Call Center Conflict

[Soontir C'boath]

Yes of course, I would not have the company work at a loss but if they can do both, making money and keeping customers happy in reasonable circumstances that'd be great.

The way I see this case, it's a caller who takes the time ordering, spends more time trying to get a delivery date, and now presumably spends more time back to the ordering department to cancel the order (so it's now a loss of revenue and time) or more time when she calls back to try and get another delivery date. This is a waste of time and if that is going to happen anyway, might as well have a solution to keep the sale.

Edit: Ooooooh.

[Dalton]

JSF's spammy flamebait one-liner bullshit, and Soontir's response, have been split off to the Barrel.

[Vendetta]

It's called pen and paper.

Have you ever seen a call centre? Things written down on bits of paper will get lost and forgotten in minutes, if not sooner.

Besides which, capturing identifiable customer data on hardcopy is a potential source of breach of the Data Protection Act here in the UK, so in any decently operating call centre you are actually not allowed to write things down, and if you do you have to securely destroy them as soon as you're finished with them.

[Vendetta]

The way I see this case, it's a caller who takes the time ordering, spends more time trying to get a delivery date, and now presumably spends more time back to the ordering department to cancel the order (so it's now a loss of revenue and time) or more time when she calls back to try and get another delivery date. This is a waste of time and if that is going to happen anyway, might as well have a solution to keep the sale.

Of course, that doesn't mean there's magically going to be a delivery slot available on the date that customer originally wanted, because even delivery drivers do not work infinite length days, and squeezing in even one delivery can massively extend a driver's day if it means getting caught in urban rush hour (or even significant time driving at urban speed limits, because delivery drivers have to stick to those, so there is a practical limit to the distance they can cover in a day), and if there really isn't a delivery slot available, well they'll just have to suck it up and take delivery on a date when there is a slot available.

[Soontir C'boath]

It's called pen and paper.

Have you ever seen a call centre? Things written down on bits of paper will get lost and forgotten in minutes, if not sooner.
Besides which, capturing identifiable customer data on hardcopy is a potential source of breach of the Data Protection Act here in the UK, so in any decently operating call centre you are actually not allowed to write things down, and if you do you have to securely destroy them as soon as you're finished with them.

That's good to know. Though I should say securely destroy them after being finished with them could mean after the order's been processed (shipped out, et al) which I would presume include orders that come in from the mail which Mr Bean seems to imply they can handle those as well.

Of course, that doesn't mean there's magically going to be a delivery slot available on the date that customer originally wanted, because even delivery drivers do not work infinite length days, and squeezing in even one delivery can massively extend a driver's day if it means getting caught in urban rush hour (or even significant time driving at urban speed limits, because delivery drivers have to stick to those, so there is a practical limit to the distance they can cover in a day), and if there really isn't a delivery slot available, well they'll just have to suck it up and take delivery on a date when there is a slot available.

If you had read this thread, the original poster said the computer program was mentioned to have had delivery dates/times that were available and then all of a sudden not anymore. So unless they managed to fill out the orders in a wink of an eye for the same day, they're more likely still available.

[Mr Bean]

It's called pen and paper.

Have you ever seen a call centre? Things written down on bits of paper will get lost and forgotten in minutes, if not sooner.
Besides which, capturing identifiable customer data on hardcopy is a potential source of breach of the Data Protection Act here in the UK, so in any decently operating call centre you are actually not allowed to write things down, and if you do you have to securely destroy them as soon as you're finished with them.

That's good to know. Though I should say securely destroy them after being finished with them could mean after the order's been processed (shipped out, et al) which I would presume include orders that come in from the mail which Mr Bean seems to imply they can handle those as well.

The US also has laws about such as well. We were allowed to take notes but any and all paper had to be destroyed at end of day if contained any consumer information on it. Even a phone number would require you to get rid of the whole page.

Mostly because any call center that handles orders also handles Credit card numbers and with all the info we had it would have been stupid ease to steal whole identities +credit cards for bad ju ju. So all paper was collected and shredded at the end of your shift.

[Soontir C'boath]

I'm looking at a few things such as the FACTA Disposal Rule and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and they mainly state that the policy the company decide on how to remove information should be 'reasonable'. That end of day rule sounds like it's just company policy.

[PeZook]

I don't know why you keep thinking the employee has to go to another department "every time" an order comes along which seems to be where you add the waste of time. I doubt they would do what you say in the days before computers came along.

Jesus christ, will the form just teleport to where it's needed? Somebody will have to physically handle it and file it away at the end ; There are additional steps you can't circumvent when working outside a computer network, no matter what.

Hence why companies even bother with computerization at all.

If it's because of delivery dates, the urgency assumed seems to be out of place when it's apparent orders from this company are not necessarily given the next day or so nor would it have to be guaranteed such swiftness in the company policy (in this case of transporting furniture anyway).

The form (if there is one) will have to be taken to the people actually doing the shipping at some point ; It's an extra operation that's entirely avoidable by simply moving the customer to a different day.

I suppose all those companies that still uses mail order-catalogs and have to spend money on the catalogs and employees time to process the orders written on the form that comes with the catalog coming in from the mail are a work of fiction...

You do know these orders are entered into a computer system by a desk drone at some point and then processed like every other order everywhere else, right? Unlike the situation in this case where it's the computer system itself that causes a (small) problem.

Boy those mail ordering companies are screwed if it has to be one or the other! I suppose it wasn't synergy when mail catalog companies included the telephone and then onwards to the internet/computer to process orders.

The only difference is the input, not the procedure itself.

No, because the subjective opinion of superiority you seem to grab off the caller only comes from you.

I actually grabbed it from a post in this very thread (the "computers rule our lives!" post)

Oh bull, you're entire argument was that it wasn't normal operating procedure and shouldn't be done while I've just shot you back with your own example of the bank no less that would cost some time and would still be in place.

My actual argument was that a call centre rep saying "the computer won't let me do X" is a perfectly justified excuse if that's the only tool he has, and that a customer doesn't get to issue smug statements of superiority about the company and the rep because the rep won't lie to them about the problem actually being XYZ.

It doesn't even have to be done through paper. It was just one other option if the computer refuses to work. If the computer program had an override to fill orders when it's clear the computer was wrong, that'd work too.

And if it doesn't you'd demand the rep modify the system for you while you hold, while sarcastically declaring "computers must run your lives!"?

Remember this all started because the program his company uses is finicky in which he stated that sometimes it wouldn't give delivery dates at times that were suppose to be available. Which means the delivery date the lady wanted could have been available and could have been handled through other means.

If she didn't hung up in disgust, then perhaps it could've been.

[Vendetta]

If you had read this thread, the original poster said the computer program was mentioned to have had delivery dates/times that were available and then all of a sudden not anymore. So unless they managed to fill out the orders in a wink of an eye for the same day, they're more likely still available.

I did read the thread, and what I read was quite different to what you appear to have understood. What Zaune said was that the system would report some slots filled and then on a subsequent booking attempt report them as open. That indicates that the slots being shown open is the misreport, and therefore the concept of having an "override" for it is silly.

Also, the idea of call centre staff "taking" anything to a delivery depot is also silly, because a call centre is just that, a call centre a dedicated single purpose site which solely and only handles phone calls, it's not on the same site as the delivery hub, if the delivery hub even is a single site (the company I work for has something like 25 delivery hubs spread all over the UK and Ireland). So the only ways to communicate that would be either to email it, leaving the customer in the dark as to whether the slot will be available for anything up to a day because the delivery hub have work to do processing and fulfilling the deliveries, so aren't sitting watching an email inbox all day or to phone it across, which well, see above, they have their actual job to do, they're not there to answer phone calls that's what the call centre is for.