Employee Survey?

So anyways, today was the first day to start our employee surveys. It was supposed to take half an hour but I took nearly two hours to do mine. Since I'm basically rehashing my blog with my comments (well, in a much more polite fashion of course), I thought I'd post what I wrote haha.

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This will be a lengthy comment section, and it will be divided mainly into two categories, with the first being SDP related, and the second being our chinese line. Both of these issues pertain mostly to the Vancouver system.

We need a more efficient way to send technical escalations for SDP. Right now, TSRs really have no control over a situation if all troubleshooting steps are complete, and I often feel like I'm
helpless at times to help our customer no matter how much I want to try.

Our response time to get back to a customer if it becomes escalated to SOC is usually frustrating for them as an issue often becomes escalated multiple times. Our TSR 2's should be allowed to contact broadwing directly as call records only stay for 24 hours and it takes hours to escalate it to broadwing currently. Furthermore, we frequently need to inconvenience our customers - while they're on the phone with us, we try to get them to place test calls half way across the world when either the other side is sleeping, or to try at a later time which further delays a resolution to their issue.

The training program for new SDP TSRs upsets me, as many reps who are trained are not even put onto the queue, nor are they given the proper TSR related training to make them confident in doing so. The online portion of the training, at least when I had taken it in the middle of April, was terribly outdated, and not useful at all. My impression that I'm getting from other TSRs who have gone through the sales portion of the SDP training are now just shadowing with some of our TSRs for their TSR training of SDP. Although this is an effective way to learn more about the type of calls we take, it doesn't really cover all the bases or instill confidence into our TSRs. We really need some concrete documentation easily accessible to our new TSRs for SDP troubleshooting that they can read up on before jumping on the queue.

Also, one thing that really upsets me and has been bothering me for awhile is that TSR's access to the plant monitoring portion of the SDP tools was taken away due to "concerns regarding the server load." That, to me, is an inadequate explanation for an almost necessary tool for me. I used to use that tool almost everyday to assist with our customers, and it's really quite annoying and time-consuming to have to go line up to a TSR 2 to get them to check when we know how to use the tool and could have checked in two seconds.

Another huge concern I have is our flapping DPTs which cause intermittent dialtone. I hope it will be addressed immediately as our reps here on average receive 3-4 different no dialtone calls each 8 hour shift. If not, at least we should get we really need more service techs in North Van/W Van/White rock/S Surrey, as these areas seem to be prevalent areas for no dial tone service calls. Often, we cannot get a tech out on the same day for our customers in these areas, and many of them have valid safety concerns even if we can get a cell phone out to them in a few hours.

I am generally quite happy with our response time to SDP issues and concerns, such as fixes and updates like the new SDP SOC escalation form tracker that we have recently implemented. I do realize that SDP is a new product for us, and I'm excited to be part of a growing product; however, we really do need to improve our technical service procedures. It would be great if we could define our support scope like we do for our internet/cable since currently, we support everything from functions on fax machines to how to operate their answering machines.

The chinese line has been a concern for me as well.

We have had increasing amounts of upset chinese customers who wait for a long time to get through to our chinese queue, only to get a rep who cannot speak their language. (ie. Customer speaks Mandarin, but gets a Cantonese rep) We are then forced to transfer the call to a Mandarin rep, which takes another 10-15 minutes at least nowadays. This situation is vice versa for our mandarin reps as well, although we do have more cantonese reps than mandarin reps. Also, because we do not do cold transfers between the chinese queues, we again delay ourselves from taking another call by waiting for a mandarin rep to pick up.

It would be in our best interest if we could implement a better ARU system for our customers so that when they choose mandarin, they'll actually get a mandarin rep vs a cantonese one. We've had many customers complain that they did press 2 for mandarin and got me instead. It wastes our customers time and our own time as well since we cannot help.

Also, when we have a major outage, usually our ARU system is updated with this information so that customers do not have to wait to speak with one of us to get that message. This does not happen with the chinese line. On a few days, when a good chunk of vancouver where a large percentage of our chinese community went down for internet, there were non-stop calls regarding this all day from the start of my shift at 8 am all the way to 4:30.

I believe that this is a great company to work with and for the most part, we are caring towards our employees. I'm really happy how our management had addressed a major concern with an individual I had with efficiency and genuine empathy. Also, I am pleased that my strengths are utilized to the fullest at work. It makes me feel needed and appreciated at work when management trusts me to make a callback to a customer or when my opinion is asked for an issue we are experiencing. I am also happy that (company) is asking for my opinion now, and giving me time at work to type this all up.

Thanks very much for reading.
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Wow, how's that for formal eh. I was typing it in the morning though when I'm always half asleep so there's probably alot of grammatical mistakes. Anyways, I doubt anything'll be done about it, but at least I've done my rant.

Except for the annoying Macau guy calling me back. Holy cow. Refer back to http://tsr-mia.blogspot.com/2006/07/insert-catch-phrase-here.html. Note the date. JULY 12!!!

This guy has called me 4 times since then to talk to me. So freaking annoying. Everytime I talk with him, all he talks about is wanting credit for 3 months of SDP service. WTF, just cause you can't make calls to Macau doesn't mean you can't make calls anywhere else. Then he tries to come up with some sob story about how some relative in his family is being hospitalized or something. Since this was the 5th time he would give me the same story, I finally decided to get a chinese supervisor involved. Well, actually more like a couple TSR 2's, but whatever, same power. Poor TSR 2. I passed the buck to him. I better buy that guy lunch or something lol.

Geez, I'm tired of the stupid customer calling me every week to talk to me about the same damn thing to say the same damn things! He was probably lying about speaking to several reps too. And I'm annoyed that we can't fix the issue either. And I'm also annoyed that he can't just keep using a calling card since the rates are probably cheaper anyways. He pays for calls to Macau anyways with our service. So retarded.

I should stop giving out my stupid rep number to our customers. It seems like whenever they want to seek me, it's always for an issue that's outside of my department. Like this woman who I randomly gave my rep number to was looking for me to solve a problem she was having with her transfer from SDP back to Telus issue. What the hell. I'm too nice. I support everything for our customers. They can probably sense it too that's why they come find me.

Oh well, I suppose I'll just look at it as um everyone thinking I'm so smart and that's the reason why they want to speak with me only. Yup, modest as usual.

By the way, welcome back on the phones SJ haha. Hope you missed us.