Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Experience on call centers

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Experience on call centers

I have created some short videos (less than 5 mins) on my experience in calling the call centers of a few large organisations.

They can be viewed here:
http://www.easysearch.sg/videos/

I hope that the large organisations can understand the frustration and difficulty of their customers in navigating through their automated system, and in listening to irrelevant messages. They should simplify the system to make it easier for their customer to talk to a customer service officer. They should also provide an option in the website for the customer to submit a form and for the call center staff to call back with the answer.

I was quite surprised that the calls were answered quickly for SIA, DBS and Starhub. The customer service officers were helpful and competent. Well done.

Tan Kin Lian

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hi Mr Tan KL, I wonder if it's possible for you to make call to call centers at later timing? There are people who do not make call till the later part of their day and their experience is totally different after the morning timing.; May 19, 2010 1:03 PM
Tan Kin Lian said...: I will try some calls in the evening.; May 19, 2010 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Mr. Tan,

I remembered years back when i made a complaint on my NTUC policy, you made a call back personally to apologize. That gesture has taken me aback. I never expected a CEO of NTUC would call me. While I appreciate your kind gesture, I hung off the phone wondering what kind of life are you living as a CEO and more importantly, not everyone perceived the same kind of expectation you would expect to receive.

I am just being Singaporean.; May 19, 2010 1:54 PM
Unknown said...: I totally agree with Tan KL. I am totally shocked with Amex Card Call Center today when I tried terminate my card for security reason. Agent A tells me cannot locate my name and no way in system can track it down. I told him it is not my liability if they cannot track my name in their system as I have already inform them to terminate my card.; May 19, 2010 3:05 PM
Unknown said...: Mr Tan, the only reason you are getting good service is because you call during off peak hours. Please try calling at 12-1pm and 5-6pm to get a representative experience.; May 19, 2010 6:02 PM
Tan Kin Lian said...: Hi Chris
Perhaps more people should try calling during the off-peak hours, so that the load becomes spread out.; May 19, 2010 6:39 PM
Anonymous said...: I work in a contact centre and I hate my job. Customers always want us to quickly pick up their phone calls (results of many many surveys conducted) and management decided to swap people from different skill sets into busy queues just to address the so-called SERVICE-LEVEL - piece of shit! This actually created stress and anxiety for the call centre staff. I wish I can strike big Toto one day and throw my letter at my manager! Customers and contact centre staff alike - we are humans. You don't have to drive people nuts! Everything wants quick, quick. Go self-service better - want?; May 20, 2010 12:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear Mr Tan
Reference your suggestion:
"Hi Chris
Perhaps more people should try calling during the off-peak hours, so that the load becomes spread out."

Most corporate slaves have very tight schedules:
- both spouses work
- 5am-6am, drop off kids to relatives
- 6am-8am, travel to work
- 8am-lunch hour. Work hard to be cheaper, better, faster because bosses don't know how to work smarter.
- reverse above achedule after lunch hour

So only time to take care of personal business like phoning call centres is:
- lunch hour
- 5-6pm, just before the mad rush home to pick up kids

A smarter way is for call centres to;
a) cater for peak hours or,
b) operate extended hours or,
c) stagger their working hours to match their customers' free time

Smarter and creative is always an improvement over cheaper, better, faster and selective hearing loss.

Applogies for the snide closing remark. But it still makes me angry to pay public employees high salaries only to be told that the solution is for me the taxpayer to;
a) accept a salary cut
b) a CPF cut
c) work cheaper, better, faster

Do we need graduates and scholars to come out with such "imaginative" and original ideas?; May 20, 2010 7:31 AM