We're taking a bit of a breather while the world rearranges its underpants. Meanwhile, the other blog is here.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Leaves on the line

We have a new corporate procedure for reporting building repair requests. In order to save money, instead of ringing somebody up in the Town Hall to report a problem we now have to ring an 0845 number and talk to somebody in a call centre somewhere up north. Because the process is automated in part there is a few minutes' (being paid-for) delay before getting to the call centre operative and then quite a lot longer working their way through a set form before finally getting to the bit where they ask what the problem is.

The implementation of the new procedure was phased. Phase one was the doing of it. Phase two was not telling anybody about it. Phase three was people ringing the old number on Monday and being told they had to ring the new number. Phase four was service managers finding out that they're now being charged to report building problems.

The return to rainy weather has brought a few new leaky roofs to our attention and this, together with the half-term holiday vandalisms, has kept Maisie busy on the 'phone to the call centre. This morning was the capper. She'd reported the problem, or so she thought, when the operator said:

"I've taken down all the details. I can't give you a log
number for this call because I'm not on the repairs system."


"You're not on the repairs system?"

"I'm just covering calls while the person you should be
talking to has gone to the loo. I'm really Network Rail."


4 comments:

Eddie 2-Sox said...

Could the Network Rail person do both jobs, with a little extra training. Training. Forget it.

The Topiary Cow said...

"Phase two was not telling anybody about it."

Ah. That explains my workplace then.

Moo!

Kevin Musgrove said...

Eddie: you see, Simon, you know how the system works!

Ms. Cow: you've worked in a library, you know the score!

The Topiary Cow said...

As a former librarian, Cow doesn't know the score, but might be able to find a book in which to look it up.

That's on a good day....

Moo!