Blog

[#1]

Hi guys,

My name is Shaun McGrory and I have been with the member service team since June 2009 (Yes you
read that correctly, before giffgaff went live) I’m 30, I’m from Derry and I’m looking for... ah.... I jest.

I have watched giffgaff grow from what was a relatively small business to one of the most innovative
up and coming MVNOs. There have been a lot of challenges along the way. We have added new
products like Goodybags, Gigabags and most recently the much anticipated BlackBerry update. We
have had competitions and golf days, web parties and award ceremonies. To say it has been hard
work would be an understatement. We’ve had time when we laughed and joked and had the time to
do so but we’ve also had times when you could hear a pin drop in the office because everyone has
so much work to do that even blinking is viewed as a waste of time and productivity.

One of our main challenges was keeping a consistent level of service throughout the team and
standardising the team’s knowledge. It hasn’t been an easy task with all the various improvements
and changes. We now have daily briefings for each and every issue that arises. We have updates
from our escalations teams on a 2 hour basis, weekly training sessions and we have even gone as far
as getting a “Ticker tape” application installed on our PCs so we can have real time updates rather
than sending out emails. This is a challenge that we will continue to face as giffgaff grows and we
add more agents. The member service team don’t claim to be perfect, while we do make the odd
mistake we truly believe that we deliver a great service. For every customer that highlights an agent
issue on the Community forum there are literally thousands more that have been dealt with, fixed
and nurtured in the way we strive to do with all our customers.

We have always had a great relationship with the giffgaff team in Beaconsfield who are only a phone call or an IM away and we have truly become 1 big team.
We enjoyed working on the forum and interacting with you all on a daily basis, we had lots of fun and the feeling you get when someone thanks you in the Community is hard to beat.
But, alas, the forum became too busy for us with the level of cases being raised via Ask an Agent. We needed to concentrate on the more technical side of the business and get your issues sorted.
So what about the Community forum I hear you ask, who will look after us? You all know the answer to that.

Ladies and gentlemen... (Drum roll) The Educators

The introduction of the Educators has been a masterstroke and has been a great success. They help
on the forum while we investigate, escalate and resolve your issues. We have had a visit from the
guys recently that helped build the relationship between the 2 teams. As per tradition we had a
night out. The night began with a meal, some sociable drinks and then we all went home and went
to bed by 12midnight... well that’s what we are telling the boss and is about as much as we can
remember. There's a few photos of that we will add to this blog shortly..

The relationship between the two teams has grown from strength to strength and long may that
continue.

We know we have challenges ahead in delivering excellent customer service and delivering it
consistently but it’s a challenge we meet with open arms (and with our eyes wide open too) We want
to continue to work with the Educators, the guys in Beaconsfield and most of all, you, to make giffgaff
the continued success it deserves to be.

 

Shaun

[#2]

nice to meet you shaun... you present a great picture for what seems to be giffgaff's weakest link... I hope your enthusiasm & knowledge are symptomatic of the rest of the team, however, the general perception of agents from anyone who has dealt with them (you) is of poor response times & cut & paste replies that fail to address the issue being raised... You got lots to do to change that unfortunate perception.

good luck mate, you'll need it.

[#3]

And there you have it!!! Cheers for the update

[#4]

i have got to agree with mgb2! we need more personalised messages...we used to have it but recently copy and paste...

that said...nice to see the agents with a human face hey shaun!

[#5]

Hey, shaun. Very nice post

I like these updates....

Liam

[#6]

So what are you going to be doing, to improve the way the agents work Shaun? Lots of people have been let down with their famous "copy and paste" messages, and I'm not happy that they do this, and not read the actual issue properly. How are you to conquer this? I'm interested. Other than that a rather good read. Thanks for making this post. 

[#7]

Interesting read

[#8]

good read, agree that if educators hadn't been brought on, giffgaff would have suffered greatly..

[#9]

Hello Shaun, and thanks for letting us see how things have changed with agents role as gg has grown.

But as has been said already, I feel there is still a steep hill to climb before the agents response times and information relayed to those that have raised cases is accepted with gratitude rather than the anger and frustration we all too often are seeing in the forums.

You said .."One of our main challenges was keeping a consistent level of service throughout the team and standardising the team’s knowledge"

but unfortunately the forum perception is that you can't keep what you haven't got .... unless you're prepared to carry on with the current perceived levels  

I wonder ... and please correct me if I am wrong.... as the agents are outsourced by gg, the team are more than likely working to KPI's that are verging on almost impossible to achieve figures, thus preventing the queries from actually being read and understood before a reply was given?

And all to often a reply is given that bears no relation at all to the problem being reported.

I can understand that some (and I stress some) queries would/could warrant a standard reply, but not all.

But again, are the KPI's also preventing a more personal approach....???

With all the tekkie stuff in place up there with you now, here's looking forward to brighter times ...

I wish you well.

[#10]

its great to get to know what agents do day-to-day, and its nice to meet you shaun, and im looking forward to hearing from you and the other agents in the future

i have to agree with the comments above unfortunately though. the general perception of agents on the forum tends to be one of late, copy and paste replies, which dont address the actual question asked.and then customers/members have to chase for updates, rather than being regularly and frequently updated by the agent (even if its just a case of, 'there's been no further progress im afraid, but we are still working on it'. silence is not what the customer wants to hear)

i guess part of this is that we are always going to get more complaints than praise on the forum (though occassionally there is a thread where agents are thanked/praised for their work), as it is a place for people to get help. and i guess the majority of agent cases which are solved, we never hear anything about

i wonder what statistics are kept? would it be possible to release some figures to give the community some reassurance? for example, how many cases do the agents deal with in the average week? What % of those are solved within 24 hours? 48 hours? a week?

also, i'd like to know what percentage of agent cases could actually be dealt with by the community?

edit

as an example, please see this post

http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Join-Considering-giffgaff/dont-bother/m-p/3072583/highlight/true#M7...

[#11]

Hi Shaun ,

Good to hear from  you , and thank you for the post , It's good to have some form of interaction  with the  service team  , hopefully  your efforts will be rewarded , it will be good to hear how things go .