Yesterday I phoned my insurer to insure my new car. What a time consuming and frustrating process. When I first started using them (and I suppose I had better not mention their name) I found them to be perfectly fine. In the intervening period however they appear to relocated their call centre to India. I spoke to 4 people yesterday, all of whom were Indian so I assume they have gone off-shore to save money. The service is now appalling. I had to spell out nearly every word the chap had to write down, for example Avensis and Newcastle upon Tyne. And no, I don?t have a Newcastle accent! It took ages for the chap to understand what I wanted to do and even longer for him to do it. Surely I?m not the 1st person in the world wanting to transfer insurance to a new car and have the certificate sent to a car dealer? A very frustrating experience that has left me wondering if the car will be insured. The net result of this experience is that they will not be getting my custom when its renewal time. Price is not the only thing to consider when getting insurance and I have now lost confidence in them.
Rant over
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Dont rant to us - Rant to them.
If no one complains they wont know any better.
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Interesting comments;
Quite a bit of my business is in call centre consultancy and there is evidence that the "offshoring" especially within India is overheating and the volumes of perfect english speakers is not as large as was initially thought with the effect that the late comers are dredging an overfished pool for good quality staff. When this is linked to wage inflation and poaching of those that are worth the money you can get an idea of how its not going as planned. Some companies are quietly abandoning offshoring as a result.
Also the extended family system and inevitable corruption means that a number of relatively well paid roles are being assigned to those with less than perfect English skills becuase of there "family" connections.
I have done some "issues identification" work with a national telecoms co that has created a big Customer Service operation in India. One of the staggering things to emerge is the abandoned call rate, that is where the customer hangs up someway through the call without resolution being achieved. This suggests there are a lot of unhappy UK based customers trying to use the service but failing to get their problem resolved because largely due to language misunderstandings.
Just wait till the old eastern bloc get their act together; Poland and the old Czech Republic are likley to be the next big offshore destination for these operations.
as always
Mark
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I would add that this 'debate' is not confined to UK customers.
Some large USA organisations have transferred their call centres to India and experience the same problems.
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Oh I already have, via email. I would like to talk to them but the only number for customer services takes you to....India.
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If you have issues that 'customer services' cannot resolve for you write (a letter, not an email) to the Chief Executive of the insurance company concerned highlighting your concerns in a constructive manner.
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I had the same problem when I phoned Norwich Union, I can just imagine 'Bernard Manning types' taking the pink fluffy dice or hanging-up.
The quote that I eventually got was £200 more than my current insurer, the woman on the other end of the phone didn't seem to realize how big a difference this was.
I suspect companies with off-shore call-centers will see a drop in their profits and will have to move back to the UK. Wage-costs might be higher but they won't loose as much business.
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My experience of call centres in the Uk is pretty low in the customer satisfaction stakes.
I have experienced both broad Irish and Scottish accents which are difficult to understand. Both times from a major telecoms provider. On one accasion I had to give up! The call handler was incapable of understanding the problem, and I could not understand the answers without continuous repitition and clarification. My experience of Indian call centres has been that the intellectual and language capabilities of the staff has been way above thatthat you find in the UK.
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pmh (was peter)
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The cheapest quote I've just received is from Norwich Union, but I know the call centre is in India - fine when you are getting web quotes, an absolute nightmare if you have a query out of the ordinary.
I'll be paying the 10% extra and continuing to use Frizzell whose staff are still in the UK - although explaining that an A3 Sportback isn't necessarily a 'Sport' took a bit of sorting out - they are known in the insurance trade as an A3 5 door.
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"The cheapest quote I've just received is from Norwich Union, but I know the call centre is in India - fine when you are getting web quotes, an absolute nightmare if you have a query out of the ordinary."
If you really want to tear your hair out, try making a claim with this firm, or even asking for an explanation of some policy details. My daughter was in tears after trying to get someone to understand that because someone had run into the back of their car, she wanted it repairing.
The house insurance is pretty dreadful too. NU do a lot of apologizing.
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The indian call centres follow exactly the processes that they are given to follow.
Typically these are over proscriptive, unrealistic, excessively detailed and low-level and prevent the use of any initiative. This is usually the fault of the company trying to outsource its call centre.
Outsourcing is a skill, and not the same as running a call centre, or any other function, in-house. Both contract placement and ongoing management need to be done by experts, not the people who couldn't run the in-house call centre in the first place. Virtually nobody realises that and its not going to get better until they do.
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There is a severe disconnect between call centre and customer service, before you even throw in outsourcing and offshore.
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Well well: I have just spoken to them to check all was correct with what I arrnaged yesterday. Turns out it was not, a few key details had been entered incorrectly. Hopefully all is well now.
No way are they getting any more business from me.
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as for terrible service over the phone the inland revenue take some beating, i dont know whether id call it call centre or not, its not that organised, u can spend hours being passed from idiot to idiot each knowing less about tax than your little finger
as for indian insurance call centres, well insurance companies need to keep costs down, car insurance is primarily cost focussed sale, attempts to sell on good service or speedy payment of claims largely failed, but youre right some of the more extreme bad call centres will lead to customer defections
BT are pretty bad too, as are ticketmaster
call centres are hard to do well, and not many manage it
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Any point in sending a written complaint to the Company ? If incorrect information was recorded it potentially exposed you to a void policy. Complaints, are presumably, still dealt with in the UK.
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Had a problem myslef last year with NU's Indian call centre. To cut a long story short, my aunty was phoning to put me and my cousin on her car for foreign use. She gave the dates of travel, and thought all was well. When the green card turned up it only ran from 1730 hours on the first day of travel (that was the time of the phonecall, the woman didnt ask what time to start and if she had any clue about anything she might have asked or simply put 0001 hours) so had to ring back and change it, for which they wanted an amendment fee (which they asked for but quickly dropped when we pointed out it was their fault) and as a result had to travel most of the first day with incorrect paper work (it was too late to send the ammended one by then).
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oh yea lloyds bank taking the calls away from the branches and pumping them into call centres was and is a total disaster
moved to rbs where you can actually get to speak to a banker, rather than a teenager in a call centre
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If you don't like call centres in India, change to another firm.
The NFU Mutual is very good. You speak to English people ( maybe the odd Scot ) and the quotes are very competitive.
If you are over 50, Saga are also very good.
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I use RBS Direct banking and have never had a problem in all the many years I've used them. I can speak to the branch whenever necessary as well.
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I've always found Direct line excellent in this respect. Seem to be able to get through quickly (no endless Vivaldi to listen to) and written confirmation of Green Card/amendments confirmed by post the next day.
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Direct Line, Churchill Insurance, Green Flag, Tesco Home and motor insurance, Tesco personal finance and RBS all use the same call centre. Well they dont actually they are all interlinked, you could be phoning any one of them and not know it. They are the best of a bad bunch IMHO
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What is it with Vivaldi and Mozart - why not some Debusi or indeed Elgar ?
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(no endless Vivaldi to listen to)
Vivaldi? If only!
But on the subject of car insurance, I'm another ex-Norwich Union client - following a time consuming and very frustrating call to an Indian call centre.
Oddly enough, the company I am now with is underwritten and administered by Norwich Union - but the person on the other end of the phone can understand me (and vice versa).
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>What is it with Vivaldi and Mozart - why not some Debusi or indeed Elgar ?
Puccini is bringing back some happy memories at the moment.
>There is a severe disconnect between call centre and customer service, before
>you even throw in outsourcing and offshore.
Dell discovered this the hard way.
Kevin...
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Being an owner of a Gateway (a few years ago) I found it was better to phone at a peak period when calls were bounced accross the Atlantic and you got the American on-call techie...
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This thread is getting silly with lots of daft opinions being stated by people who know not of what they speak.
That I could live with.
However, IMO its getting dangerously close to descriminatory behaviour and getting a long way from motoring.
That I cannot live with.
Half a dozen notes deleted and thread locked.
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