Is this normal? PCS Support Line

[nebneb]

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, I couldn't quite work out where this post would fit.

I've been on the 0333 011 7000 line for 2 hours so far. I've spent easily the last 45 minutes in position 1 in the queue, maybe longer. Is that a normal wait time? What could the person ahead of me be talking to them about that takes that long? Or have they just stopped answering?

I know the mods here aren't PCS staff, but do any of you know if this is normal?

Yes, it's the week before Christmas and a million and one people are ringing up about different GPUs, etc. But 2 hours+ seems crazy, especially 45 minutes in position 1...

 

[Harag]

I've never called them, but recently it appears 2+ hours waits is the normal at the moment due to everyone wondering why they are not going into build yet I guess. as for 45 Mins at Position 1 - No idea about this. I guess they are very busy and short staffed given the time of year. Maybe someone who has called them several times might help you more.

 

[Gavras]

Possibly like a number of companies, they empty the offices and everyone helps out ‘downstairs’ either building, testing or packing..

Priorities, answer phones or get built customer orders out of the door?

 

[nebneb]

Possibly like a number of companies, they empty the offices and everyone helps out ‘downstairs’ either building, testing or packing..

Priorities, answer phones or get built customer orders out of the door?

That's what I think has happened, but it would be nice to have something in the automated message that said something along those lines. Even - "we're experiencing significant delays in answering calls due to christmas, covid, GPUs" etc. That way I could hang up and try again tomorrow.

I don't want to hang up only to never know I was 30 seconds away from an answer

 

[Gavras]

That's what I think has happened, but it would be nice to have something in the automated message that said something along those lines. Even - "we're experiencing significant delays in answering calls due to christmas, covid, GPUs" etc. That way I could hang up and try again tomorrow.

I don't want to hang up only to never know I was 30 seconds away from an answer

Yeah that’s the thing, when to hang up or not lol.

I had similar with HRMC the other month, it was arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[nebneb]

Got through after 2 hours 30 minutes. Stick with it

 

[Stevewtw]

Definetely not normal but it has been really bad in the last couple of days. My guess is that things will be a lot calmer after xmas.

 

[Smoggyuk]

It’s a blessing to be this busy and we are not taking it for granted.

PCSpecialist get a wide variety of calls. Basic tracking enquiries and pre sales are the large majority. But we do offer technical support and it is common to see call lengths between 1 and 2 hours, this is not through incompetence, but to do a thorough job, it is sometimes required of us.

It is a mixed bag and with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas cut off just been and gone we haven’t ever seen numbers like this, the pandemic situation is the cherry on top.

Exponential growth, coupled with the high demand for home work stations, it hasn’t been easy for the team and things are moving forward to alleviate the long wait times and to give breathing space for specialist colleagues so we can once again give the same standard of customer care we once did.

As a part of management within the customer care team I can promise everyone that recruitment drives have taken place, I have also assisted with the training with many of new starters. We are not officially in the office and select members have been juggling training whilst under very strict COVID measures. We have to be extremely careful with this type of job role as we cannot simply take in a new starter and expect them to understand the systems and hit the ground running, after all the job entails you to be a jack of all trades in the hopes to master them all (given time).

Many of PCSpecialists teams have doubled in size since March and we are still sat around 1-2 hour answer times, this is with call centre colleagues taking upwards of 40 calls a day each! It’s incredible but at the same time quite disheartening!

for some perspective we averaged around 3 minutes as our longest wait time throughout 2019 and we are now around 40/50 minutes.

with time and patience we will adjust and with the surplus of staff at the tail end of the pandemic we are hoping to see our plans come to fruition shortly.

thanks for all of your patience, we sincerely appreciate it.

 

[SpyderTracks]

It’s a blessing to be this busy and we are not taking it for granted.

PCSpecialist get a wide variety of calls. Basic tracking enquiries and pre sales are the large majority. But we do offer technical support and it is common to see call lengths between 1 and 2 hours, this is not through incompetence, but to do a thorough job, it is sometimes required of us.

It is a mixed bag and with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas cut off just been and gone we haven’t ever seen numbers like this, the pandemic situation is the cherry on top.

Exponential growth, coupled with the high demand for home work stations, it hasn’t been easy for the team and things are moving forward to alleviate the long wait times and to give breathing space for specialist colleagues so we can once again give the same standard of customer care we once did.

As a part of management within the customer care team I can promise everyone that recruitment drives have taken place, I have also assisted with the training with many of new starters. We are not officially in the office and select members have been juggling training whilst under very strict COVID measures. We have to be extremely careful with this type of job role as we cannot simply take in a new starter and expect them to understand the systems and hit the ground running, after all the job entails you to be a jack of all trades in the hopes to master them all (given time).

Many of PCSpecialists teams have doubled in size since March and we are still sat around 1-2 hour answer times, this is with call centre colleagues taking upwards of 40 calls a day each! It’s incredible but at the same time quite disheartening!

for some perspective we averaged around 3 minutes as our longest wait time throughout 2019 and we are now around 40/50 minutes.

with time and patience we will adjust and with the surplus of staff at the tail end of the pandemic we are hoping to see our plans come to fruition shortly.

thanks for all of your patience, we sincerely appreciate it.

Very well said!