On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:37:51 -0400, Saul Luizaga wrote:

> Depends, some cases are fictional so those will stay out of
> consideration but, real-life cases maybe be a good reference. 

There's almost always some dramatic license taken with the cases shown in 
movies or on television.  I'm a huge fan of Law & Order (the TV series), 
but I hold no illusions that their presentations are very highly 
dramatized for effect.  I've been in court a few times (never as a 
defendant, once as an observer and twice as a prospective jurist - and I 
was selected once), and it's generally fairly boring stuff that wouldn't 
make good TV.  (I've also got family in the legal profession and a cousin 
who works as a sheriff's deputy, and they confirm that it never really 
gets that exciting in the actual courtroom).

> I wouldn't
> call it a guide since it doesn't guarantee any success but I think would
> give you an idea what to expect. 

I really don't think so.  My experience is limited, but as I stated 
above, it seems that dramatizations have to add stuff to make it more 
entertaining.

> But since our friend here is English
> won't be much of a help, probably he knows better about legal outcomes
> in UK.

Probably, but L&O UK wouldn't be my choice as a guide, either.

Jim

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Oh I see, of course you need the appeal factor on everything on TV but 
what I meant was that real-life based TV/movies cases are more likely to 
show what abuse cases are all about, not something you take notes on, 
you know what I mean?

I've never been in court.

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On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:38:50 -0400, Saul Luizaga wrote:

> Oh I see, of course you need the appeal factor on everything on TV but
> what I meant was that real-life based TV/movies cases are more likely to
> show what abuse cases are all about, not something you take notes on,
> you know what I mean?

I'm not sure I follow....

> I've never been in court.

It's an interesting experience.

Jim

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> Well, this is it. The call handling target *was* 500 seconds per call.

LOL I love it when people set targets like that, then the person who hangs 
up every call after 499 seconds looks to be way "better" than the person who 
spends the time giving out quality advice when it's needed.

Also I suspect that *most* of the calls are quite easily solved in under 500 
seconds, it's just going to be a few that aren't.  Then it's just going to 
be luck of the draw which operator gets more than their fair share of those 
in a month making their results look rubbish.

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scott wrote:
>> Well, this is it. The call handling target *was* 500 seconds per call.
> 
> LOL I love it when people set targets like that, then the person who 
> hangs up every call after 499 seconds looks to be way "better" than the 
> person who spends the time giving out quality advice when it's needed.

QED.

This, I suspect, is how the managers can claim that "everybody else can 
do it". Um, no, they can't, they're just better at gaming the system.

My mum, on the other hand, is one of those rare people who actually 
wants to help the customer. Every service quality measurement they have 
a statistic for, my mum is above target by a mile. The *only* stat below 
target is call duration. Need I explain further?

> Also I suspect that *most* of the calls are quite easily solved in under 
> 500 seconds, it's just going to be a few that aren't.  Then it's just 
> going to be luck of the draw which operator gets more than their fair 
> share of those in a month making their results look rubbish.

Indeed.

BT seems to have an institutional culture of everybody trying to dump 
work on other people as fast as possible. People will transfer calls to 
totally inappropriate departments just to keep their own stats looking 
good. The faster you transfer the call, the faster it becomes "not my 
problem any more". Heaven forbid that *I* should actually do some *work*...

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> My mum, on the other hand, is one of those rare people who actually wants 
> to help the customer. Every service quality measurement they have a 
> statistic for, my mum is above target by a mile. The *only* stat below 
> target is call duration. Need I explain further?

Not to me, but I guess to her manager if he shouts at her.  If I were your 
mum I would simply ask him what to do, simply say would you prefer me to cut 
off callers early in order to reach this target or carry on as I'm doing 
actually trying to solve the problem, or maybe he has another suggestion. 
Get it in writing what she should be aiming to do, as there doesn't seem an 
obvious way to meet the target *and* solve every problem properly.

> BT seems to have an institutional culture of everybody trying to dump work 
> on other people as fast as possible. People will transfer calls to totally 
> inappropriate departments just to keep their own stats looking good. The 
> faster you transfer the call, the faster it becomes "not my problem any 
> more".

Hehe, I guess if your average call duration is 502 seconds and it's near the 
end of the month you need a few 5 second "hang on while i transfer you" 
calls to get under the magic 500!

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>> ...except that she doesn't do that any more. She ended up in the call 
>> center because she was getting too old for lugging ladders and stuff 
>> around in all weather.
> 
> Oh. I imagine there's lots of call for call-center work

Except that call-center work turns out to be what she's not good at. ;-)

> or for 
> management and training of people to pull wires and such.

Possibly. But I'm guessing that requires written qualifications rather 
than just experience. I don't know though...

>> Well, this is it. The call handling target *was* 500 seconds per call.
>> It should be self-evident that this is completely impossible.
> 
> Not at all.

Do you have any idea how many things "must" happen during a call? You 
"must" read the standard greeting, you "must" ask a set of questions to 
determine that you're speaking to somebody authorised to discuss the 
account, you "must" formally appologise for loss of service, you "must" 
explain to the customer how to check their own equipment, you "must" 
warn the customer that if an engineer is sent, there may be charges 
applied (and explain the whole price structure), you "must" conclude the 
call be summarising the actions that will be carried out, you "must" get 
the customer to verbally agree to your summary, etc. There are huge long 
lists of stuff you "must" do - all in 500 seconds? I don't think so.

>> - If somebody calls you and spends 25 minutes screaming at you about 
>> how **** your company is before they will even tell you what they're 
>> calling about, you cannot complete the call in 500 seconds. [Yes, this 
>> is apparently a *daily* occurrance. Some people apparently think 
>> they're important or something.]
> 
> I really can't imagine why she cares, other than it takes too long. I 
> can't imagine how that could bother you emotionally, to have some loonie 
> ranting about the company you work for.

The first two or three calls? Yeah, you don't care. After the 50th call 
of the day, when you're already tired and stressed and you've got a 
manager breathing down your neck and yelling at you to work faster and 
you just want to go home and all anybody has done all day is yell at 
you... it starts to get to you. Especially when this is all your life 
consists of, almost every day.

>> - If some little old lady calls you, and you have to repeat yourself 
>> six times before she even hears what you said properly (never mind 
>> understands what you're asking), you cannot complete the call in 500 
>> seconds.
> 
> True.

Also, if some little old lady who lives in the middle of nowhere and is 
obviously very frail calls to say her phone is busted and she can't 
contact anybody, my mother is the sort of person who would be actually 
worried for this human being's safety, and would want to know that this 
*is* actually going to get fixed promptly. (Needless to say, such fault 
reports get prioritised much higher than normal, but even so...)

>> - If you have to transfer the call to another department, and they 
>> take 20 minutes to pick up the phone, you cannot end in the call in 
>> 500 seconds.
> 
> Sure you can. Watch:   "Here, let me transfer you to the billing 
> department."  Then you hang up on them.

Not with your manager sitting next to you monitoring your call handling, 
no. ;-)

> Why do you think call centers have such a bad reputation?

Because managers seem to think they can handle arbitrarily large call 
volumes without expending any actual resources. Don't bother hiring 
quality staff and paying them real wages, don't bother hiring enough 
people to handle the load. Just hire the cheapest people you can find, 
and whip them until they do the impossible. Much cheaper...

>> Oh, you're still expected to do the  same *work*, just faster.
> 
> No, you're expected to hang up after that many seconds. "Sorry, got 
> disconnected."

Interestingly, the company has just instigated a computerised call 
handling system. It is now physically impossible to hang up. The only 
way to end a call is if the customer hangs up, or you transfer them.

Three guesses why they just did this...

>> You're also not supposed to hang up. 
> 
> Not on purpose at least.

It's an instant disciplinary warning if you do.

>> Apparently the only people more unreasonably than the company is the 
>> customers. Like the people running a business from their house. Phone 
>> stops working, they want 4-hour turnaround fixing it, or else £1,000 
>> per hour for every hour they're out of service, because that's how 
>> much money they claim to be losing by not having a phone. But, 
>> obviously, these people are paying residential phone rates....... Um, 
>> yeah, nice try.
> 
> It's not unreasonable to *ask*. :-)

No. But to call up *demanding* compensation and threatening to sue if 
you don't get it... well, those calls are the easiest to deal with, 
actually. You just say "good luck with that". ;-)

Business rates are way higher For A Reason.

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>> Wait - you mean if somebody is in a contract, it's not necessarily 
>> enforcible?
> 
> Generally, in civilized countries, there are things you can't put into a 
> contract and have enforced. You can write them in, but you can't get the 
> government to force you to obey them.

Does this mean that all that M$ stuff about "we technically own your PC 
now and you can't stop us doing anything we want to it" is not actually 
legally binding?

Suddenly EULAs take on a whole different hue...

(E.g., presumably you can't write an EULA that says in the small print 
"by using this software you agree to surrender your first-born child to 
us". Or rather, you *can*, it just won't mean squat.)

> For example, in California (since we're so big on start-ups), if I 
> create something on my own time with my own money and equipment, it 
> belongs to me even *if* it's *directly* in competition with the employer 
> I was working for.
> 
> In Pennsylvania (where I grew up), the company was allowed to keep you 
> from working for any competitor that sold the same thing to the same 
> customers for something like 6 months or a year or so.

Interesting.

I wonder how any of this applies to the UK. Hmm, Phil would know!

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>>> And no other company manages similar (albeit smaller) such networks?
>> No. That's why it's called a "government-granted monopoly".
> 
> I don't know what kind of work your mum does, but maybe her skills could 
> be reapplied at a mobile phone network of some sort?  BT doesn't own 
> those, as I recall.

No, BT made the "interesting" decision of deliberately selling off it's 
mobile operations. (Probably because they were losing money hand over 
fist, like the rest of BT always has...)

My mum's knowledge is basically

- How BT does business.
- How to install wired analogue telephone systems.
- How to perform diagnostics on wired analogue telephone systems.

I'm not sure how much of that would be relevant to mobile phone network 
technology. I'm also not sure how many staff the mobile operators 
actually employ in the first place, for that matter...

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Darren New wrote:

> Heck, I know people who rant about Microsoft doing things with Windows 
> that will make them more money at the expense of their customers, as if 
> that wasn't their entire job. ;-)

It isn't.

Microsoft's job is to make money. It doesn't necessarily have to be at 
their customer's expense - they just prefer to do business that way 
because it's easier. (And the law does not apply to them.)

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