Shop Talk

Are other call centers acheiving these goals at a higher rate? Are Verizon or T-Mobile doing these things better? Are these things items things that customers in focus groups have said will make a difference?

No offense but your same argument has been made a 100 times over in here, whether valid or not. I am really hoping to see if these figures are a pipe dream in comparison to the entire industry or if they are based on some concrete data that if we do better with these our customer satisfaction should go in a positive direction.

If you want to say they are indeed a pipe dream and not realistic at all please cite examples of how other centers of the competition can be doing better.

Last year ATTWS ranked 6th and Cingular 4th in...
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Our call centre primarily handles legacy ATTWS customers, both TDMA and GSM. We recently pulled 300 associates from the ATTWS care team and moved them to Cingular XBM, but the remaining 1300 or so take legacy blue calls. To my knowledge, there is no other call centre with such a high concentration of legacy blue calls. This is significant because we use different systems - siebel, CUP, AXYS. These systems are old and slow. To give you an example, to modify a billing address is a 9 step process, to add or remove a feature on a single line takes at least 3 minutes. Luckily, Cingular recognizes this and is migrating accounts to Telegence over the next month or so. Out of 44 or 48 sites, we rank around 30-35 or so. We have an outstanding trainin...
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an edit to my above post, it should read that I have NEVER done an unnecessary transfer ... my bad ... 🤭

Well said! 😁 Cingular has ranked low in customer service based on J.D Powers and other groups for a very long time. It was made clear after last year's scores that it reflects customer service in stores as well. I work in a store and I've handled all sorts of problems from other agents, corporate reps, and cust. svc. reps, not to mention e-store and telesales mistakes, and as long as you take care of the customer, that's all that should matter.

I think the biggest mistake any representative of Cingular could make, whether at store or over the phone, is to play the blame game. It's unprofessional and it makes the company look bad. It could result in loss of business which would put everyone out on the street. In short: Take care of the ...
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wolfspider73 said:
I have dealt with rude and arrogant sales reps, I have corrected the misinformation reps have given in order to sell a product and I have removed the features store reps have slammed the customer with.

The "free" features being added and then charging the customers 1 month-3 months later is complete crap. There is not one day that goes by that I don't receive a call about this. It is always an escalated issue as well. The other is Cingular store reps telling customers they have to immediately switch their services to cingular. Misonformation and slamming from store reps are two of the biggest issues I deal with on a daily basis. They are always lengthy escalated calls and rightly so. S...
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As a store rep, I have found it highly useful to notate the account fully before I call Care. It helps them get a quick fix an the problem and make adjustments quickly. It also gives them something to fall back on if a supervisor challenges them.

i have to completely agree with you on this and you know what it really sucks what reps go thru for trying to be the customers advocate. ☹️ :

So these numbers are able to be acheived in, let's say, a more veteran call center?

Transition can be very tough indeed. What about Cingular calls centers that have been the same "policy wise" for a decent length of time (for instance, the Lubbock call center has been cingular for many many years. From what I been told by tenured employees things have not changed for the worse). Shouldn't they be able to hit these stats without issue?

I don't know about centers that have been Cingular centers that weren't AWS before but i know the only people meeting target were people who were sacrifysing Customer Care. At the call center i'm in now for a different company i can easly meat 400 seconds (half what i was doing at Cingular) just because it is much easyer to complete the customers request.

That is good to know, and what I think Cingular is basing their goals.

I don't know the call center routines as well as others and when many here (granted, small communiyty and usually the ones most vocal are on the extreme sides of issues) complained these figures were not able to be hit I was curious.

Transition to a new system definately is cause for baby steps, especially with management learning as well. Long term reps or centers with consistent information should be able to hit these goals as your new center does with regularity.

You are very lucky that your call time is 500-600 seconds. With Verizon Wireless it is 350. People here are always being walked out the door...it is mostly for quality or attendance. VZW doesn't play with either of those two metrics. From the different call centers I've worked in and industry they are all pretty much the same! Good Luck and just CYA!

I'm not sure if either of you are understanding what i'm saying. getting 600-700 seconds is extreamly tough at the call center i worked for and still give the customer service that customers deserve. In order to acheave these goals you had to deal with the issue and push them out the door. This is because there was no support from either managment or other departments. I worked for Cingular for 3 months before i found out what their ETF is. I asked my managers and they told me they would get back to me. No one could tell me what it was and i was doing migrations and selling phones with renewed contracts and different ETF's. I had worked for AWS for 2 years before that with excelent stats and excelent Quality scores.

Now i work for ...
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Good for you cutting your handle time. It sounds as though Cingular has a lot of issues that need to be worked out. The ETF was drilled into me from the moment I walked in the door at VZW. I don't believe it is possible to not know what the M&P's are there. They make that info so readily available. I'm glad you have a better job. Good Luck to you!!!!!

I don't know what systems you have accsess to but I mean couldn't you proactively search for these answers yourself with the systems you currently have.

Nope. Had no Cingular information. Only information i was given was about AWS policys and what was given on the migration system. And believe me i looked for ETF's on there. Finaly after 3 months of "We'll get back to you" i called an Orange center and got a really cool rep who showed me CSP. Fortunatly it was the same login as my migration tool. after 6 months when i quit I still hadn't been shown CSP by anyone offical.

I feel your pain. Issues simply cannot always be resolved as quickly as the management would like. When I worked in a call center, I had frequent calls from elderly people who barely knew how to turn on their computer. I would first have to help them learn what each component of the computer was before I could even begin to attempt to resolve the issue. And talk about the wildcard...we had one famous customer at our call center that many reps had spoken to; she would call in complaining about the voices in her computer. I never spoke to the woman, but I read the call notes covering several months and hundreds of calls, all documented by various reps. Amazing what they went through with her.

But back to your point. The focus should ...
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