Disclaimer: This is based on events seen by myself inside Bell Mobility as a person who works there. This is my personal opinion on how I am seeing things there and does not represent Bell Mobility itself or affiliates. People may agree or disagree. I am only saying what I am noticing.
This is from perspective of a Bell Employee. I want to show how things are on our end so people can understand and not assume that we have more authority and abilities than we really do. At the same time that blame goes to the company and quite a bit of agents for their lack of patience and interest in the job , customers are also to be blamed for their lack of knowledge and research of their purchases and devices.
At Bell Mobility, we are constantly pressured to perform and exceed stats required. Some of these stats are unrealistic and are not planned well. To make matters worse , Management usually have no understanding of how customer service works and just want numbers. I mean how can you limit the amount of time to handle a customer's call when you are supposed to help them? it gets really frustrating when people get so demanding and their issues take over 15 minutes to take care of (our handle time varies between 800-1100 seconds and if it goes around or over that hell is raised).
If you ask for too much help from Tier 2 (on 50% or more of the calls), then its deemed that you have no knowledge and require training. Now , they don't provide any additional training (the initial one is even lacking as they say we should learn from trial and error) and there is nobody else to ask. Half the times the team manager(s) aren't around and if you ask them a question they get angry and refer you to documentations that are outdated and offer no help. It is very frustrating working there with no help or support and yet expected to exceed expectations. Management walk by us looking at us like road kill laughing at us.
Morale is so low and everything they offer to employees has a catch to it ; ex: eating and drinking at your desk , you can do it between calls however there is no mute button so in case a call comes in they don't hear you eating or drinking , so you can't really eat or drink at your desk except on breaks and lunches. Many meetings and surveys get cancelled because of "business needs" on the phone and its busy ... well why is it busy ? because their forecasting is really horrible to say the least.
To make matters worse , Bell Mobility introduced this new queue called specialty to deal with tablets and data devices. Here is the deal, they never informed us that it will have to do with the billing aspect as well until we were in the actual training class and it was too late to pull out. The "perks" that they offered us we got them about 8 weeks after they were promised. There is no management of the calls coming in to know the amount of agents needed so you never know if it will be a busy day and you need additional people or if it will be light day and can let people go for the day to decrease cost. So now the technical support department is slashed into 3 sections with specialty being the least of them.
When people were trained for specialty they were trained for only 2 days on everything including bill where they never dealt with billing before. People on calls didn't know what they're doing and the billing documentations were outdated and did not apply to them , so they put customers on hold for 10-30 mins sometimes or even disconnect the call. The supervisors are not trained on these information so you can't ask them about anything. Bell has deceived its own employees too just like they did with their customers. No wonder morale is low and they constantly have to spend $ on PR and loyalty efforts.
Our dear Quality department , which is supposed to consist of experts who have dealt with calls before and have perfected it , don't have a single idea of what they are doing. First , they are either based in Montreal or in Philippines and so they are very weak or don't speak English. They can easily mistake words you say on the phone and deduct your score. The Quality Score sheet is very vague and is not clear at all to the point where we are always arguing with them over our scores. They really can make you hate the job.
To make matters worse , the specialty agents don't get any extra pay even though they deal with troubleshooting for cellular devices (technical), data devices (technical and billing) and tablets (technical and billing) while not receiving any extra pay ; we get paid the same as the others in the Smart phone or voice Queue who deal with only cellular devices (technical) and maybe data devices (technical - most of them end up transferring the call to specialty anyways cold transfer).
Now to our dear Bell customers. First , know what you're getting into. Don't just take the word of the agent or sales rep. Read about it on the internet as well on the Bell website and find out from multiple sources. Understand everything including billing process and the technical information on the device you're receiving. Learn about it , find out what others said about it before getting it. If you encounter a problem with your device , do basic troubleshooting from the user guide or from the internet by going to google.
Don't expect the agents to know all about your phone , we don't have them in front of us and we look at the guide too (unless we dealt with the phone personally or have a simulator for it). Sometimes people call to ask such stupid questions like how to do something ; go look it up for god sake.
I find that Canadian and North American customers are generally less knowledgeable , less aware, and less intelligent when it comes to their cellular services than the rest of the world. I traveled to many countries and so I seen and compared this. True that some agents may lie or not give proper information due to the lack of training they were provided in the first place , but at the same time you customers owe it to yourself to search and find out first before crying like little girls on the phone to the point we're annoyed enough to route you elsewhere.
Remember , when you're calling into Bell you're dealing with people who are not being paid enough to deal with the bullshit they have to hear and listen to and deal with. People are usually under-trained and are expected to rely on documents that are out-dated or don't even relate to what we're trying to do. Those documents are created by those who don't know how the job is and never done it before.
We are not sitting there with phones on our table to know what the hell you're talking about , so we rely on searching google and reading the user guide on lots of the devices. Therefore sometimes its really useless calling all together and might as well just search it yourself. The work condition is miserable to say the least with no management around to help if needed and the lighting of the place is so bad its depressing , and the seating areas don't help your back or your neck.
The company is even fighting the presence of a union within and there has been news of employees being threatened if they join (according to sources published within company internal communications). Now why would a company not want a union for its employees to make things better for them ?? so for customers , this is what you deal with when you call in.
I personally think its better off not to call except to dispute bills and disconnect your service. Even better , switch to a different telecommunication company all together so you rid yourself of headache of dealing with incompetent unhappy employees who don't even want to be there, and we as employees don't have to deal with your IQ of a squirrel l intelligent, your miserable attitude, and your stupid questions. This is my personal opinion based on what I seen from the company and its customers.
Also, we have very untrained and underpaid Store representatives who have no idea of anything. They call about the stupidest things and ask questions they should already know. They call us in an arrogant attitude as if we are mcdonalds staff or something. Guess what? deal with us better or you be routed to other departments , or even referred to the manufacturer. At the office, people joke about how incompetent those reps are.
At the end , we're both very frustrated (employees and customers). The only employees that are not frustrated are usually pets of management and they get what they want and have good shifts that don't change and have the weekend off. Alot of agents hours changed constantly so you can't plan your life and the days off are horrible (non-weekend) so it adds more to the frustration. Bell employees are not being treated well to the point they're giving away their shifts to work less to get away , and bell customers are frustrated because of the poor service they receive as a result of the low morale and corporate culture of the company. The company promises surveys about employee satisfaction , only one was done within last 2 years and results were never shown. Wonder what that tells you about this company!!
By the way , according to internal sources Bell is no longer hiring Technical Support nor Client Care within Canada (not official) as it will all be overseas in Philippines , India, and other countries from now on. This will start decreasing the jobs within Canada specially Atlantic region to start with and eventually people maybe given the option to become billing agents or be laid off. However since there are many agents at the current time , there maybe lay offs. For customers , this mean expect more outsourcing and language barriers and communication with agents who don't know Canadians nor any place in Canada.
We both should blame the management for not understanding how things are really working for customer facing agents. If anyone wants more information or advice contact me. Feel free to forward this to management of Bell Mobility if possible so they can read and learn better.
