rather making the new high speed broadband in our area available. I had to contact customer service. As there seems to be no EMAIL option (never make it TOO easy for people) I rang - to be told there was an HOUR wait for replies... someone is taking the mick - wait on the phone for an hour? You must be joking.
So this morning at 7.30am I rang early to make sure I got through - no such luck - HALF an hour wait. This is not about peak demand - this is about NOT having enough STAFF to do the job or not having the kit for the staff you do have.
For a short time I still wish to contact Plusnet to get pricing and timing info to make use of the newly available high speed broadband. If I cannot get through without waiting half an hour or more I'll just assume that Plusnet are in trouble, scrap the contract and go elsewhere.
Really, this is NOT the way to get happy customers.