Poor Customer Service - Bell TV

I spent eighteen minutes, Wednesday, February 10, on the phone with a nice woman sitting in Kitchener, Ontario at a Bell Canada call centre. I wanted to order the five free Bell TV HD Olympic Channels that are being advertised quite extensively on the bell.ca website. Enjoy all the great action on HD - free! But you need to call to order the channels. So I did. February 10 was the first day you could call to order the channels which start airing on the 12th, the first day of the 2010 Games. So I called. I tried to use the IVR and the telephone keypad...to no avail as there was no event code that I could enter. So the system transferred me to an attendant. "We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes today" (isn't that always the case?).

After some nice pleasantries regarding weather....

-Can you please give me the event code?
-There is no code sorry. Just the channel number.
-What is that start time of the event?
-There is no time. It just says February 12.
-OK. Let me put you on a short two minute hold.

Five minutes later...

-Are you sure there is no event code?
-Yes I am sure.
-OK! I have found one. Let me put you on hold so that I can find the others.

Way more than two minutes later...

-Well I could only find one code. I will put it through and then please check on the 12th whether or not the other channels are on as well.
-OK. Sure
-Did I provide you with excellent customer service today?

"Are you f'ing kidding me" I thought?

-No! I find it surprising that call centre staff are not aware of these channels and how to order them.
-Thanks for calling Bell. Have a nice day.
-And you.

This eighteen minute experience was dreadful from a customer satisfaction and revenue generating perspective. Why?

1) Customers should not have to order free channels. Just provide them! You are wasting your staff's time and, even more importantly, your customers.
2) Eighteen minutes of talk time to generate $0 in revenue is pitiful for a call centre.
3) These channels are being advertised as a Bell advantage. They have been asking customers to hold off calling to order them until Feb. 10. Uhh....extra call volumes? No kidding. Should have had more staff working. Lack of planning.
4) The service reps should have been aware of the channels and trained on how to order them. At least make the process of wasting your customers' time pleasant by knowing the process to follow to provide me the service.
5) The rep should not have read me a script and asked me whether I had received "excellent service" when she knew full well (I hope!) that I would enter that question negatively. Come on! She should have just answered the question as she would have had she been the customer. Were you happy with the duration and the service.

Someone, some where in Bell should have known better. Planned better. Should have run this new service through some kind of pre-launch readiness check list that included, at a minimum, training your staff and having more staff on hand to deal with the orders. I hope Bell will learn from this mistake.

Unfortunately this kind of unpreparedness and lack of knowledge on products and services happens much too often.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

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