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Tips on making your Wireless Care Rep happy.

 
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Jason Tandro
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PostJason Tandro Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 5:25 pm   Post subject: Tips on making your Wireless Care Rep happy. Reply with quote

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Yet another chance for me to educate and entertain you on the workings of a job.


Things Everybody Should Know About Wireless Service

How Cell Phones Work

Okay, your cell phone (also called PCS or "handset") is a little radio transceiver. Every time you make a call your signal is sent to a tower. The call is converted to a binary signal that the tower decodes and sends to what we call the "switch". The switch uses a land-line connection to send this signal to a switch on the other side of the call which then sends a signal to the tower nearest the person you are trying to call.

What is Roaming?
Contrary to popular belief, roaming has nothing to do with where you call from. It is based on what carrier's tower you are using. Say you have service with Sprint. If you are using a Sprint tower, then you are not roaming. If you are using a Verizon tower, you are roaming.

Cell phones automatically go to the strongest signal they can get, unless you set your phone to Home Only. So, even if you are sitting in your living room, if you happen to be closer to a Verizon tower, you can still be charged to roaming. Again, set your phone to Home Only to prevent this.

What Affects My Signal?
We don't like to advertise this, but as it is essentially a radio signal the same things that can affect radio transmissions can mess with your service. Cell Phone signals are surprisingly delicate.

Storms, freak weather patterns, indoor versus outdoor, even the new foliage of spring can mess with your signal. And, of course, if there are no cell towers near your area you'll never get a signal. As a frame of reference, cell towers have an average radius of 1.5 miles. If you can't see a cell tower, odds are you won't get a signal, or at least not a very good one.

If you leave your service area, you won't get anything until you get back in it. This includes voicemail and text (although you can check your VM through a landline. Each company has different rules for this but generally it's call your phone number and when you get the VM greeting press # and then when prompted enter your number.


How To Make Customer Care Happy

1. Let us prompt you.
Yes, odds are we are going to ask you for your phone number, name and some method of verification. But let us prompt you. Some reps will ask you straight away, others like to know what your problem is so they know what system to open up (and yes, we have about six different systems we work with).

2. Do not tell us what we will do.
Frontline care are the bottom of the barrel, but we are skilled in many different systems. For our skills, we have very little authority and we are bound by protocol. So do not call in and say "you are going to credit my account" or "you are going to waive this fee." As it is with all customer care, we will do what we can for you, but it's entirely up to our discretion and what protocol dictates.

3. Mistakes can happen.
If you have any question about your bill, call us! We can review what happened and explain everything you need to know.

4. If it's a tech support issue, be very specific.
And by this I mean log the time you're having the trouble. Date and time specifically. We love samples and it helps tech support find your answer faster. Also tell us if you're having trouble sending but can recieve fine, or vice versa. If you're getting an error message, give us the exact error message.

5. Never call from the phone that is having a problem, or a phone that you are changing the number to.
If you are switching what phone your number is attached to (called an ESN change), the phone number of your device, or if your device is having a problem, call us from a different line. Odds are it will save you a call.

6. Extensions on bills and loaner phones are courtesies not something to which you are entitled.
So don't be surprised if we deny you either.

7. You're not special.
Every customer is the most important customer. Which means every one of you will get the same treatment. Sure whining and screaming and demanding to speak with Retention will net you maybe one or two favors, but when it comes time for needing an extension or loaner phone (see above) odds are we'll be less inclined to help you out.

8. Take the survey.
We have a lot of quotas to meet. The most important one (arguably) is something called the Net Promoter Survey. It is usually at the end of your call. It's generally very short (around 3-5 questions depending on your company) and helps the company see how we're doing and rates the service of the individual rep you worked with. So even if you've already taken one survey with one rep, take the survey again to rate the rep you worked with today.

9. We know when you're lying to us.
I get this so often. Here's the thing. General Care has access to the biggest variety of systems and we notate EVERY TIME YOU CALL. Even if you're just calling to check your balance. Sure, we can't call you out on it, but some key phrases to watch for if you're lying to us: "that's not what I'm seeing here", or "well there must be a mistake".

10. Be concise and direct.
Again, working with customers can be very rewarding, but we don't want to hear your life story. Don't beat around the bush telling us what you have done in the past with our service explain to us what the immediate problem is and leave it at that. We get judged on our call handle time, and we're expected to solve all calls within 5 minutes (for us it's 220 seconds).
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