Yeah possibly. The art of call centre management though is matching resource with demand. You can’t have a static resource model. They have had more than enough time to train up agency to deal with peaks. I think something more fundamental is happening though. Based on what she told me about the number of agents and call length. It’s almost like folk are getting stuck in the queue. I think there must be more fundamental system issues.Their logic may be that the huge spike in phone calls is down to the no seasoncards clusterfuck and as the various teething problems with the new admission procedures are ironed out so the number of calls will drop and as such it’s not worth their while to take on and train up new staff.
It is just a great big fuck you to long standing loyal fans though.
I have the same problem. The girl sent me a print at home ticket though by email…did they offer you the same?Took 1 hour and 32 minutes to get through from caller 52. All that to be told that it is not possible to transfer my ticket for the PSG game tomorrow to another supporter. Evidently you can only transfer your ticket if you are a season ticket holder and are in the cup scheme. WTF is that about, what is the logic there. I have come down with flu and cannot atttend so in Supporters Services land the solution is that I will lose my ticket money, another blue will miss the opportunity to attend the match in my place, another empty seat in the stadium for reds to laugh at. This is how we are treated after 48 years of loyal support, supporters services are not fit for purpose.
The club knows it's failed the fans in terms of customer service. That's half the battle I suppose. The question is what are they going to do about it?I spent 50 minutes to get through yesterday only to be told the wrong info and 70 minutes this morning trying to rectify. When I did get through the girl was a gem. Interestingly I asked her how come it took so long. She said there were 20 agents Working the phones and they were expected to close a call between 5 - 7 minutes. I told her I had joined the queue at 29 so on the basis of what she said should have got through within 15 minutes tops. There is something fundamental wrong that any decent management should have fixed by now. I wonder if @Prestwich_Blue has any insight he can share with us.
flu...or man flu?I have come down with flu
We're still trying to get a date for a meeting, let alone minutes, but they will be face-to-face meetings from now on hopefully.I see they are still not fulfilling their promise of minutes of the City Matters meetings @Prestwich_Blue and any other City Matters people on here.
Any explanation for that or is that outsourced as well? Possibly to someone who has no knowledge of the meeting anyway!! Are these still TEAM/ZOOM meetings or actual meetings in person now?
Mine too Colin. Used to design build and implement e2e processes for a major bank. something pretty basic is wrong though that needs understanding. Based on what the agent told me (and she was absolutely terrific btw), they have 20 agents and are getting targeted to close calls between 5-7 minutes. She said because they are trying to be as helpful as possible, they are overrunning that significantly, which tends to suggest the systems they are using are about as good as the ones we have access to. My call took 15 minutes to establish that I can’t electronically transfer my PSG tickets as I’m not on the CL scheme but am a sc holder. (She was kind enough to email me print at home tickets ‘to do what I want with) + I haven’t received my ticket exchange refund for Burnley (that required a call back which I got pretty promptly). Thing is, based on those stats, an average call is taking 48 minutes - 20 agents taking 70 minutes to serve 29 people (that’s the position when I joined the queue), which has to be wrong. I tell you what, I recon it would take us a day to get to the bottom of what’s wrong and come up with a fix. This is no better after months.The club knows it's failed the fans in terms of customer service. That's half the battle I suppose. The question is what are they going to do about it?
Even the Government's strategy is to make public services overwhelmingly digital, with agents only dealing directly with people whose needs are more complex. Yet we're having to phone up for nearly every little thing, and City are implementing new systems and processes that require fans to do that rather than being able sort out their issues online.
Upgrades is the classic example. We've now got a situation where you can transfer tickets at the push of a button, so you should be able to do that online. but we've not been able to implement that. There will alway be a trade-off between implementing new systems and processes quickly, and ensuring all possible scenarios are covered when they are. But we've set that cut-off point at the wrong place too many times.
Obviously Covid hasn't helped. 20 call agents in an office, with supervisors and managers on hand, will be more effective than 20 working from their own homes. The club are being a little evasive about the level of outsourcing but they have said they're trying to bring things back in-house.
They also recognise they've been working in silos, without really understanding the end-to-end customer journey and experience. That is hopefully going to start changing but it won't be overnight, more like years before we've got an off-field operation that matches our on-field one. This is my professional area of expertise and I'd love (and have offered) to give whatever help I can to them with understanding that journey.
You mentioned that you haven't received your money from ticket exchange for the Burnley game. Have you now received your money?? I'm still waiting. I did email & they replied with they need to do more checks & it's not just a simple refund (like a shop)Mine too Colin. Used to design build and implement e2e processes for a major bank. something pretty basic is wrong though that needs understanding. Based on what the agent told me (and she was absolutely terrific btw), they have 20 agents and are getting targeted to close calls between 5-7 minutes. She said because they are trying to be as helpful as possible, they are overrunning that significantly, which tends to suggest the systems they are using are about as good as the ones we have access to. My call took 15 minutes to establish that I can’t electronically transfer my PSG tickets as I’m not on the CL scheme but am a sc holder. (She was kind enough to email me print at home tickets ‘to do what I want with) + I haven’t received my ticket exchange refund for Burnley (that required a call back which I got pretty promptly). Thing is, based on those stats, an average call is taking 48 minutes - 20 agents taking 70 minutes to serve 29 people (that’s the position when I joined the queue), which has to be wrong. I tell you what, I recon it would take us a day to get to the bottom of what’s wrong and come up with a fix. This is no better after months.
They simply said that the ts and cs say refund can take up to 45 days. That runs out Tuesday next week so if it isn’t received by then guess what I have to do?You mentioned that you haven't received your money from ticket exchange for the Burnley game. Have you now received your money?? I'm still waiting. I did email & they replied with they need to do more checks & it's not just a simple refund (like a shop)
Yep...and I'll be doing the same...They simply said that the ts and cs say refund can take up to 45 days. That runs out Tuesday next week so if it isn’t received by then guess what I have to do?
For sure mate. I worked for an industry where even minor outages or service breakdown were likely to be featured in the national press. Its the difference between having customers that can walk anytime they like and fans that can't.I assume that @Saddleworth2 and other guys on here who have knowledge of and experience in designing efficient systems in this field were working for businesses for which revenue and profitability would be adversely affected by a shitpoor customer service operation.
City on the other hand have a captive market who by and large will continue shelling out their hard earned money regardless of the shockingly bad level of customer service they receive. There’s no real incentive for City to up their game
Thank you PB. Hope they get back to some semblance of normal soon. :-)We're still trying to get a date for a meeting, let alone minutes, but they will be face-to-face meetings from now on hopefully.
Amazon are fantastic in my experience. Very few problems but when you need them they do answer the phone. Their website is simple for what must be a highly-complex process involving billions of transactions. We struggle to sell a few thousand away tickets for what is a very simple transaction because the ticketing portal is not compatible with many devices and browsers.Last week I had an issue with Hermes not collecting an Amazon return. Couldn't speak to a human being at Hermes so rang Amazon. Sorted within 2 minutes. No waiting in a queue, just a short menu to get through to a Customer Service person. If Amazon can do it, so can everyone else. City please take note.