Atrocious Virgin Call-Centre
Had a call this afternoon from (I think, but read on) somebody at Virgin Media – who host one of my internet connections. I think it was a general-purpose touchy-feelie we-love-you point-scoring exercise, although there may have been a sales pitch coming up. I won’t know, I didn’t last that long. Honestly, people, if you can’t be bothered to employ call centre staff who speak English, do you expect me to waste my time trying to have a conversation with them? Seriously?
Now I understand that it is probably cheaper to do these things off-shore, and probably in a massive sweat-shop where that’s all they ever do, and they do it for hundreds of companies. Fair enough. I do understand that. Honest! What I didn’t understand was the bloke who called. It took five or six repeats before I understood that he was calling on behalf of Virgin Media.
Then he asked “nhooyootoodaysir?” which I eventually figured out was “and how are you today, sir?”. Why do they even bother having that in the script? Does anybody ever think they care? Or even listen? Since I was already in a foul mood from an almighty cock-up at work, I told him that was none of his business and asked why he was bothering me. A little rude, admittedly, I could have been more polite. But he was bothering me! I didn’t invite him to call me. Anyway, it turns out to be a mistake to give a reply that’s not on their script. Utter confusion until the dimwit decided just to pass on to the next paragraph written in front of him.
Now I think this was about how happy I was with their service. But it might have been about if I was getting the most out of it, or even if I wanted more of it. In fact, he could have been offering me a free tea-service. The only thing I’m reasonably confident about was that the word “service” was probably in there somewhere. By now I was a good few minutes into the call, and all we’d established was that he was probably representing Virgin, and that I wasn’t going to tell him how I was feeling. I’m afraid I didn’t have the stamina for any more, and hung up. Rude again, I know. But I couldn’t face five minutes of getting him to understand “goodbye”. Or possibly even “piss off”.
So, a message to all call centres, but tele-sales in particular: if you are going to call me, have the courtesy to do it in such a way that I’ve got some chance of understanding what you’re on about. Otherwise, just follow my more general advice to all tele-sales organisations: “piss off, I’m TPS listed”.
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