Employee of TWC says ....the only course of action that would produce results would be to start cancelling en masse.

You think being a TWC customer is bad... - Employment

Posted By: RememberCoudersport on 12/30/2006

I was with Adelphia during the last few weeks of it's life, working in a call center in a small town in Pennsylvania, one that TWC has decided it doesnt need anymore, and will be closing in Febuary, leaving upwards of 500 people without jobs in an area where there aren't many other options. Granted, everything that I say here is the truth, and I've hated working for TWC since long before they told us we were getting shuffled off (a few weeks before Christmas, they called everyone together, gave us the bad news, and then told us to get back on the phone)
Anyhow, when it was Adelphia, our call center was referred to as "Retention".
We were the ones you call if you want to cancel your cable. And in that capacity we posted major results, we saved as many customers as we could, and in the grips of bankruptcy, Adelphia depended on us to hit the mark, and we hit it time and time again. Under Time Warner, our role moved instead to one of more generalized customer service. Billing questions, video troubleshooting, and the like, and for the first little while, we did pretty well. Right up until the Los Angeles region decided to lose their minds.
It wouldnt have been so bad if they had taken time to consider the ramifications and requirements. See, when Adelphia went away, its holding split between TWC and Comcast, as did its call centers and reps. So from day one, we were short staffed. Which again, wouldnt have been a problem if they had just left well enough alone. Instead, they decided to change everything around.
Needless to say, this caused more than a few service interruptions, which of course TWC advertised as not likely. So an inordinate amount of calls started flooding into the regional Call Center in Ontario. Ontario was instantly over-powered, and the decision was made to route the overflow calls to another center, to my center in PA.

Now that wouldnt have been so bad either, if it had been temporary, but it wasnt, and four months later it's back to back calls all day long. So when you wait on hold, understand that your waiting on hold because there are so many people calling in that it's overflowing TWO call centers.
But it wasnt just a problem of VOLUME. During the migration, all the rate codes were being changed, and in many cases our training in the new system consisted of a 3 page packet given to us 15 minutes before we get on the phone. And based upon different stories from different people, we would alternate between applying new rates, recovering old rates to correct errors, and then reapplying new rates to correct other errors. And the shuffle, some of the codes we sed pretty often just dissappeared from our systems, such that we had to track down a spervisor whenever we needed to do something very simple.
TWC finally realized they needed more people, so they hired about 45 people at West Hollywood and Ontario, and 4 weeks later, they are transferring calls to or center becase they "Don't know how to do this" Waiting about 45 minutes in OUR queue, which is an overflow for THEIR queue, and just building up the wait time. And the local techs and supervisors werent much better. We have a system called a Customer Assitance Tool that allows us to send information to the local offices to resolve issues, and it is not uncommon to have a ticket sit idle for several days, if it's looked at at all. And more than a few CAT tickets have been listed as "Completed" when nothing was done.
So it's not just a problem of the VOLUME of calls, its a problem of complete impotence. Becuase service in Los Angeles region is horrible, and they route your calls to a call center that can only pass information along to the local staff, which doesn't appear to be in any big hurry to fix the problem. And you can expect it to get worse, becuase TWC has decided to take their already inadequate staff and cut 500 more. Customer Support and Internet Tech Support reps are all getting axed in Febuary, at which point, if the rumors are true, your unaswered calls will be sent to Buffalo instead, which is having its own psychotic breakdown (basically their raising the rates on anything more then very basic digital cable and internet and hoping no one will notice)
At this point, if our calls werent being recording randomly for training and quality assurance purposes, everyone you spoke to here would suggest you get a dish. And when you call in and tell us that TWC service sucks, and that the hold times are unacceptable, trust us, WE KNOW, but we're not allowed to say that we aggree with you for the exact same reason.
And some areas of the Los Angeles Region arent even going to change over to late January, so we can only hope that in Febuary the service will get better.
I wish all TWC customers well, beleive me, we feel your pain. Stupidity offends us just as much as it offends you. I guess the only course of action that would produce results would be to start cancelling en masse. So if you think you can stand the 30-120 minute hold times, give us a call and make your point by refusing to give TWC your money. Worst case scenario, TWC closes down operations in LA.
Come to think of it...that might actually IMPROVE service quality.