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Discussion topic: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

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This message was authored by Doc5907 This message was authored by: Doc5907

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Posted by a Superuser, not a Sky employee. Find out more

Just to add my recent experience on this matter. Called Sky Thursday to discuss /dispute certain upcoming price increases.

Started off fine (offshore South Asian gentleman I think) as he listened, then put me on hold for 20 mins and came back very aggressively saying I was wrong and this certain element of my price increase was lower than what was in front of me in black and White in my future bills. Even said to me I can't add up which really annoyed me. After an unwanted argument, I eventually said I'm hanging up and will lodge a complaint. Which I have.

 

Regardless of location, these Cs agents shouldn't really leave you, at end of a call, frustrated, angry and drained..😞

 

Let's see what they say..

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This message was authored by xenon81 This message was authored by: xenon81

Re: Sky replacing UK Costumer Service staff


@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

@Anonymous I wouldn't use customer service locations as a base to choose your providers, as off-shoring the majority of customer services to third party call centres is pretty standard across the board now, as its so much cheaper for the companies to run.


Call centres in the UK are also facing serious recruitment problems with thousands of unfilled vacancies.  Low pay, long hours, frequently abusive customers and few career progression opportunities mean it's usually a short term job and staff leave once something better comes along. It's not only cheaper to offshore, it's almost becoming essential as finding staff in the UK is so challenging. 

This message was authored by MarkGoldsmith This message was authored by: MarkGoldsmith

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Posted by a Superuser, not a Sky employee. Find out more

@Doc5907 wrote:

 

 

Regardless of location, these Cs agents shouldn't really leave you, at end of a call, frustrated, angry and drained..😞

 


Certainly agree with that - if the customer is polite to the agent, the agent should certainly be polite in return.

 

Even with offshoring of CS agents, there does seem to be a issue with training them. Not only of how to engage with customers ( most customers will likely be phoning beacuse they are annoyed and have an issue) but also on the products and services that they are meant to be supporting.

 

I've lost count of the number of times on this forum customers have said " the agent on the phone told me X", and its just been completely incorrect information that this community has had to correct. There should really be no situation other Sky customers are able to better inform of a Sky process, product or service that an actual Sky Customer Services rep.

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Jason+Golding
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This message was authored by Jason+Golding This message was authored by: Jason+Golding

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

@MarkGoldsmith @It isn't correct that most companies use overseas call centres, actually companies are now increasingly returning to the UK. Case in point, BT Group/EE - they have brought all their CS back to the UK, as have Nationwide building society 

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This message was authored by MarkGoldsmith This message was authored by: MarkGoldsmith

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Posted by a Superuser, not a Sky employee. Find out more

@Jason+Golding wrote:

@MarkGoldsmith @It isn't correct that most companies use overseas call centres, actually companies are now increasingly returning to the UK. Case in point, BT Group/EE - they have brought all their CS back to the UK, as have Nationwide building society 


Some companies are trying to return fully to the Uk, the majority of companies that operate  within the UK are not 100% UK customer services based with the majority of staff being based outside the UK (particularly those business with long opening hours of the call centre) so I'm not incorrect.

 

Personally not sure how long the experiment of being 100% Uk based will be able to last as it will be incredibly costly to operate a service in that manner, which is the reason over the past decade or so those services were predominantly offshored in the first place. Particularly with is being so easy for a company to offshore customer services via third party companies.

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Jason+Golding
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This message was authored by Jason+Golding This message was authored by: Jason+Golding

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

@MarkGoldsmith @companies are doing it because customers value UK customer based services and some are willing to pay more for this. BT is a fine example of this. 

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This message was authored by does+any+of+it+ma This message was authored by: does+any+of+it+ma

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Time will tell, if lots of long standing Sky customers like me stayed with Sky because their customer support was good compared to competitors, & now like me are going to leave Sky because their customer support is now just as poor as cheaper competitors Sky may well reverse the changes they have made, or maybe they don't care & are happy to lose existing customers?

This message was authored by TimmyBGood This message was authored by: TimmyBGood

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Posted by a Superuser, not a Sky employee. Find out more

@does+any+of+it+ma wrote:

 Sky may well reverse the changes they have made, or maybe they don't care & are happy to lose existing customers?


Worth noting that since 2018 Sky Group has not been an independent company: it's a division of the Comcast Corporation, and standard practice is to reevaluate aspects of a business such as customer support after an acquisition.

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This message was authored by The+Jazzsaxman This message was authored by: The+Jazzsaxman

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Trying to get in touch with someone from sky is a nightmare. I have had issues with my broadband for 3 months now. It's been down completely and when it's not down it runs at 15mbps rather than 65. I have have four Openreach technicians? Out to sort it. Some didn't even turn up and then said they had turned up but there was no fault( meanwhile my broadband was down for a week. Eventually someone did turn up from Openreach and found a break 70 mtrs from the house. This was after sky repeatedly telling me the fault was in the house and sending out a sky specialist? Who tested it and said the faults outside.🤦🏻‍♂️ two days later they fixed it went down again for 3 days this time. That's 11 days in all. 

Get my bill today and it has two phone calls on it. £5.26 for both. I don't use my landline and even if I did the calls were supposed to have been made whilst the line was down. I spent nearly two hours this morning trying to sort this out. A total waste of time speaking to anyone in India or Bulgaria. Eventually got put through to Glasgow and the guy there had a serious attitude. He wasn't from Glasgow. I've had enough and my contact is up in April and  I will be binning sky.  I'm told they are putting the prices up soon. (Removed) Total shambles Sky.


Moderator note: Removed inappropriate language

This message was authored by does+any+of+it+ma This message was authored by: does+any+of+it+ma

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

Yes I expect a review after an acquisition, but the review should take into account the acquired business's USP, if that is not considered then the equation of saving some resources on out-sourcing customer support services might be at the cost of losing long standing customers who valued the historic customer support & are letting everybody know they are leaving

This message was authored by The+Jazzsaxman This message was authored by: The+Jazzsaxman

Re: Sky replacing UK Costumer Service staff

Sky service has declined so much by moving customer service overseas. Apart from the people here losing their jobs my experience since the move to India and Bulgaria is not good. The call centre in india is dire. They don't listen to you, don't know who can help and pass you on to someone's else. Two hours on the phone to sort out charges that were not mine is just ridiculous. Sky are about to seriously hike their charges. My monthly bill for Broadband and to will increase by about £30 a month after the increase. I would give them a wide berth. I'm leaving in April when my contract is up.

This message was authored by JonD1492 This message was authored by: JonD1492

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

I called the Sky CS people a week or so ago - had a voucher code that gave a free film rental, and there was no obvious way to use it, so rang up for help.

 

The chap I spoke with was Bulgarian, which he voluntarily told me, after he asked me what the weather was like in the UK, and I asked likewise to him.  He was excellent, and then as a kind gesture offered to give me Sky Ultra HD free for a month as a trial.  Lovely, I thought....

 

... Got an e-mail three hours later on, and he'd removed some of my Tv package, "upgraded" me to stuff I'd not asked to do, and added things on a higher price tier than I needed!

 

I was not best pleased, and so I rang back, and spoke to a lady in Bangalore, and she explained that I was wrong, and that nothing had been altered on my account, even though I had e-mail proof showing otherwise.

 

Had to then waste another 20-minutes fighting with her about it all, and getting her to undo all the rubbish nonsense that the Bulgarian chap had done to my account.

 

Really hacked me off hugely, and I was then asked to rate her service with at least a 9, as it would help her out hugely - her words, not mine.  I didn't rate her at all, and if I had, it would NOT be a 9 she'd be getting but something significantly lower.

 

This kind of garbage, is why I hate dealing with overseas call-centres who not only do I struggle to understand their heavy accents and speed of speech, but the constant accusations that the customer has "misunderstood" something (i.e. we're thick) or that we are "mistaken", when we have stuff right in front of us in black-and-white proving our issues, is really not good.

 

I would have used the Live Chat service instead, but that was broken on the day I wanted to use it.

 

Sky needs to sort out its CS.  I don't care where someone is based, or what nationality or race they are, but if you can't speak clearly, and aren't fluent with English,  then please don't do the job.  Heavy accents across international phone-lines, is not a helpful way to deal with customers.

This message was authored by The+Jazzsaxman This message was authored by: The+Jazzsaxman

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

I got an email from them today regarding my complaint. They told me the top team were dealing with it They gave me link to click on to contact one of the top team. I did and it took me to the chat with the digital assistant. I left a message as it says no one was available. Still waiting to hear back from them. It's a total joke.🤦🏻‍♂️

This message was authored by japitts This message was authored by: japitts

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff


@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

 

 

I've lost count of the number of times on this forum customers have said " the agent on the phone told me X", and its just been completely incorrect information that this community has had to correct. There should really be no situation other Sky customers are able to better inform of a Sky process, product or service that an actual Sky Customer Services re


This is not unique to Sky, not by any stretch. Virgin Media have gone down the offshoring route substantially in recent years, and examples of very similar tales have been increasing on their forum noticeably of late.

This message was authored by jimglg This message was authored by: jimglg

Re: Sky replacing UK Customer Service Staff

If it says "Posted by a Superuser, not a Sky employee" I would be very suspicious they were Sky employees........ Replying at all hours, 40K plus posts.....And the funny bit, managing to get problems sorted when nobody can get through to customer services....... where do they get this hotline.....?

 

Why do they say not an employee....I'm not but I dont say it......................?

 

Why dont Sky just give an email........

 

Think I may be banned from this forum soon for some reason......

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