Is it just me or are other people totally fed up with ringing an 0871 number to listen to a message saying “we are so sorry but we are currently experiencing very high call volumes and can’t get to your call right now!! We doing all we can to improve the situation.”
No your not, if you where we would not be hearing this month after month.
After hearing a recorded announcement for the 100th time it does not feel like your sorry, just like you’re trying to get money by charging you but not speaking to you.
I wonder if company’s who do this release that effects there sales. Agents and Customers are feed up and it gives the company’s a bad image. I thought we got over this a few years ago but it seems to be coming back.
Anyway what’s wrong with an engaged tone?
This is why travel agents are switching to company's that care where we can
I couldn't agree with you more, Nick....
It's especially frustrating if the matter is urgent and you just can't get through. I run a small business and know that if I'm stuck on the phone my customers can't get through to me. To prevent this from being a problem I use a virtual answering service where a 'real' person answers the phone 24 hours a day and diverts it/leaves a message as appropriate. If it's urgent and I'm unavailable they will try my mobile/home numbers so my customers always able to contact me. Sadly this is not the kind of service we tend to get from larger operators. It also frustrates me that when you send an email marked urgent that it may take days to answer, if you're lucky!
I hate any service where I am sat on a phone paying a bill waiting. I use mobiles all the time and the charges are phenominal, or could be; I just hang up.
Like you say, if they are busy give us an engaged tone or even an answerphone, not music that would have kept Noah happy as he banged nails into his Ark.
I have created many websites, including for cheap cruises, cruise deals and a new one attacking cruise holidays.
I couldn't agree more. It wouldn't be as bad if they used 01 or 02 numbers, as many people have a call package which includes free calls to those numbers. With some packages 0870 and 0845 are also included (although not from mobiles), but 0871 and 0844 work out costly on long calls.
I wonder what the ratios are in most companies for Sales/Customer Services? I bet that would be an interesting read.
Thankfully, My Customer/Sales/Service..Ranks Highly, Our aim being..We exceed your expectations!
..always answered promptly by a human being - no answerphone - no music on hold - just a knowlegeable specialist Tour Operator consultant....
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who is really frustrated with these silly answering services where you waste so much time/money and still not get connected to someone nor do you get your problem resolved!
I have just spent 20 minutes on the phone to medhotels, trying to make a booking - no response so i gave up after spending £2.60.
I then tried to call Flytcx, got cut off after 5 minutes, tried again after some slow speaking woman goes through the menus i was told i would have to wait 30 minutes.
I get fed up of making money for these companies when all they do screw you somewhere along the line.
No wonder the travel industry is in a mess, every company just wants to skin you for everything.
Sometimes helps,look for an alternative at this link.
http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php
Paul.
I posted this back in May because I was feed up with the wait time to speak to Thomas Cook. (It has improved a little since then).
The thing that got my goat was for a year they had been using the line "unexpected high demand" while that may work for a couple of months it was just showing up how poor there customer service was at that time.
Since then we had a look at the company's we deal with and have moved to company's with good customer service like Classic Collection (though did wait 2 minutes, yes a whole 2 minutes for them to answer the phone one day). But it seems other company's are both improving (well done travel 2) and getting worse.
We all know it sometimes is going to be busy, but when you regularly have queue times over an hour or you're cutting off 50% of your customers because you can not handle the calls do you honestly think people are going to keep using you