Sligo people "not sufficiently skilled" to work in call centres

JDxtra

Carolan Lennon shouldn't even be CEO of the local Spar shop.

The problem is with the CEO and management at eir. Not the coalface staff in Sligo who have their ****e system to deal with.

What a ****.

Mrs OBumble

Necro wrote: »

There have been a number of call centres in Sligo throughout the years going back to TalkTalk, then to MBNA and also Toucan.

Dud any of them stay there? Or is there a trend ....

Glurrl

The management of eir are not sufficiently skilled at doing thier job

Necro

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Dud any of them stay there? Or is there a trend ....

Certainly a trend with Eir being chronically awful for years dating back before the Sligo centre.

keano_afc

Wasn't it a fella from Sligo who got a job in Eir just so he could cancel his own broadband?

Glurrl

“If an agent faces a systems issue today, we have to courier their computer back to our IT team meaning an issue that could have been resolved in a few minutes pre-Covid now could take a day.”


They should get themselves a few spare computers to use in this event

_Kaiser_

Glurrl wrote: »

“If an agent faces a systems issue today, we have to courier their computer back to our IT team meaning an issue that could have been resolved in a few minutes pre-Covid now could take a day.”


They should get themselves a few spare computers to use in this event

Or set it up that the agents log into a virtual desktop so that everything can be managed there and all the agent has is a terminal.

doublejobbing 2

mariaalice wrote: »

She said they pay 21k to 23k with sick pay and maternity benefits and bonus, which is not bad for starting work or if the person has no qualification or skill, individuals have progressed from call center to contract negotiations, planners, to managements.

I agree she came across as dreadful I would say she is difficult to work for

21k is not bad?!

Bonus, LOL.

Let me guess. They fob the employees off with free pizza once a month

Ash.J.Williams

cj maxx wrote: »

He might be right. The parents signed up to eir , got a router posted to them and when I rang them about starting the contract they said they knew nothing about us. Clowns of a customer support

that could be higher level than a sligo call centre

mariaalice

doublejobbing 2 wrote: »

21k is not bad?!

Bonus, LOL.

Let me guess. They fob the employees off with free pizza once a month

So what should someone who say scraped a pass in a higher cert in business and has very little work experience be getting?

I personally know someone who started out in a call center after they dropped out of college, eventually got into management, then scheduling and planning, then contract negotiation, and now has a very senior position.

All because they did not blow off a call center job because of the poor pay.

runawaybishop

mariaalice wrote: »

So what should someone who say scraped a pass in a higher cert in business and has very little work experience be getting?

I personally know someone who started out in a call center after they dropped out of college, eventually got into management, then scheduling and planning, then contract negotiation, and now has a very senior position.

All because they did not blow off a call center job because of the poor pay.

The CEO said they found it hard to get staff, you don't think the pay has something to do with that? I'd want a hell of a lot more before I worked in a call center for eir with their reputation.

mariaalice

runawaybishop wrote: »

The CEO said they found it hard to get staff, you don't think the pay has something to do with that? I'd want a hell of a lot more before I worked in a call center for eir with their reputation.

I am not saying its a great job or well paid however people have to start somewhere they are not going to stay there forever.

PhilOssophy

I would say there are 2 reasons people don't want to work in Eir call centre
1. People on the other end of the line (who would want to listen to that all day)
2. Crap pay

pjdarcy

doublejobbing 2 wrote: »

21k is not bad?!

Bonus, LOL.

Let me guess. They fob the employees off with free pizza once a month

You could probably buy a detached 4-bed in Sligo for 21k

Captcha

cj maxx wrote: »

He might be right. The parents signed up to eir , got a router posted to them and when I rang them about starting the contract they said they knew nothing about us. Clowns of a customer support

That sounds like a crappy IT system rather than the person that would normally try to help you ffs

colm_mcm

daheff wrote: »

Who designs the processes and implements the systems???
I wonder would that be the hired help........

I doubt it’s the minimum wagers in Sligo that are. I would suppose that head office in Dublin would have the final say.

Eir would have gotten a lot of financial assistance from the IDA for this.

Tombo2001

Reminds me of when I got let go by Abrakebabra as the manager felt 'I wasnt up to it'. This was a job that was midnight to 6am, paying (late 1990s) 4 euros an hour, serving massive hordes of drunk people.

Captcha

Necro wrote: »

Nah her comments were nonsense.

There have been a number of call centres in Sligo throughout the years going back to TalkTalk, then to MBNA and also Toucan.

Eir's own customer care policies are at fault here, and likely their training procedures for new staff.

I started my career in Toucan Sligo (back in 2006 or 2004 cannot remember)... 18k got into a sales role there and went to 30k... Now working in Dublin (well home now) for just over 100k

No education other than Junior cert

Floppybits

mariaalice wrote: »

So what should someone who say scraped a pass in a higher cert in business and has very little work experience be getting?

I personally know someone who started out in a call center after they dropped out of college, eventually got into management, then scheduling and planning, then contract negotiation, and now has a very senior position.

All because they did not blow off a call center job because of the poor pay.

I have to agree with you. A call centre is a great starting off point, I would advise anyone looking to go down the IT route to do a few months in a call centre. I started my IT career in a call centre and right through out my career the experience I had there dealing with customer issues have helped when managing IT projects and gives you are great perspective when working with developers and being able to look at an application and say you will need to make that a bit simpler or you need to change this.

whisky_galore

Shít company blames other people for its shíttyness.

cgcsb

The desperation from this statement is quite extreme. Management blaming staff for management failures is often the death of companies, share owners can't have any faith in management if they're blaming the bottom rung of staff.

givyjoe

Purple Mountain wrote: »

The sting in the tail is, they're only operating out of Sligo for about 6 months.
So she has erased years of previous customer experience from her brain.
I transferred over to eir about 4 years ago.
My heart was actually broken trying to get them to actually send me the correct first bill.
I wasted hours on going into the store, on the phone, email etc etc. Eventually they got a credit control department onto me who told me they just get a list of customers to ring and their amounts "owed". When I explained why I didn't owe the money, he said basically he doesn't have access to that information. Then they rang me again the next month. I thought my blood pressure would sky rocket.
In fairness, the agent in the local shop was helpful and knew what he was talking about but beyond that, jesus wept.
Interestingly, I had an ongoing dispute with PayPal this year that shone a light for me on their ability to handle a customer dispute, which was probably fraud but noone acknowledged that for me.
I fought tooth and nail with them for my refund spending hours gathering evidence and sending correspondence but I refused to give up even though I wanted to rip my hair out.
Those 2 companies give me the shudders.

From the point of view of a seller, Paypal are utterly shocking. They make fraud exceptionally easy.

As for EIR, the're would be so many calls to Customer Service if the service itself wasn't such a shambles.

cgcsb

Most companies in Ireland don't have much of a customer service. I don't think Vodafone have a number and they've gotten rid of their instant chat function. Vodafone still have a debt collection agency ringing me about a set-top box that I returned to them 3 years ago.

Virgin don't answer emails and there's often no point calling them.

Have you ever tried to deal with insurance company in Ireland? Axa are still asking me for a document that they issued.

seamus

This is nothing to do with Sligo, and everything to do with a culture problem in eir that has existed since day dot. The fact that CEO blames the quality of customer service on the staff says volumes about what management think about staff.

In my early days I worked in two companies that could not be more different in their reputation for customer service; Superquinn and eircom.

Superquinn's induction process consisted of two days. 1.5 days were spent discussing customer service. Literally. Drilling home the "customer is always right" culture that the business was built on. Roleplaying various scenarios about serving customer, responding to issues, etc. The other half day was the procedural company stuff, the job, etc. When you were working, performance was almost entirely focussed on customer interaction; whether you were pleasant and friendly to customers, whether you looked dour and unapproachable while working, whether customers specifically called you out for being helpful, etc. Issues like speed or accuracy less important.
Going above and beyond for a customer was the holy grail.

eircom's induction process (for a customer support role) was 1.5 days learning how to do sales and a half day learning about the company. That's it. The "support" training was being given access to a load of How-To documents to guide you through the issues you might have to deal with.
On the job, there were no customer service performance metrics. No customer satisfaction surveys, no ticketing systems that tracked whether a customer issue was fixed and how long it took to fix. The only metrics were how quickly you could finish a call, and how many sales you made (on a support call). They didn't care about anything else.
No training to deal with difficult customers. No discussion on customer satisfaction. Just "fix their sh1t quickly and try to sell them stuff while you have them". Going above and beyond was no desired. I spent an hour on a call with a guy in his 80s one day. He didn't really need anything fixed, just lonely and wanted a chat. I got called out for it and told it was way too long.

So it doesn't surprise me at all, that when this company went to set up a new call centre in Sligo from scratch, they made an absolute balls of it. Because eir has never, ever, understood what customer support is supposed to be.

partyguinness

If the company had it's **** together in the first place it would negate the need for such frequent use of call centres by customers.

Floppybits

I think the problem with Eir is that they still haven't shaken the public sector legacy from the company even though it has been a privatised company for many decades now.

begbysback

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Reminds me of when I got let go by Abrakebabra as the manager felt 'I wasnt up to it'. This was a job that was midnight to 6am, paying (late 1990s) 4 euros an hour, serving massive hordes of drunk people.

You from Sligo?

Pawwed Rig

Blaming the pandemic and working from home for their poor customer service. What was their excuse last year for the appalling performance?

Atlantic Dawn

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Why have they not offshored this kind of work like Vodafone have?

That explains why they have gotten so bad.

I've worked in several call centres, as an agent, as Junior management and as a consultant. The people in them all were lovely people but the difference in service was down to the processes not the people.

I went from a multi-national call centre to a startup. In the multi-national, if I needed to replace a customers cable or router, I filled out a form in Outlook, included the account details and clicked send and a cable got sent out.

In the startup, on my first day I had to put together my flat pack desk myself. A few days later i got a call and needed to replace a cable for customer. I asked my manager what was the process. He said "In the corner is a box of cables, then go to reception and get an envelope and a stamp, put the cable in, write on the address and give it back to the receptionist to go out.

If I had a router and a cable to send out to two different customers, it only takes a momentary lapse of focus(or lets face it, a hangover), for me to send the wrong one to the wrong customer.

Eir isn't a startup but they clearly didn't have rigid, fool-proof processes. So mistakes got made. Can't blame Sligo people for that - and thats coming from a Galwayman! :pac: