ATT/Cingular CS - Yes I am Venting

And I though Agent Debit was a bad rep Sorry to hear about your troubles.

 

That's terrible.

I'm a new Cingular customer too.

Last Monday, I noticed they accidentally charged an ETF to my bill for no reason. When I called, I kept getting transferred back and forth between Customer Service and Financial Services and then got hung up on.

I've only been a customer 3.5 weeks. Why am I getting billed for an ETF?

I called back twice and got hung up on two more times.

I was so mad that nobody wanted to take ownership of my issue and instead of trying they just got scared and hung up.

On Thursday, I finally spoke to a supervisor who assured me he'd take care of it and apoligized for the glitch in the billing system.

Fastfoward to yesterday: My phone gets shut off. Why? Because the billing system says that I owe an ETF and that the charge is past due. Customer service again, incompetently are unable to resolve my issue without a supervisor and keep insisting that I need to pay the ETF. After 30 minutes, they turn my phone back on and the supervisor assures me that he removed the ETF that somehow was never removed.

I login to my account today again. OLAM shows my account past due the ETF charge. I didn't want to call customer service again. I tried emailing them. I was left a very harsh sounding VM from some supervisor named Darshan (he sounded like he was 15) who told me that contacting over and over again will not resolve my issue ant that my concern will "self correct," on June 10th and that there was nothing more anyone could do.

I feel your pain Charlyee. Cingular has been a nightmare to deal with.

 

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/160)

I hate it when CS thinks they know the problem and they keep telling you the same thing over and over. I had the same problem with the CS from Alltel.

 

I agree this is for sure one of the bad reps. It is too bad that some refuse to learn. Now to YourDaddy, I think what the supervisor told you could hold true and the June 10th seems to be your end of billing Cycle which if the credit is done right it should then reverse, make sure that you keep the voice mail untill then.

 

Good one.

I love how they don't give their reps any training, encourage them to get rid of customers as fast as possible, and then add insult to idiocy by having them read scripts that declare they are providing good service. One of my favorites is: "How may I provide you with excellent service today?"

Next time I hear that I think I'll say, "Well for starters you can assume I am not a moron, actually listen to my question and try to understand it. And if you don't understand it, you can switch me to someone who might."

SW

 

I've always had pretty good luck with Cingular's CS. They've always been helpful to me and most of the time seem to really known how to handle any issue or problem that I might have. Cingular also has some of the most personable and friendly reps that I have ever delt with from any company.

 

I can say I am lucky as every time i call it takes me to the business services which makes me think that they do have a better trained CS. But one never knows. in all honesty every time I needed to call they served me well and i could never complain. Charlyee, I would for sure try the Battery/SIM pull and leave them out for 10 minutes and try.

 

This is amazing that both of you have these horrible CS experiences like this, I have been fortunate & always had a very helpful & curtious reps whenever I called.

Have either of you tried posting something on their forums? Especially you Charlyee, since it sounds like a tower issue.

As for YourDaddy, as hf1khal stated it seems things like this clear at the end of the billing cycle, and normally do and it's a shame your phone got shut off in the mean time.

I also say keep the VM or record it before it gets deleted, just in case.

 

LOL! I've heard this line several times from Verizon. I don't feel they are that excellent.

As for Cingular, I've been lucky with their CS most of the times. Every time there are problems, issues get resolved.

 

I had a weird problem a few months ago, a one-of-a-kind, where people would call me, my phone would ring, but the caller couldn't hear any ring. So often times, they would hang up thinking the call wasn't going through. It took them about a month to fix it. The rep in charge of my case gave me a free month of service and she would call me every few days to update me on the status, which basically was just to apologize and to remind me that they were working on it. Eventually, they got it fixed. Thanks Rachel!

 

My encounter with Cingular customer service last year when I had them for a while wasn't all that good either. They were not very friendly and not helpful at all and refused to transfer me to a supervisor or a second tier rep or whatever they call it. At least I finally fought my way out of the ETF and thank goodness didn't get it charged on the bill, so I didn't have to call back in and fight it again.

 

I work in a Call Center and, just a suggestion not pointed to anyone in particular on here, but talking to the person in a calm tone is always helpful. I find it harder to be nice to people that are screaming at me and won't listen to what I have to say. I know alot of CS reps that are complete _______es to customer's that call in. And for those fools, I apologize. Working for Cingular CS is an easy job, the easiest I've had by far. I've spoke with many many customer's who have went through similar situations where they get the run-around and get transferred repeatedly because the rep doesn't want to take ownership of the call. My suggestion for calling CS is doing it during the earlier hours of the business day as that is when the tenured reps are there as their seniority allows them to work an earlier shift.


Just my 2 cents on the matter.

 

My problem with CS has been really bad over the last year, i am sure i cost cingular at least $500 in calls. I called 12 times, and finally after the 12th call. The problem was solved. I think CS is taught do all you can to get the customer off the phone, the last important thing is there problem.

 

Actually, "First Call Resolution" is supposed to be a big thing. You see, we have stats that we're evaluated on. In one day's time no more than 10% of your customer's are supposed to call back in. My % is usually 4-6% and that's taking about 50 calls a day and 1 or 2 calling back in. But, they do put a big emphasis on what your Average Handle Time[AHT] is and people that are really bad at their job try to hurry customer's off the call to keep their AHT low.

 

I've actually had good experiences with Cingular CS. I've only called twice, and I can remember the first time I called I was praying that it wasn't as bad as Dell CS. I had the same thing happen to me. They told me stuff I already knew. They were basically restating my questions and statements to me for the entire call.

 

Good point. I always try to remember that even though I may have been dealing with a given issue for a while, if I call in to a new rep this is the first they are hearing of it. I definitely start out calm....

Also it's nice to see a real CS Rep posting here. Any time I have mentioned these forums to Cingular reps I either got silence (I assume most have no idea what these forums are) or the party line - "I can't comment on anything that's posted on an external website". No kidding, I wasn't asking you to.

But don't they have to take ownership in some way? Your next post indicates that they do. If a rep can't solve my issue, I don't have a problem with that, just as long as I get escalated to someone who can, preferably on the same call. What gets frustrating is having to call back multiple times and starting over each time. That's why if I have an ongoing issue I give a quick summary and ask them to read the notes on my account before we even start.

That's a good point about the time of day. I usually deal with these things at the end of the day - 6 - 8 PM, but that may not be best.

Right - these metrics are in conflict. They should reflect the fact that, as you say above, if the customer calls back with the same issue, it's not really handled. Thanks for the insight from the "other side".

SW

 

Glad I could help, most customer's don't understand it from the rep's point of view either. But then again I can't really blame some of them because of all of the hassle they sometimes have to go through to get an issue fixed. Almost every time I get a customer who's pretty cool and has had a re-occurring issue I follow up with them for a week or two to make sure every thing's going alright. Just depends on the customer though. Most manager's are cool with a rep who takes longer on a call and has a lower Repeat Call rate because it's estimated to cost about $8 per call in every time a customer has to call in.. so they try to make a big emphasis on doing it all in One Call and if not getting them to the right people that can do it.

 

I think it's significant that you are depending on your manager to understand that your slightly longer Handle Time may be related to your lower Repeat Call rate. You are also, apparently, following up on your own initiative. Please let your managers know that you are the type of rep that I (and I'd bet, all other customers too) would hope to get connected to when we call.

Have a good day.

SW

 

Oh believe me, they know. I get alot of commendations from customer's and I figured that's probably why. I"m probably about to get taken out of the general population though and move to Tech support or I may just quit all together. Haven't decided yet. But thanks for the compliment none the less.

 

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es70)

That sounds like one of Dell customer service reps that I talked when the USB ports went bad on a new computer at my old job. I thought it was interesting that he started to explain to me what a northbridge & southbridge was, but apparently didn't know that I have actually designed PC-based motherboards for a mobile routers for the company I worked for.

He had me run diagnostic software that tested everything on the motherboard (but it didn't check any of the devices that were connected to the USB bus), which passed all of the required tests. The rep got a little irritated with me when I asked if there were any disagnostics that check if there are any attached USB devices. He had also suggested that I either reinstall Windows 2000 or "upgrade" to Windows XP since the diagnostic program passed all tests.

Realizing that I wasn't getting anywhere, I changed my approach and ended up setting up the BIOS to boot using a USB keyboard & mouse (instead of PS2). When the motherboard failed to see the USB keyboard & mouse on bootup, I called Dell support again and this time got a good rep. The service people that came out to replace the motherboard thought it was pretty funny when they saw some of the motherboards that I've designed after some of the things the first rep reported.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes you have top go rep-shopping to find someone that is willing to

• not assume that they know more than the customer
• listen to what you have to say & don't make up their mind what they believe the issue is
• willing to take ownership and take the appropriate action to correct it

 

Even if you're not going to stay at Cingular for very long, the promotion to Tech Support - recognition that you have excelled at first level CS - will look good on your resume. If it's likely to happen soon, you may want to stick in there for a while and get that. Best of luck.


SW

 

Probably where PCs are concerned, 90% of the time the rep does know more than the customer. It's that other 10%, where they are talking to someone from the high-tech industry, that they are out of their league.

Of course, if that rep knew as much as you do about hardware, he wouldn't be in customer service. Almost by definition, they are people who know just a little more about technology than the average customer.

Your point is well taken, though. Attitude is critical and a good CS rep (like a good physician) has to be open to the possibility that their initial diagnosis might be wrong.


SW

 

This is where call centers make their biggest mistakes in my opinion, they put way too much emphasis on time over quality of resolution.

When I worked a help desk it was the same thing, the only thing I was able to do was we had surveys done after most calls (as well as ones that were monitored live) and I usually got the high scores from the reps & managers I spoke with.
I think they all have gotten away from the real picture, help the customer fix their problem.

 

I agree, we do still have surveys that are randomly taken after the call, though it does ask you before you speak with the rep if you want to take the survey or not. [even if you select no before the call and change your mind later you can press * at the end of the call to take the survey] But alas, I've always had high scores on my calls that are monitored, though our Quality Assurance team only listens to approx 2 calls in 1 month per rep. SO, if I take approx 50 calls a day time and work approx 26 days that's 1,300 calls and 2 of them get listened to by Quality Assurance..

 

I still do encounter some surveys on some of my help need calls but not one from any wireless company. I know with Cingular now after a few days I get a survey call as a result of a call or a visit to the store and do some thing there which trigers something on my account (like a purchase).

 

int the scoring on a representative the AHT (average handle time) is only a small part... quality and first call resolution is the bigger portions and are literally hammered into our heads...for me it wasnt a big adjustment (I was a former blue rep) for others it was...

 

You're from Halifax eh? Do you take ccare calls or do receive those No-Install forms I have to fill out sometimes?

 

IMHO, this is the wrong time to ask. If I am punching through the voice menu labyrinth, talking to a real person is always the last choice. I know it's going to take a few minutes to listen to all the recorded messages and promotions and then usually several minutes on hold to even get someone on the line. So the last thing I want to do is to commit my time at the end of the call. I am interested in making the service better, but I never accept the survey when they give you that choice up front.

Now if I happen to have extra time that day (ha ha) and I am feeling either particularly good or particularly bad at the end of a call, I might take a survey. But they never seem to ask then.

And I'm certainly not going to memorize the special command that lets me do the survey at the end. Is it * or # or 9 or 88? Is it the same for all carriers or all companies I do business with? Forget it.

That's odd. I have forgotten most of my college Statistics, but I don't believe that can be a good test where a single rep is involved. It may be fine in the aggregate.

SW