When you ring Customer Services.....

[star234]

My goodness, you are suspicious. I am sure that all customers are treated the same. I don't think call centre staff could give a flying fig whether you are a good customer or have sent every item back. They are there to answer calls and deal with them accordingly.

having a status convaying your rating according to your spending habits is exactly what Vodaphone does on its customer care screens when you call their CS/helpline/whatever its called

 

[Boris Bear]

My Tesco club card thing comes with money-off vouchers for wine :blush:, green vegetables and other highly targeted stuff like fabric conditioner, bizarrely. They've simply noted what I've bought, logged it on my account and sold me more stuff.

I've only shopped at Tesco a couple of times in the last three months after they told me they couldn't do anything about something that was off on the use by date as I didn't have a receipt. Hey presto the other day I got some vouchers for £10 off when I spend £50 in one transaction each week for the next 4 or 5 weeks. They would have been so much better off just refunding the £2.50 for the faulty item!

 

[AngelGab]

I've often wondered excatly the same thing :thinking:

Does it trouble anybody else when you ring they first ask can I help you, so you then start to talk about your reason for your call.
Then that conversation gets stopped as they say something along the lines of can I have your name and then your pin number.
Why are they not told to ask to confirm your id and obtain your name before you start to explain the reason for your call ?

:headbang:

Bags, that really drives me mad!....so I try and get them to do the security question (PIN no.) before I start my enquiry....I don't think they like deviating from their script though...it's not just QVC who do this.... :devil:

 

[Toril]

Many companies record phone calls, so QVC are bound to make notes on the reason someone has rung. To be honest, that makes 'good business' sense because if you need a follow up call it usually means you don't have to repeat everything again.

I have always found their CS to be extremely helpful and, in the case of the two-pack Breezie bra fiasco where we only received one bra, I rang them several times and didn't have to keep explaining why I was ringing and I received the 'missing' bra short while later.

I phoned them a few minutes ago about an order and once again they were extremely helpful. They did have more specific details about my order on their system than were showing in my account description though. This fact was also borne out when I rang on another occasion to find out what size I'd ordered in an item of clothing that I wanted to order again (because my account didn't specify it) and within seconds I had the answer so could re-order an item that I knew I liked and that I knew would fit.

I doubt whether we will ever discover if they do actually 'ear-mark' us with a 'good' or 'bad' customer label though.

 

[lesa60]

I think Re cycle's post was helpful and enlightening. In my own area of work, we don't have flags for customers although there can be various historical information and notes stored to assist with enquiries. We are very careful of anything that we note on a customer's record however due to data protection.

There used to be a section within my organisation however that flagged really abusive customers and due to the nature of the work they had quite a few of those. It's got me wondering if that's still allowed nowadays as this was some years ago.

 

[Re Cycle]

I think Re cycle's post was helpful and enlightening. In my own area of work, we don't have flags for customers although there can be various historical information and notes stored to assist with enquiries. We are very careful of anything that we note on a customer's record however due to data protection.

There used to be a section within my organisation however that flagged really abusive customers and due to the nature of the work they had quite a few of those. It's got me wondering if that's still allowed nowadays as this was some years ago.

Thanks, that's very kind of you!

In many ways you could argue that there SHOULD be a field which an Agent can tick for "difficult customer"; just because someone works in a call centre doesn't give members of the public carte-blanche to talk to them like dirt, nor to have the screaming ab dabs. The teams I've worked with have to tread a difficult line between preserving and hopefully increasing company profits by making sure that the customer is happy, and weeding out customers who take the proverbial p***. Noone has the right to be rude to someone on the end of the phone. Some of the calls I used to listen to would shock you!

Anyway, I reckon QVC's customer service is one of the best I've ever experienced and it's nice (for a change) to see that other FMs think so too. I bought one of those fab LG jewellery cabinets last year and the idiot couriers left it in the foyer of my flat - guess what, some toe-rag pinched it! No problem: they sent another one, with strict instructions to the courier to call me on my mobile on the day/afternoon of delivery to warn me that it was on its way. Very pleased.