On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 13:05:29 +0100, Tony Williams
wrote:

In article ,
T i m wrote:

Anyone know what goes on behind the scenes with these people ...?

It's a disease known as Public Utilities Contractor'itis.
Very similar symptoms to Call Centre'itis.

Ohhh ...

Mr L. Hand and Mr R. Hand? Total bloody strangers.

LOL

Say anything to the punter to complete the call within
the alloted time slot.

Indeed, however you do get some (like NTL on the phone this morning
but not the doctor the other day) that give you whatever time is
needed to sort the problem?

Promise that someone will ring back...... *s*******.

There is that .. but getting their names often helps .. (assuming you
can pronounce it these days ..)?

Any mistakes (especially financial) eversoaccidentally
always in their favour.

In most cases we like to pay-as-we-go .. (gas, elec, BT, NTL, Mobiles
etc) and in that we maintain some control on the payments. It often
costs a bit more but worth it for the peace of mind ;-)


The list goes on.

I bet ..mind you I ran a 'Help Desk' for 5+ years I can't say
hand-on-heart I didn't use a trick or two over that time, but, as it
was *just* me I couldn't (and didn't try) to get away with much, going
on the 'honesty is the best policy' tack.

If I couldn't get an engineer to a customer in the time agreed in
their contract I would try to assess their circumstances and work
around that. If they are sending *their* guy on site then I'll pull
out all the stops to get *our* guy there at the same time. If the
issue was at the office then I might offer to send them some kit by
cab for them to install / replace themselves (they were often more
than happy to do that than wait) ;-)

On the flip side I was often there late assising one of their guys
(who may be on a remote site) because I knew what that felt like
(being an engineer myself)?

But that was a fairly small company where I would often have the last
say, not the same with these lumbering utilities monsters ;-(

Do those folk who schedule these engineers we wait in for ever need
help themselves? Or maybe if they are acountants they just buy new
stuff all the time anyway?

All the best ..

T i m