Orange help call centres go into meltdown

BOTH THE general public and its resellers have been plunged into chaos by Orange UK's decision to axe around 1,000 members of staff from its call centres last month [July 2006].

According to a report in Mobile magazine, dealers are waiting up to two hours to connect new customers via Orange's 'Enable' service.

Those dealers trying to use email instead of calling the centres are finding that it takes as long as three to four days to get a reply, Mobile reports.

It's equally bad for Orange's existing customers. One reader told the INQ that he had held on during the day for an answer to a handset query for so long that his battery ran out.

So he rang back at 3.30 AM in the morning. To his chagrin the call centre was still telling him that "Orange is committed to excellent customer service" but it was "currently receiving a high number of calls."

Orange has previously been very proud of its record on customer service. In May 2005, the company gained the top ranking for customer satisfaction among mobile phone contract customers in the annual JD Power and Associates 2005 UK Mobile telephone customers satisfaction study.

This was the seventh time Orange has been ranked top by the study. It is now highly unlikely to repeat that trick for 2007.

An Orange spokeswoman claimed that the company had actually allocated extra staff to handle calls and reduce waiting times.

Our INQ reader claimed he'd got through twice and been cut off before the call centre agent had been able to provide an answer. "She actually tried to send me a text," he added. "But the message was incomplete. µ