Your call is important to us. Please wait till we can connect you?

Question

Postcode profiling-as soon as we give our addresses, we reveal an awful lot about ourselves. Incomes: voting habits, etc
Computer software is now so sophisticated that call centres are using it to answer calls in the order of their preference. Perhaps because of our incomes and the likelihood of purchasing goods.
Can you please give me your views on this?
Thank you.

Answer 1

I always hang up and then hit the "new enquiry" option when I've redialed. It takes most companies just three rings to answer a "new enquiry" call. They then transfer me to the customer services and I wait... and wait... and wait...

Then when they eventually answer I ask them why their new enquiries people can answer in three rings and they cannot.

If they haven't answered after five minutes I hang up and then redial the new enquiry option again. Tell them what I spend with them and that if they really want to keep my business they will have a supervisor call me if they don't want me to contact their head office to close my account and give their poor standard of service as the reason. Then I hang up.

Invariably I get a callback from someone claiming to be a supervisor - although I know it's still a CS clerk - about half an hour later and they sort my problem.

Answer 2

Agree wholeheartedly with you. The trouble with a lot of these calls is that the person making the call will not take a polite no and you are left with the option of ringing off or being abusive to the person. I had a call today from an Asian gentleman with limited English that went something like this-:
Hello Mr . Have you or anyone else at No 4 had an accident in the last 3 years
No
Have you had an accident in the last 3 years
Slightly agitated now - no in a louder voice
Don't shout as I am a very polite person and trying to help you.
No
I am waiting for your answer as to whether you have an accident in the last 3 years.
NO NO NO
Thank you and you look after yourself.
The other day I had a car insurance firm on the phone and the person insisted on going through what he could offer me even though I told him I was quite happy with my present company I had been with for many years. He still tried to get me to sign up for a policy and was most put out when I refused.
What gets me is when the phone rings (number randomly selected by computer) and no one answers because the operatives are busy on other calls. Also the number of calls you can get with an Asian caller who is very difficult to understand because their English is so bad.

Answer 3

You know , Well after you mentioned it ,That thought opened the flood gates of my mind ,you are a thought provoker which is a good thing, first thing that arises in my mind is zip codes, if your zip code is in an affluent area where ever in the country would affect what was in your mail box , or your call may be monitored for quality insurance, well is it or isn't it. I think we have the right to know., there are a lot of people around the world we connect to are they able to keep connected we think we have disconnect then are they able to use are connection able to relay through us to another site with out of our knowledge maybe a sensitive area, I,m sure you are 99.5 % Correct

Answer 4

Bluetooth is the biggest con perpetrated. It has recently been reported in the newspapers that crooks using Bluetooth can target your car to know if you have a Sat.Nav installed or a Laptop inside.

But the opening sentence of your question is usually followed up by "Your conversation will be recorded for training purposes" so I always use the phuk word at least once.

Answer 5

Well, Chuckler, yours is a complicated question. One thing I do know, whenever I have to ring BT, I literally lose the will to live. I now email them and (quote) "because of the bad weather, they are experiencing a high volume of email complaints" Aahem, it hasn't rained for weeks in the UK. What a multinational toss pot of a company. And yes, I live in the inner-city!!

Answer 6

And so when someone speaking a strange form of Pidgin-English finally does answer, I ask them where they are located, and invariably the anser is "India". Well, I tell them, "I want to speak to an American who is in the United States who speaks English", and that I do not want to talk to them, so it works both ways. If it gets really bad, I call corporate headquarters and complain about being shunted off to some Hindu whose accent is so bad as to be almost incomprehensible. Insult them enough and maybe one day the counterproductivity of all this nonsense might dawn on someone.

If my call is so important to you, don;t pass me off to somebody in a Third World country reading off of a prepared script. I expect better than that.

Answer 7

Well probably but I'd just hang up anyway, if they don't want my business, sod em!! It's the Customer Service lines that infuriate me, when you really need help with something, and you just go round and round in a maze of automated voices. It's enough to make me homicidal.

Answer 8

Good for bussiness. Bad for freedom.

I saw on the news the other day that a family was VOLUNTEERING to have micro-chips imbedded in thier bodies. These chips are trackable by satelite, and have the potential to be implanted in anyone. '1984' is becoming a reality....

Answer 9

Call centres and IVRS software is horrible.At times you have to wait and hear music or advertisement for several minutes.It is disgusting.When you are making urgent call you have to wait based on your income or wealth.There is no legal remedy.

Answer 10

Try selling cars. Salesmen always pre-approve people as soon as they step foot on the lot