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Tech support and time limits

How long should the ISP suppport representative be allowed to help one customer?

  • Seven and a half Mins is enough time?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ten Mins is long enough?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Fifteen Mins is long enough?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Each call for support should be allowed to take as long as the customer needs?

    Votes: 19 100.0%

  • Total voters
    19

Kits

ULTIMATE Member
This is for all to discuss and air their views on restrictions some ISPs have in place on the length of time their support workers can spend helping a customer.

I have heard rumblings of one large ISP recently having a meeting and telling the staff to cut all calls to seven and a half mins maximum. The team leaders have to cut the call off if it takes longer or the whole team will lose the bonus.


As you are the paying customer what are your views on this?
 
Erm...Don't *WE* phone *THEM*?

So...We pay the phone bill.....I'm confused here....If they phone us then I can expect some kind of limit....But not the other way around...We should be allowed to stay on for as long as the problem takes to fix...
If it takes 12 seconds then great....If not *shrug*
Maybe it will encourage some ISPs to train better or hire more experienced staff....Or indeed hire MORE staff that are better trained! :laugh:
 
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If an ISP's support department wants to cut me off at 7½ minutes without resolving my problem then that's fine by me...

Providing at 7 minutes they give me a MAC code, cancel the contract for free and refund me for the remainder of the month. Mind you I only ever phone support to get an issue resolved that was caused by the ISP (or for a line fault) so can't be fixed my end - not my fault if they don't believe me and want to waste my time going through scripts.
 
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my answer isnt there... if tech support actually knew what they were doing it would be great, and l dont fancy been cut off mid problem after been told how to work my router if l "know" that isnt the problem, you know these indian call centres it takes 15mins to get some sort of level of understanding.
 
Erm...Don't *WE* phone *THEM*?

So...We pay the phone bill.....I'm confused here....If they phone us then I can expect some kind of limit....But not the other way around...We should be allowed to stay on for as long as the problem takes to fix...
If it takes 12 seconds then great....If not *shrug*
Maybe it will encourage some ISPs to train better or hire more experienced staff....Or indeed hire MORE staff that are better trained! :laugh:


To be fair, call centres need to be targeted for average handling time, as they have to calculate how many calls they can handle with their staff capacity and of course how many new staff they need to handle their forecast calls... (Otherwise they will have high call queues)

However if everyone isn't achieving, telling them to sort it won't fix it. Only coaching will do so (or the company changing their target/calculations)
 
I understand they need to have an average but to tell team leaders to end the calls if they are going over or the whole team losses the bonus is goiing OTT
 
I think there is nothing wrong with a time limit if that time limit is realistic and is for the resolving the problem. Time limit per call however is out of order. Some times over a minute as been spent just authenticating who I am due to slow systems. Unfortunatley in a call centre environment this is not seen as a reason for having a longer call. However I can see this leading to more premium rate numbers where the operators will be incouraged to string out the call instead.
 
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Service is already included in the price paid by the customer, at least that should be part of the equation, therefore a customer should have access to however long it takes to get their problem resolved.

We all know from experience that in the case of many ISP's that isn't the case.

My ISP answers the phone within 5 rings on a freephone number without any need for press button 3, press button 5, your call is important blah blah blah, oh and is answered by a human being that knows their stuff and is always courteous and friendly, but that is why I chose them.;)
 
A generic time limit for all calls is ridiculous, when you consider that some calls might just be for something trivial like a forgotten password, whereas others might be for more complicated problems needing more time.
 
The main cost of the call is the time of the ISP's rep, so as part of their cost cutting they want to keep them on the phone for as little time as possible.

It's a sad fact that most problems will be solved by answers of the "Turn it off and on again" variety, which is why the reps are often given a script and why those users with some idea what they are doing get offended and frustrated.

If ISPs could classify their users into categories according to computer ability, then it would be so much easier.

But this limit - I wonder which ISP they are? - is obviously imposed by some bean counter who never sees the public and hasn't a clue how the business works. It will certainly alienate more punters, so possibly the ISP is too big to care and just accepts the churn rate as a fact of life.
 
I have been told about this and as I used to work answering support calls, I dont agree with the time scales a call takes as long as it takes, like people have pointed out it can be anything from a password request to a routing issue or line fault which needs testing via woosh which can take up to 15 mins to run at times depending what the fault is.

I wont name the ISP but there has been people left them come to us on support and been shocked at how relaxed we are in support on call times etc.
 
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Shouldn't be a time limit IMHO, some people don't understand the info received as easily as others and need longer to understand, it's a bit like talking to someone and they keep looking at their watch, it's rude as if they are dying to get away and it makes you more nervous asking the question, it would be the same when on the phone to tech support.

These support lines are doing this stuff all the time, they must know how it all averages out and employ enough operatives to be able to cope with the demand not put time limits on instead.
 
... actually imho getting english staff who are understandable would be the way to go since most problems l find with AOL are caused by tech support not been able to understand me, sadly tho when it comes to the internet and braodband l feel l already know more than them and that even tho they are tech support its not really like they can do anything anyways.
 
Support

Note to all that we offer a full uk telephone support centre - with our USP being the call is always answered by a person, that person will be knowledgeable and helpful and you can speak to the same person everytime you call. We also pride ourselves in the fact that our phone never rings more than 4 times before it will be answered.

Worth thinking about......
 
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also off topic slightly as this was about ISPs limiting the time help can be given to customer on the phone.
 
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Lets face it, help lines are for those who haven't the savvy to fix a problem themself...
If you get an error message...twiddle and mess up your settings then they should be able to talk you through resetting them again without time constraints, after all as already mentioned, it is the customer that is paying for the call.

Ringing an ISP helpline to ask (for example)what they're doing to cure a network outage is IMHO a complete waste of time as the call centre staff (often non UK) are not likely to know that a problem exists.
Even if they did, they wouldn't have the means to fix it or to advise how long it will be before everything is running again...so why bother?

If you forget your login/password help centres are fine, (a little book with such info on your desktop is better)
In the eight or so years online I have rung an ISP helpline twice, once to reset my password and again to confirm logon settings...since then that little book on my desktop saves me the price of the call ;)
 
Ringing an ISP helpline to ask (for example)what they're doing to cure a network outage is IMHO a complete waste of time as the call centre staff (often non UK) are not likely to know that a problem exists.
Even if they did, they wouldn't have the means to fix it or to advise how long it will be before everything is running again...so why bother?

If someone is suffering an outage, how else can they check the status or report a problem?
 
Lets face it, help lines are for those who haven't the savvy to fix a problem themself...
If you get an error message...twiddle and mess up your settings then they should be able to talk you through resetting them again without time constraints, after all as already mentioned, it is the customer that is paying for the call.

I thought ISP support lines were supposed to be for getting line faults and configuration errors at the ISP's end fixed, at least that is why I made several calls to my ISP last year and spent a total of well over two hours on the phone.



As the poll has closed, perhaps it is time to unsticky this thread?
 
I have heard rumblings of one large ISP recently having a meeting and telling the staff to cut all calls to seven and a half mins maximum. The team leaders have to cut the call off if it takes longer or the whole team will lose the bonus.

As you are the paying customer what are your views on this?

I think it's ridiculous. I never use phone support but if I did, I'd be pretty p'ed if they'd cut me off mid sentence at 7 and a half mins when my problem hadn't been solved yet...

But it's not exactly the worst thing they could do. Sprint recently cancelled contracts of customers who called the support line too much...

 
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