You will have to bear with me... - Better People Recruitment

You will have to bear with me………

Been told that on a call lately?

How many of you have had to wait for more than half an hour to speak to a financial institution. –An institution that has got your money – let’s not forget to mention that bit?

Have you had this – “You will have to bear with us” by means of a pre-recorded voice message. Do we HAVE to bear with you? We don’t actually! We can move our money, business, etc

I am talking about services that we are paying for. We are immediately put into a call answering service with music playing before we have even spoken to anyone? Sound familiar?

From Personal Experience

My mother was told by the customer service team of a well-known bank (after listening to music, on hold, for 40 minutes), to go to the local branch with some paperwork.

When she was no longer required to be shielding, she went to the branch they had sent her to. When she got there, she discovered it had been closed for the last 18 months! Needless to say, she really couldn’t be bothered to phone them and complain.

And that right there is why they get away with it, isn’t it? No one wants to run the risk of another stressful 25-minute wait, listening to that awful music, to get through to a person who then tells you, you need to speak to department Z, because “we don’t deal with complaints”.

From Government Departments to Well Known Brands

Even certain government departments are guilty of this. We want to pay our taxes or ask a question to enable us to get this right and yet we can’t speak to anyone.

I had a similar experience with a well-known German car brand recently- so it appears, doesn’t matter how much you want to spend, you can be treated badly when you want to spend a lot of money too!

Frustrated

It is driving me bonkers that small business owners are doing all that we can to provide the very best service we can so that our businesses survive and thrive.

We make our customers feel important, we are courteous, quick to reply, anxious to do the very best we can aren’t we? Whilst it has to be said that the corporates, the behemoths do not seem to be trying at all.

I wonder if the senior leadership teams know how their phones are being answered. Do they actually ever do any secret shopper or quality assessment work to see what kind of experience incoming callers are experiencing? This isn’t a COVID-related matter. This has been the attitude of these larger organisations for quite a few years now.

And I am sorry to say that a bank that has kept you waiting for 25 minutes before you can even speak to someone, does not inspire me to spend even another 30 seconds completing one of their online customer service questionnaires

Can we assume that they don’t want any more customers? That they really don’t care if people are furious with them?

The Next Time

So the next time you hear someone say “you will have to bear with me”… breathe deeply and imagine your happy place. Or put your phone on loudspeaker and do some exercises, see how many squats you can do before they answer, or you could see how many biscuits you can eat before they answer.

The thing is if it’s a bank that I’m calling, I think I should go for the squats as my waistline numbers really shouldn’t be on the increase from those biscuits! Rant over! What’s getting your goat at the moment?

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