In the past week I’ve had the delight of calling the DVLA, an insurer and a bank. Inevitably, on each occasion I got the same message: “We are experiencing high call volumes at the moment.” Sigh. Only they weren’t, because shortly after that I was through to a real person. The DVLA had even claimed that there was a 30-minute expected wait. Time and again this happens. Is it a mistake, or is it a deliberate strategy to force us on to the internet?
Whichever it is, something needs to change in the way companies have treated customers since Covid began.
Financial firms, HMRC and the DVLA adjusted quickly (and commendably) to home working in the first lockdown last year. They improved their technology, overcame data protection issues and retrained staff. And as customers we were tolerant of delays and mistakes. With work-from-home guidance back in place, we’ll have to be tolerant again.
Patience, though, is running thin. Bad service is everywhere and working from home is to blame. The old ways of providing customer service just don’t work any more.
I once got a job in a call centre: I left for lunch on the first day and never went back. I had just finished university and was saving up to go to journalism college, so I accepted a role as a “customer support associate”, or something similarly vague. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like a call centre.
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When I turned up for my induction I was guided from room to room with rows of other twentysomethings wearing headsets taking details from caller after caller. They were all being monitored and there were tally charts on the wall scoring everyone.
In one room a young woman was crying because someone had been so rude to her. The whole thing terrified me; it seemed like enormous pressure. I realised I could never do it.
That was more than 20 years ago, but I’ve been to a number of call centres since — for big telecoms firms, banks and energy companies — and they’ve all been equally relentless and brutal in their efficiency. The demands and scrutiny placed on staff is immense. Call centre managers are like team captains, chivvying staff along, setting targets, driving them all forward individually and as a team.
Call centres don’t work when staff are not in this environment. Not without fundamental changes to the way that businesses operate. And that is why so much of the world seems to be in customer service chaos at the moment. There is no amount of technology that can replace the drive and energy that is needed to run an efficient call centre.
So if, as seems likely, working from home is going to be a long-term habit, companies and government departments need to address how they can increase service capacity lost by having large chunks of staff at home.
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One strategy they’re using is to force us all on to webchats, which can be great (take a bow, Amazon) but also painful as you get passed from person to person, never quite knowing whether they are real or a robot.
I’ve been having my own customer service battle with the DVLA, another organisation whose service levels seem to be teetering.
When I moved house over the summer it was very efficient in issuing new driving licences to me and my wife. But when it came to getting a new vehicle registration document, it cancelled a direct debit, kept me hanging on the phone while constantly dispensing information that turned out to be wrong, sent my documents to the wrong address twice, and then told me that everything I had previously done had been impossible. I guarantee this saga is not over yet.
There is a serious point about the chaos at the DVLA, and that is that if your car is not properly registered, or your driving licence details are wrong, technically you are uninsured.
Then there is HMRC. When we reported on its chaos last month we told how some taxpayers were being threatened with court action because they could not resolve complaints.
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When service levels collapse at businesses it is worth remembering that it is never the fault of the person at the end of the phone: it is always a cultural problem.
The modern world cannot simply get used to rotten service, because it can be more than just inconvenient — it can be dangerous and expensive too.
While we wait for firms to adjust their habits, my advice for getting a problem dealt with is to say that you would like to make a formal complaint.
This forces many firms to register your issue as a problem; ask for a reference number because it shows you are serious; always take a note of the time and date; ask for a recording of your call ( if they’re taping it for training purposes then use it to your advantage); swot up on your rights — in particular don’t let a parcel company muck you around, instead go to the retailer; and if all else fails contact us, we’re always happy to help.
