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20 Feb 2008

The deadly embrace of front-line disempowerment

The central Whitehall switchboard 020 7217 3000 is way way better than it was, and works pretty well generally. But man when it goes wrong it looks bad from the customer end, and it’s a classic case of CRM-disempowered front line staff.

I try to call my friend G, who seems to have moved jobs. I get a delay, then a recorded message which says “Thank you for your call. Please be aware that your call may be recorded for staff-training purposes.” Then a polite and efficient sounding person asks who I want. I explain. They can’t find them listed (G hovers in and out of the more “trusted” parts of government) so they “go to HR” who appear to be a deeper source of wisdom. Then I get put through to a number. It rings for ages, and I’m back at ...

...a recorded message which says “Thank you for your call. Please be aware that your call may be recorded for staff-training purposes.” Then a DIFFERENT polite and efficient sounding person AGAIN asks who I want. I explain AGAIN. They AGAIN can’t find them listed (G STILL hovers in and out of the more “trusted” parts of government) so they AGAIN “go to HR” who STILL appear to be a deeper source of wisdom. Then I get put through to a number. It rings AGAIN for ages, and THEN YET AGAIN I’m back at ...

...a recorded message which says “Thank you for your call. Please be aware that your call may be recorded for staff-training purposes.” Then the same (#2) polite and efficient sounding person asks who I want. I explain that the system isnt working very well. Can I just have the number they keep putting me through to and I’ll try aghain later. Clearly he’s not answering the phone, and doesnt use an answerphone (fair enough; neither do I). This leads to a - perfectly polite - “It’s just not possible/I don’t make the rules” type conversation. The perfectly friendly but enfuriating advice is that I streamline the process in future by asking to go straight through to HR in future, so I can be more efficiently fobbed off by a deeper source of wisdom.

Somewhere in the bowels of some server probably in Plano Texas is a digital recording of an exasperated human being [me]protesting that this would be a perfectly sensible solution if my time were a free and infinite resource, and the polite person saying “I quite understand...I dont make the rules...” etc

Wibbi: the call-centre rulemakers heads appeared on a web site where we could launch custard pies at them.

Wibbi: There were no recorded message. Or if there was it said “Gracious taxpayer; we’ll sort out whatever you’re calling about as fast, efficiently and politely as humanly possible. If you’d like to record this call for service-feedback purposes please do so; just press # at the end.” ...and then again after the call is finished “Just to remind you; if you want this call recorded and checked by our customer satisfaction team, just press hash, and we’ll email you the URL where it can be found.”

Wibbi there was a free searchable civil service yearbook online (fume fume). Oh! Hold the fuming! Here it is! Not bad! But not free: £125/year. Not entirely up to date from what I can see. And it still doesn’t answer today’s question.

• Posted by William Heath on 20/02/08 at 2:04pm
• Categories · "What do we want?" · Wibbipedia/MindtheGap · Design: user-oriented
• Comments (5)  Permalink

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