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firewillow mentioned sometime yesterday (or maybe today) that she actually likes long posts on her friends list. Consider yourself served, babe. ;)
So, here's what's been happening with me (in case you were interested).
I will be working over the holidays. A lot. Without being paid overtime. 'Cause Bell Mobility are a bunch of stingy fucks. Ah well. At least I'll be paid.
Today was one of the most frazzling yet personally rewarding days I've had working at Bell Mobility. Productivity-wise it blew vaster chunks than Mt. Etna, but that was really beside the point. I spent the day fielding very few calls, but the calls I got were all horrendously irate clients whom I managed to send home happy, which always gives me a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction. I will now allow myself to bore you with the details of two such calls.
1- In the morning I received a call from a slightly annoyed-sounding client who briskly informed me that he'd just received a call but hadn't been able to hear anything from the other person at all. I hastened to assure him that I would credit him for the call (1 minute is nothing to a company like BMC: it's 25ç), and that at the same time I would send off a report to our technicians so they would go take a look at the network and see if there was indeed something wrong there.
The client interrupted me, saying that I needn't bother as he was leaving the company soon anyway. This set off any number of alarm bells in my head. This is the fourth quarter, which means we've been given the order to save all clients at all costs. It is far cheaper for us to keep a client than to activate a new line for a new client (taking into consideration advertising, promotions, activation and marketing and agent fees), so we need to keep our churn rate as low as possible.
(Brief explanation of "churn": that's the number of clients who deactivate their lines in a given month. The higher your churn, the worse your company is doing. For example, at BMC, our churn is at about 28 per thousand give or take. At Fido, their churn is closer to 50 per thousand. That is why Fido is going to go out of business and BMC isn't. ^_-)
So, turning on my best customer service tone of voice and sitting up straight in my chair, I ask my client why he wants to terminate his account, because there must be something I can do to fix whatever he's displeased with and thus persuade him to remain our loyal customer as he has been for over a year now.
Turns out that his incredibly expensive Samsung is faulty, and that he very often doesn't hear his incoming calls. Up until now, customer service have been obdurate in telling him that he has to buy a new phone, and that no we won't send him a new one free. This is why he wants to deactivate his line.
Now, anyone in my position would immediately like to go find all those numbknuts and beat them all to death with their own keyboard for not sending this client a phone, and here's why: I check the client's AREC (more on that in a second) and see that it sits at well over one thousand dollars.
AREC is the client's annual revenue. I'm letting you in on a trade not-so-secret here, so if anybody asks, you didn't hear it from me. ^_- We are entitled usually to use 25% of a client's AREC as a margin of manoever for retention purposes. Translated into English, that means that I can offer services and hardware and accessories to this client free for a total value of 25% of his annual income at Bell Mobility. For Christmas, we're allowed to double this (and this has been going on for the last three months), so in essence we have 50% of the AREC to play with.
What does that translate to for me in this case? About $500. I check the rest of the account. This client has received NO, that's right NO promotions at ALL this year. So I can basically go to work for this guy, metaphorically speaking.
After numerous phone calls, checking and double-checking, and an hour of my time and twenty minutes taken out of my lunch break, I saved the client and signed him onto a two-year contract. What did I have to do? I sent him a free Motorola Timeport P270c along with a car lighter adapter and a leather case, put him on a very advantageous 500 minute plan with 40% off his long-distance calls in Canada, gave him all his incoming minutes free for one year and at $10/month after that and free voice mail and call display for a year and at $8/month after.
*sigh* If people hadn't been sitting on their thumbs before me, we would have kept this guy just by sending him the goddamned phone. But since the idiots who took the calls had spoken with him, my client had the time to go to Telus Mobility and get a pretty good offer. I was only able to keep him because he ran a business with his cell phone and it would be a hassle to change his number.
*grumble*
Still, it was a damned good deal and a damned good save, and Bell Mobility owes me one.
2- The second call was not as good in the eyes of my company, because the caller wasn't actually a client. Still, it was an important public relations gesture, and I'm very glad I spent an hour on the phone with the lady who called.
Those of you living in Québec and Ontario might have seen the new Christmas Gift Pak or Gift Box promotion that Bell Mobility is offering currently. If you haven't, it's not serious. ^_-
Anyhoo, the promotion itself is pretty good: for the (reduced) price of one of three cell phones, you get the first three months of service free. No connection charge, no system access fee, no 911 charge, nada. So you recoup on the price of your phone after the three months are up anyway, and you're under no obligation to keep the service (even though we hope you will).
The Gift Pak (unlike the Gift Box) is not offered in stores. It's only available through Bell Mobility or Bell Canada or through a Direct Marketing Channel (those are the annoying people who call you up to sell you stuff). You place your order, which we then have sent to you by Purolator. What you receive is not a phone, but a silver metallic box with a lovely card in it telling you what kind of phone you're entitled to. This makes it a nifty stocking-stuffer type of deal, I suppose. Then you call the toll-free number in the package, have your phone activated, and it's sent to you within 48 hours all ready to use. The Gift Pak can be charged to your Bell Mobility account, to your Bell Canada account, or directly to a major credit card, as you prefer.
With me so far? Good. Well, this nice lady had received a call from Bell Canada offering her the Gift Pak, which she politely but firmly declined. The salesperson, however, was apparently not talking very clearly and hung up very rapidly on her, so the client was understandably a little confused and worried. She called Bell Mobility immediately and was told that they couldn't see an order in their systems, but that if such a package was to arrive by Purolator that she should refuse it and that it would go straight back to Bell Mobility.
All good. So this morning (those conversations took place on Wednesday) while she's at work Purolator arrives with a package. The babysitter, not knowing about all this, accepts the package, thus complicating our poor client's life considerably.
Once she's been apprised of this, our client calls up Bell Mobility to tell them that there's been a mistake, that she never asked for this Gift Pak. She speaks to three different people who tell her three different stories. The second person (wait for it) asks her to peel back the sticker to reveal the PIN number on the card so that they can issue a refund cheque, and she does so. She then gets transferred to someone else, who says that the refund cheque will take from eight to ten weeks to reach her, by which time of course her Bell Canada bill will be due.
The client, naturally, freaks out. She doesn't have $99 after Christmas to pay on top of her regular Bell Canada bill. She speaks to a supervisor named Alexander, who apologises profusely but says there's nothing he can do to speed up the delivery of the cheque as it's all done by computer. Seeing that she's insisting, he decides (presumably) to shunt the problem off to someone else, and he tells the client he's transferring her to the Marketing Department to see if there's anything they can do.
She falls on me. Yeah, I'm not the Marketing Department. Apparently the supervisor didn't know his extension numbers. Whatever. I hear the whole story as I told it to you, except with more emphatic language (although she used no profanity, to her credit) and in a more convoluted way.
So I once again made use of my best client-soothing sk1llz and stayed on the phone with her for an hour, talking to the Direct Fulfilment people, then my help desk, then my supervisor, then Bell Canada. I finally spoke to someone who didn't have their head up their ass at Bell Canada. Nice girl named Shirley, who reminded me a lot of me. We reassured the client that she would a) receive her refund cheque before her next bill was due and b) even if she didn't we would ensure that she would have no late fees any future bills or incur any kind of penalty for the salesperson's fraudulent behaviour.
Another satisfied customer. She left a message on my supervisor's voicemail telling him I deserved a promotion. Instead I got a high five, and I might even get a little cardboard star saying that I'm loyal to our customers. Enh, I'll take what I can get.
In other news, I had to stay at work an hour later to work on follow-ups which that last call had prevented me from doing (it took me right up to my finishing time). I hope they pay me overtime. Unlikely. Ah well, at least I can be satisfied with a job well done.
I think that's my "problem" though. I'm happier knowing that my clients are satisfied than knowing that I've met my goal. Today all those long complicated and expensive calls essentially meant that none of my goals were even slightly close to being met, but I feel a lot better than on days when I meet those objectives (even though I'm beat today).
Spending day with the Paternal Unit tomorrow. I think I may try to persuade him to try La Transition for lunch. It seems interesting, and they have whole wheat pasta or something. I want to try a new restaurant, dammit.
Then we're going to see Bowling For Columbine, which the Paternal Unit wants to see. It looks like it'll either be great or terrible but not in-between. Will let you know if you're interested.
After that, I'm a-goin' dancin' atsorceror's fundraising thingamajiggy. Ought to be fun as long as I remember my dancin' shoes.
Urgh. Off to post another smaller announcement which'll get buried in this post.
firewillow mentioned sometime yesterday (or maybe today) that she actually likes long posts on her friends list. Consider yourself served, babe. ;)So, here's what's been happening with me (in case you were interested).
I will be working over the holidays. A lot. Without being paid overtime. 'Cause Bell Mobility are a bunch of stingy fucks. Ah well. At least I'll be paid.
Today was one of the most frazzling yet personally rewarding days I've had working at Bell Mobility. Productivity-wise it blew vaster chunks than Mt. Etna, but that was really beside the point. I spent the day fielding very few calls, but the calls I got were all horrendously irate clients whom I managed to send home happy, which always gives me a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction. I will now allow myself to bore you with the details of two such calls.
1- In the morning I received a call from a slightly annoyed-sounding client who briskly informed me that he'd just received a call but hadn't been able to hear anything from the other person at all. I hastened to assure him that I would credit him for the call (1 minute is nothing to a company like BMC: it's 25ç), and that at the same time I would send off a report to our technicians so they would go take a look at the network and see if there was indeed something wrong there.
The client interrupted me, saying that I needn't bother as he was leaving the company soon anyway. This set off any number of alarm bells in my head. This is the fourth quarter, which means we've been given the order to save all clients at all costs. It is far cheaper for us to keep a client than to activate a new line for a new client (taking into consideration advertising, promotions, activation and marketing and agent fees), so we need to keep our churn rate as low as possible.
(Brief explanation of "churn": that's the number of clients who deactivate their lines in a given month. The higher your churn, the worse your company is doing. For example, at BMC, our churn is at about 28 per thousand give or take. At Fido, their churn is closer to 50 per thousand. That is why Fido is going to go out of business and BMC isn't. ^_-)
So, turning on my best customer service tone of voice and sitting up straight in my chair, I ask my client why he wants to terminate his account, because there must be something I can do to fix whatever he's displeased with and thus persuade him to remain our loyal customer as he has been for over a year now.
Turns out that his incredibly expensive Samsung is faulty, and that he very often doesn't hear his incoming calls. Up until now, customer service have been obdurate in telling him that he has to buy a new phone, and that no we won't send him a new one free. This is why he wants to deactivate his line.
Now, anyone in my position would immediately like to go find all those numbknuts and beat them all to death with their own keyboard for not sending this client a phone, and here's why: I check the client's AREC (more on that in a second) and see that it sits at well over one thousand dollars.
AREC is the client's annual revenue. I'm letting you in on a trade not-so-secret here, so if anybody asks, you didn't hear it from me. ^_- We are entitled usually to use 25% of a client's AREC as a margin of manoever for retention purposes. Translated into English, that means that I can offer services and hardware and accessories to this client free for a total value of 25% of his annual income at Bell Mobility. For Christmas, we're allowed to double this (and this has been going on for the last three months), so in essence we have 50% of the AREC to play with.
What does that translate to for me in this case? About $500. I check the rest of the account. This client has received NO, that's right NO promotions at ALL this year. So I can basically go to work for this guy, metaphorically speaking.
After numerous phone calls, checking and double-checking, and an hour of my time and twenty minutes taken out of my lunch break, I saved the client and signed him onto a two-year contract. What did I have to do? I sent him a free Motorola Timeport P270c along with a car lighter adapter and a leather case, put him on a very advantageous 500 minute plan with 40% off his long-distance calls in Canada, gave him all his incoming minutes free for one year and at $10/month after that and free voice mail and call display for a year and at $8/month after.
*sigh* If people hadn't been sitting on their thumbs before me, we would have kept this guy just by sending him the goddamned phone. But since the idiots who took the calls had spoken with him, my client had the time to go to Telus Mobility and get a pretty good offer. I was only able to keep him because he ran a business with his cell phone and it would be a hassle to change his number.
*grumble*
Still, it was a damned good deal and a damned good save, and Bell Mobility owes me one.
2- The second call was not as good in the eyes of my company, because the caller wasn't actually a client. Still, it was an important public relations gesture, and I'm very glad I spent an hour on the phone with the lady who called.
Those of you living in Québec and Ontario might have seen the new Christmas Gift Pak or Gift Box promotion that Bell Mobility is offering currently. If you haven't, it's not serious. ^_-
Anyhoo, the promotion itself is pretty good: for the (reduced) price of one of three cell phones, you get the first three months of service free. No connection charge, no system access fee, no 911 charge, nada. So you recoup on the price of your phone after the three months are up anyway, and you're under no obligation to keep the service (even though we hope you will).
The Gift Pak (unlike the Gift Box) is not offered in stores. It's only available through Bell Mobility or Bell Canada or through a Direct Marketing Channel (those are the annoying people who call you up to sell you stuff). You place your order, which we then have sent to you by Purolator. What you receive is not a phone, but a silver metallic box with a lovely card in it telling you what kind of phone you're entitled to. This makes it a nifty stocking-stuffer type of deal, I suppose. Then you call the toll-free number in the package, have your phone activated, and it's sent to you within 48 hours all ready to use. The Gift Pak can be charged to your Bell Mobility account, to your Bell Canada account, or directly to a major credit card, as you prefer.
With me so far? Good. Well, this nice lady had received a call from Bell Canada offering her the Gift Pak, which she politely but firmly declined. The salesperson, however, was apparently not talking very clearly and hung up very rapidly on her, so the client was understandably a little confused and worried. She called Bell Mobility immediately and was told that they couldn't see an order in their systems, but that if such a package was to arrive by Purolator that she should refuse it and that it would go straight back to Bell Mobility.
All good. So this morning (those conversations took place on Wednesday) while she's at work Purolator arrives with a package. The babysitter, not knowing about all this, accepts the package, thus complicating our poor client's life considerably.
Once she's been apprised of this, our client calls up Bell Mobility to tell them that there's been a mistake, that she never asked for this Gift Pak. She speaks to three different people who tell her three different stories. The second person (wait for it) asks her to peel back the sticker to reveal the PIN number on the card so that they can issue a refund cheque, and she does so. She then gets transferred to someone else, who says that the refund cheque will take from eight to ten weeks to reach her, by which time of course her Bell Canada bill will be due.
The client, naturally, freaks out. She doesn't have $99 after Christmas to pay on top of her regular Bell Canada bill. She speaks to a supervisor named Alexander, who apologises profusely but says there's nothing he can do to speed up the delivery of the cheque as it's all done by computer. Seeing that she's insisting, he decides (presumably) to shunt the problem off to someone else, and he tells the client he's transferring her to the Marketing Department to see if there's anything they can do.
She falls on me. Yeah, I'm not the Marketing Department. Apparently the supervisor didn't know his extension numbers. Whatever. I hear the whole story as I told it to you, except with more emphatic language (although she used no profanity, to her credit) and in a more convoluted way.
So I once again made use of my best client-soothing sk1llz and stayed on the phone with her for an hour, talking to the Direct Fulfilment people, then my help desk, then my supervisor, then Bell Canada. I finally spoke to someone who didn't have their head up their ass at Bell Canada. Nice girl named Shirley, who reminded me a lot of me. We reassured the client that she would a) receive her refund cheque before her next bill was due and b) even if she didn't we would ensure that she would have no late fees any future bills or incur any kind of penalty for the salesperson's fraudulent behaviour.
Another satisfied customer. She left a message on my supervisor's voicemail telling him I deserved a promotion. Instead I got a high five, and I might even get a little cardboard star saying that I'm loyal to our customers. Enh, I'll take what I can get.
In other news, I had to stay at work an hour later to work on follow-ups which that last call had prevented me from doing (it took me right up to my finishing time). I hope they pay me overtime. Unlikely. Ah well, at least I can be satisfied with a job well done.
I think that's my "problem" though. I'm happier knowing that my clients are satisfied than knowing that I've met my goal. Today all those long complicated and expensive calls essentially meant that none of my goals were even slightly close to being met, but I feel a lot better than on days when I meet those objectives (even though I'm beat today).
Spending day with the Paternal Unit tomorrow. I think I may try to persuade him to try La Transition for lunch. It seems interesting, and they have whole wheat pasta or something. I want to try a new restaurant, dammit.
Then we're going to see Bowling For Columbine, which the Paternal Unit wants to see. It looks like it'll either be great or terrible but not in-between. Will let you know if you're interested.
After that, I'm a-goin' dancin' at
sorceror's fundraising thingamajiggy. Ought to be fun as long as I remember my dancin' shoes.Urgh. Off to post another smaller announcement which'll get buried in this post.
