It’s hard to be a Help Desk person. We customers only call when we’re angry or confused or both. If only we could just learn to enjoy:
- waiting (Kenny G is Top Of The Pops on “Hold” this week)
- listening to long multilingual messages that don’t make sense in any language
- bouncing between service people (I suspect they have a [Random] button to send us to other departments where we will hear, “That’s not my job,” immediately before they ask the obligatory question, “Is there anything more I help you with today?”)
- getting nowhere and taking forever to get there
In a bid to be the “ideal customer,” I have started to use my problems as entertainment, for both myself and Help Desk employees. I had a great chat, this morning, with someone at Bell Canada. He was wonderful and had the customer service spirit so often missing in call centres.
The Deadbeat Harrassment System
I’m not a Bell customer, except for the occasional pay phone. However, I’m receiving daily “Pay up or die!” calls from an automated system that asks me to call a phone number that turns out to be the credit department at Bell. It seems a former holder of my new phone number hasn’t met some of her financial obligations. I know this because Bell wasn’t the only firm calling about monies owed. Fortunately, the others sent humans or included an account number in their recorded messages. These companies understand that communication requires some content and contact.
Not so Bell Canada, which is, ironically, Canada’s largest communications network and has corporate communication departments in several cities. This was the sixth time I had called Bell on this matter – and the first time anyone seemed interested. This lovely agent dug into my case like detective Hercule Poirot. He revealed that, for this giant company whose business is phones and phoning, a phone number is insufficient information. He searched on all my particulars, diver’s licence, social insurance number, and such, just to rule out identity theft. Then he determined, to his and my regret, that there is absolutely nothing he or Bell can do to stop the system from hassling me.
A solution is found (maybe)
Firmly convinced that you can always get good service if you communicate, I didn’t give up. There is a possible solution. Caller blocking! So the next few times Bell calls, I can note the time and caller phone number and my telco can stop the nonsense.
How do I know this? You guessed it. I called the Rogers Telecom Help Desk.
Cheers – Sue
UPDATE – Many calls later, I finally wrote to the chairman of Bell. I knew, from personal experience in the PR department of a huge corporation, that would get someone’s attention. Within days, I received a final call from the giant telco apologizing for the inconvenience. And no more automated collection calls. What a shame that the company’s own front line service employees weren’t empowered or informed well enough to make that happen.