topic Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone in Plusnet Feedback

That dreadful loud music when we phone

Anon — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 23:22:44 GMT

Can something be done about the dreadful music that we have to listen to for endless time periods when we try to contact you.
How about it being quieter or what about a choice at the touch of another key. You know the best way to help keep customers calm is with quiet gentle music and more often than not your customers are irate before they get hit with that draedful racket.
Tell you what might improve things enormously, change the music and get your times down so we don't have to listed to the din for so long.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

alanf — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:55:30 GMT

Plusnet response in another thread:

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_
I'm pushing back on this but please don't expect anything urgent as I can't promise that.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

aesmith — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 09:06:45 GMT

Plusnet's music on hold could almost have been designed to be as annoying as possible ..
1. Music on hold is set much louder than speech, so volume level that makes the music remotely tolerable means you wouldn't be able to hear the agent when it's finally answered
2. Play loud jangly stuff at sufficiently high volume to be intrusive even when the handset is lying on the table
3. Switch occasionally to quieter tracks so that handset suddenly appears to go quiet, causing you to pick it up and say "hello .. hello"
4. Make some of the loud to quiet switches happen mid-song, again fooling the caller into hoping the call's been picked up

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

MattyC — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:44:37 GMT

Quote from: Anon
Tell you what might improve things enormously, change the music and get your times down so we don't have to listed to the din for so long.

I'd prefer the latter.
Hopefully there's been a reduction in call queues as a lot of new staff have gone live recently. I notice that there's less mention of the queues on social media at the moment, but willing to be corrected on that.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

alegeek — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 13:13:13 GMT

Quote from: MattyC
Hopefully there's been a reduction in call queues as a lot of new staff have gone live recently. I notice that there's less mention of the queues on social media at the moment, but willing to be corrected on that.

I called on Monday, I got through in under 1 minute.
I was actually surprised, I'd put my phone on speaker and went to make a cup of coffee expecting to be a while - I nearly killed myself diving across the room to grab my phone.
Can I claim compensation?

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

MattyC — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 16:24:56 GMT

Nice one. As long as the coffee was fine, then I must reject the compensation request.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

198kHz — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 22:45:56 GMT

This is a recurring theme.
How hard can it be to turn down the volume?

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

deathtrap — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 01:31:37 GMT

The music as been played at levels so high it is distorted at times , probably because they want you to hang up and not wait and have your ears tortured ,lol

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

aesmith — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 08:53:03 GMT

Quote from: deathtrap
The music as been played at levels so high it is distorted at times

I suspect that's there phone system, codecs designed to optimise speech can give poor quality for music or other non-speech audio.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

ferkemall — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 19:36:15 GMT

Then the 30minuet wait before the interrogation only to told its all your fault and their speeds are up to legal the requirement !

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

stalkstalk — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:36:13 GMT

The perfect classic music for PN's customer support line: Plusnet Trolololo
Just put that one song on repeat, as it seems very fitting?
Or if the waiting times increase, you could always use this modern extended version: Plusnet Nyan
And don't you go taking the credit for my awesome well coupled suggestions.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

Anon — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 23:05:50 GMT

Do have to say in their favour that today I also waited a very short time on the phone, the guy also was helpful, he contradicted everything I was told in late December so the guy in December had no idea what he was talking about. Bit like a member of staff told me three of months ago I needed a MAC code to leave.
Perhaps that old saying might be true
"When they were good they were very very good and when they were bad they were awful"
Trouble is one can never tell at the time which it is going to be. Bit like my line intermittently drops, some times good mostly awful.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

runhare — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 10:11:15 GMT

the music seems to be turned off. I just phoned tech support. A short recorded annoucenment but No Wait and no music! Instant repsonse. Keep up the good work !

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

PembsPanther — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:29:34 GMT

The music is awful and to be fair has been for a long long time and still nothing is done about it, a very crappy way to greet customers and does not give a great impression from the outset.
The thing I dislike the most though is the blood curdling annoying announcement that says something along the lines of:
" We are sorry for making you wait............" when clearly they are not sorry at all as if they were I would not be waiting in the first place!
In PN's defense waiting times do seem to be coming down slowly however I see from your marketing you are still buying customers with cashback offers, employing and training staff AFTER you have an influx of new customers is narrow minded to say the least.
However part of the BT stable now so the fat cat shareholders dividends will ALWAYS come first, this is one of the many reasons why we still have an outdated network that is going to take years to bring up to scratch, too many dividends and not nearly enough re-investment over the years.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

MattyC — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:23:09 GMT

Quote from: PembsPanther
this is one of the many reasons why we still have an outdated network that is going to take years to bring up to scratch, too many dividends and not nearly enough re-investment over the years.

It might be worth having a look at this thread: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,147447.0.html

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

pwatson — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:43:51 GMT

I note that MattyC has replied three times to this thread yet has failed to make any comment on the issue at hand...

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

MattyC — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:33:03 GMT

Don't you think so? For clarity, I'm treating this as the issue:

Quote
Tell you what might improve things enormously, change the music and get your times down so we don't have to listed to the din for so long.

This issue comes up reasonably often and I've always maintained the same stance that it wouldn't be such an annoyance if the call queues were down.
It has been raised before (as you'll see from previous threads), but the emphasis is on the reduction of wait times in terms of priority.

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

pwatson — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:41:04 GMT

Selective reading then, I read the issue as

Quote
Can something be done about the dreadful music that we have to listen to for endless time periods when we try to contact you.
How about it being quieter or what about a choice at the touch of another key. You know the best way to help keep customers calm is with quiet gentle music and more often than not your customers are irate before they get hit with that draedful racket.

Getting the call queue time down is great but the emphasis of this thread is sort the bloomin' music out! It doesn't matter how long the queuing time is - The music is deafening and needs to be altered.
How about an official PN comment about that?

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

Finguz — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:53:15 GMT

How about no music at all? I'm sure we all have the necessary equipment to listen to our own music if we wish, so could we just remove the music altogether?

Re: That dreadful loud music when we phone

PembsPanther — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 17:17:34 GMT

I would rather just an occasional reassuring beep then I am free to listen to or carry on whatever it is I am doing at the time I make the call, the music is just a distraction and in this case an obnoxious one