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Left hanging on the telephone
Article from: Courier Mail

By Paul Syvret
April 07, 2009 12:00am

I AM truly sorry. In the past couple of weeks I fear I caused deep offence and did little to further the cause of multicultural harmony.

Let me, please, explain.

Late one afternoon the phone rings.

At that time of the day I'm expecting either an irritable editor, a cranky version of the long-suffering Mrs Syvret because I have committed some unspecified crime under the Being There and Other Offences Act, or an irritable ex-wife laying charges under the same legislation.

But no, it was a friendly caller from a far-flung foreign land, who opened the conversation by asking me to confirm my date of birth, street address, mother's maiden name, blood group and shoe size.

Having established my bona fides, a sneaking suspicion arose that one of my (also long-suffering) lenders was concerned that unless I made another credit card payment immediately they, too, would have to join the queue for a taxpayer-funded bank rescue.

Thankfully not. Apparently I had foolishly failed to respond to a mail-out offering some new income-protection insurance or structured investment product. I forget which. The glossy fold-out brochure at that point was performing sterling service as lining for the cat litter tray.

Anyway, to the call centre person in Lower Punjab or wherever you herald from, I apologise for getting slightly frustrated when I had trouble deciphering your perfect English delivered with a thick accent on an international phone line.

I'm sorry that rather than signing up for the most innovative financial product since paper money was invented, I instead tried to order a home delivery of beef vindaloo, jasmine rice and a side of pappadums, before hanging up.

Actually, no, I'm not. It felt great. I had a fleeting moment of empowerment, which I can assure you is rare in my household. Even the cats tend to issue me lawful directives these days.

At least the (bless 'em) cats' only concept of a call centre is to sit in front of the pantry mewling pathetically until someone arrives to stave off imminent starvation.

If they were waiting for Telstra to respond to their complaints, the poor little buggers would end up so malnourished they'd switch service providers.

This would be easy, because they would have numerous unsolicited offers from various call centres located everywhere from Manila to Bangkok to upgrade their situation.

The great part with these call centres is that if you're signing up for something, you get straight through, and the operator has your billing details in the computer before you can say "12-month contract".

Try lodging a complaint, however.

On this note, was there anyone really surprised to read yesterday that complaints to the Telecommunications Ombudsman about Telstra's phone service had jumped by more than 50 per cent in the past 90 days? In fact, they're up some 240 per cent since Sol Trujillo took over (maybe his bonuses are linked to complaint levels rather than the share price performance).

The scary thing is many of these complainants are probably the people who couldn't get through Telstra's automated answering system:

"Please select one of the 17 following options your call has been placed in a queue we apologise for the long delay please consider going to make a cup of tea and taking up a new hobby while you wait how long before you get the hint we just don't want to know."

Given all the money Telstra and others (like the banks) have invested in overseas call centres ... hang on, I got that wrong, let's start again. Given all the money banks, telcos and the like have saved by cutting Australian jobs, and outsourcing their call centre operations to underpaid workers reading prompt sheets somewhere northeast of Bagdelhistan, there should be more spending available for customer service, right?

Damn. No, we spent that bit on Sol's bonus and the last round of redundancy payments.

Here's a solution - and all of us have suffered the interminably frustrating fight with various alleged service providers while trying to rectify faults or correct billing mistakes, account anomalies and so forth.

Don't telephone the complaints or fault line - that road leads only to grief and frustration.

Just dial the number (or select the automated option) that puts you through to an operator who signs up new accounts. Then you can start downloading your grief (politely) to a human being in this hemisphere (no offence to my no doubt underpaid Indian friend).

I achieved immediate action with this method recently after weeks of frustration with a certain institution.

After cancelling a long-standing and up-to-date account out of sheer frustration, which I only managed to achieve after calling their new accounts/sign-on number - I had their marketing department fawning over me within 24 hours offering to do whatever was necessary.

This is the 21st century. Basic service shouldn't be this bloody difficult and time-consuming.

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Good One Paul.

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