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Re: British Gas Homecare
May I respectfully suggest we put this topic back on stream, and remind ourselves of the state of British Gas, and their performance.
Alex
Re: bosch wff 2001
This is a bit like the Gynaecologist who papered his hall-way through the letter-box.
Sometimes the short cut is longer that the suggested route. 10 out of 10 for effort though.
Alex
Re: LG work
Tech back-up from LG = Nil
Paying up on time = Nil
Spares, suspect only via Connect.
Best left to CDSL to handle the workload, and the accountancy issues.
Alex
Re: Mercury Appliances
Their customer care is out of this world.
The only critscism I may express is they tend to put the customer before the repairer, and for that reason their support to agents may be questionable at times. To be honest that depends on who answers the phone.
The machine is good, alignment of control knobs leave a bit to be desired, but they are good payers which is important.
Alex
Re: Domestic & General
The BER limit is too low at £125 yet D&G claim the machines of today do not justify a larger ceiling. Point taken.
The Comet thing is out of order in one respect as far as I’m concerned. No matter what make machine, Comet do their own repairs. This means you could write off a machine that, (and if the replacment is of a make that you are contracted to repair) you won’t see that customer again as Comet have exclusivity on repairs.
With the BER @ such a low figure, and spares getting out of reach, the levels of write off is steadily increasing, and customer database as far as I’m concerned, dimishing. I had quite a passionate debate on this with Michael Fitzgerald, but fell on Deaf ears. I supose it may be better they used Comet as Currys would insist on banging out C/plan.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
Had a sudden visit from D.P. last Thursday, just dropped in, said he was passing. Bit odd, as I sent an e-mail only the day before asking for clarification on one or two points.
He has agreed a set day per week for outlying postcodes, being Exmoor, and is aware of my concerns regards calls booked of an evening turning out to be next day by the time we open up next morning. Didn’t have a solution though, but I advised him, if presents a problem due to timing, he will find out soon enough.
I suggested perhaps to move towards Direct Transfer, same as MFI. I was told too expensive and too large a scale. MFI he thinks are a mere handful of calls, this in the opinion of CDSL is volume. Means 2 lines tied up in each case, one to accept the incoming call, then the other whilst the transfer takes place. Should be seemless, but some centres could be busy, engaged or even closed.
Now it gets interesting. D.P. tells me that most of the centres who are on this asked for this??? I said I may as well trial it if it is inevitable, and to be honest I think it will be. He tells me there is another contract on the horizon, and part of the deal could well be pre-booking. God knows what, but bet it will be small fry and rubbish.
D.P. also told me in the main the ones who were having an issue with this, were not even CDSL agents. I asked him for some instances, but he declined. Naturally I didn’t know who he was referring to!
Will keep you all updated as things progress.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
kheath wrote:Good on yer Alex, to support you we should keep this in this forum only. As far as my last info goes, Mark, Jason, Philip and myself, who are the other CDSL workers in this room, all rejected the “direct booking”.
Keep us informed and we can maimtain our defence.
KevinPerzactly.
I purposely haven’t responded to the DirectBooking/Inkfish thread just to make it look that all is tickety-boo.
It may actually prove me wrong, but I’ve got little to lose as the workload is not significant in my case, and still under control.
Will update on a regular basis.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
Of course I remember Mastercare. How could I forget, also had the same with B.Gas, Hoover Gias, and before you say it I terminated all of them.
“Thin end of Wedge” and all that. Excuse me for looking stupid but I have my motives. I didn’t volunteer, I was offered this and the hint was it would happen anyway as that is what some of the companies they offer work for require, or will demand.
Heads of agreement, never had one officially, and Dave Parker admits he has no record of me being presented with one. I am putting out e-mails to RF to get clarification on a few things and if not forthcoming will tell them to put it into abeyance.
Somebody in here needs to trial this set-up, and with a bit of luck blow it out of the water. I’m putting myself up for it. Lamb to the slaughter, not me, to bloody old for that one.
Everyone else should keep up their side of the protest though. It will all end in tears I’m sure.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
I was given some names, and will be following it up soon as I am at a meeting next week; which although is not related, I will be seeing one or two. I did speak to someone today who is already on this and he tells me that he moves calls as and when it suits him.
I made it clear that I will do the same, and I will push customers on a couple of days should I need to. I was lead to believe that this should not cause any issues as there are times when there is a mutual benefit. We shall see. It ain’t going to work, we all know that, and we won’t let it.
I have this theory that I don’t see the point in refusing wholesale, I will give it a shot and see if it does work. That way if it goes tits up I am more than qualified to protest and throw my toys out the pram if needs be.
As someone said earlier, not all the agents have the luxury of the motorway corridor, and it is around 40 calls per week, so not shed-loads. To be honest I think we can handle at this stage, but you will be the 1st to know if we get a problem.
I am aware that they are taking calls up to 9p.m. so you may go home at 6 with all new jobs off their system and loaded into your own schedules. Then come in 8 am next day and find a few more booked for tomorrow. It may have seemed like 2 days for them when they booked it, but it is not not 48 hours, which is different. I will remind them of that every now and then.
Alex
Re: Xmas 2006
As Jason says, the smaller players are allowed to get time off. Even to the extent we all get an e-mail in November asking us when are we open over the holiday.
They have second tier cover in most cases, and I thought this was why. However, if all agents were on holiday, what would they do?
We had our quietest 3 days ever in between Xmas & new year. We even closed at 4 p.m. as it was so dead. We would not get away with a shut down though as we have too many commitments, plus we are finding it bad enough to catch after 3 working days out of the system.
Alex
Re: Engineer vacancy wanted.
Take a shot at 01202-303363 Martin Benham Quality Electrical Bournemouth. He covers a fair chunk of N.Dorset.
Or http://www.serviceforce.co.uk there is an engineer vacancy section on there. Ignore the fact there may not be a vacancy showing, the link is new and not everyone has posted yet.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
Parts fits, we are to book. Yes o.k. they know when we have the bits, but they cannot guarantee arrival, or whether damaged etc. even after we sign for them.
We have not placed restrictions on where to book etc. but we are going to trim it to suit us. For example the area we cover for them is mainly 3 big towns, and all easily fed by the Motorway, except Exmoor and we don’t get many up there; secondly the customers in that area are so remote they accept that they are traditionally faced with a service delay. Too bad if they won’t. Any calls that come in for areas we don’t traditionally cover for them, but we go to in any case, they will contact us 1st to see what our workload is like.
I’m at a S.F. meeting in a weeks time, and coincidentally will be seeing someone who has been doing this for them since November, this guy is a realist, and if he has any problems, I will be well informed.
I know what I’m doing, believe me.
Another thing, they asked me if my workload could take any more calls, and if so how many realistically. I remained slightly negative on that.
The bad vibes on Brandt are getting through though. I told them that when they get rid of Brandt, I can possibly take on another 25 calls per week.
Alex
Re: pre booked calls
They are talking about the End of this month.
I’ve been told that several are now doing it, and it is “Supposed” to be working. For whom remains to be seen.
It has been said that ALL appointments will be home all day only, and we will ensure of that believe me. We got very smart with that in the past when we used to receive same day pre-booked calls from Nottingham, they used to come in by fax up to 11.30 and I would have great pleasure in advising customers that, “No Madam, it won’t be today”.
If it is a fridge and they demand we call as arranged, we offer to send a cooker engineer, and the opposite applies if it is a cooker. Once the customer realises that they are a prisoner in their own home for up to 12 hours, and won’t have working machine at the end of it, they soon climb down. Then of course there is the pre-order bits routine, that will slow a few calls as well. If of course it suits us, then we will oblige. Only a third of my area are we the agents for CDSL in any case, and they have a second tier, so if we fall short, they will pass it to another repairer.
The only advantage I can see is that it will save us trying to get hold of customers that have been passed through in the present system. We had a load of calls come in today, and haven’t been able to contact all of them I realise the same will apply if the call is pre-booked, but we will make it clear to the customer we did endeavour to make contact to advise we would not be able to keep the unrealistic appointment.
There is worse to come, and regretfully it is a culture some of us may have to fall into. I don’t like it either, and if it causes too much of a problem, then good night Vienna.
Beko are heading the same way, and there are bound to be others that will follow suit just to keep up.
The rumour is that CDSL are looking at a web-based call logging system. This will allow the consumer to log onto the customer sector of a web site, put in a postcode and be directed straight to the designated repairer, who will then receive an e-mail booking the call. That takes the call operative in Brum right out of the equasion.
Will keep you posted as and when.
Alex
Re: What a year eh!
Thanks Martin for the CD, You were mentioned in dispatches somewhere else on the forums, possibly in recommended listening.
Looks like we are going out with a bang at the expense of Brandt & CDSL
Have a good un.
Alex
Re: CDSL
kwatt wrote:.
It states quite cleary…
This is to confirm that I do not wish my number to be given out to any customer on products out of guarantee and not covered by any other extended warranty.
K.
Damn good point.
Must admit I only skip read the document and assumed it related to Brandt only. I even said as below in my earlier posting, mainly because my conviction was towards Brandt only.
I find that very bizarre, and I’m sure we would not be asked that question of any other brand.
Good topic this, to keep the mind active over the next few days. Pity some offices etc. are now closed.
Never mind
Alex
