Ask the Boss - Answers discussion thread

[#1]

I've just spotted a few personal replies from Anthony in a number of older (but important) threads that appeared to have gone dormant.
It's good to see that someone at the centre IS still reviewing much of the old data - and more importantly giving some feedback.  With the responses coming directly from "The Boss" it might just help move things along a bit.
Thanks Anthony for putting in the effort - perhaps the old Plusnet is not dead, just "resting" 
Maurice

[#2]

If you get up early enough you will spot his presence on the forum. Definitely good news that he can spend the time to find out what customers think about the service. Just a shame that more customers don't give praise to the staff and forum members for all the help and support they gain from this.

[#3]

Quote from: Crucibleofevil

In the present economic climate, surely use of foreign call centres should be minimised! Offering extra training for their inherent shortcomings instead of investing in the UK has to be wrong.

Quote from: Anthony

Jeremy - re offshore call centres, we are investing time and money in both our Sheffield and South Africa sites. This includes plans to invest in workplace and step change our self-service capabilities (an area which Plusnet has always been strong in). I believe our quality of service is on the whole very good, but we can be much better and there are still lots of areas (particularly regarding provision of broadband or home phone, or moving house, for example) where either customers still have to call us or we have to call them (a lot). We need to improve this so that its becomes very natural for our customers to order, make changes, ask questions and raise issues through our websites and only contact us if what happens online isn't up to scratch. Nothing revolutionary about this I know, but I don't believe any broadband provider does a particularly good job in this space, and i'd like Plusnet to be the best. We definitely have the know-how and the capababilties in the company to do this. This will give us room to grow and allow us in time to refocus and retrain our advisors (in Sheffield and South Africa) on the areas which have to be supported over the phone, rather than doing work which can easily be automated. High quality online service (backed up by excellent support over the phone when needed) is a big priority for us. Anthony

At risk of quoting myself (in part) and Anthony (in full), I'm sorry to say that we can ask questions, but we will only receive "form" answers.
I'm willing to bet that if I sent my comment to any company that relies on a foreign call centre I would receive a very similar response,
(assuming that I would be allowed to speak to Senior Management).
Unfortunately, no Company would ever admit that their use of a foreign call centre is second-best.
Whilst a foreign call centre is cheap, why not withdraw support completely - it won't cost anything at all then
It seems that the accountants are running the business (badly).
Share price is under-performing FTSE 100.