Bank Alfalah, Fix Your IVR
I had the misfortune of calling both the Citibank and the Bank Alfalah help lines today (took me around 1 hour and my cell ran out of credit) to resolve some minor (yet presistant) issues with my (not so) new address, and found out a funny thing.
While the Citibank IVR lady does it right by saying something like 'Urdu kay liyay aik milaiyay, for English, press two', the Bank Alfalah female says 'Urdu kay liyay aik milaiyay, English kay liyay dou milaiyay'. If someone from the later bank reads this, please fix your recordings, if I don't know Urdu, I won't know what to do!
I always press the key for Urdu, as I believe it generates a relatively better QoS than speaking in English with the struggling CSRs. And yet, even when I explicitly declare my preference for Urdu, the greeting that I get is always something like 'AOA, this is XYZ. How may I help you?'. Please, when I say I want Urdu, when your system knows I want Urdu, when your CSR can speak Urdu, please use Urdu. Even if you can't solve a small problem with my credit card in 4 months, you owe me this much. It sucks that I don't speak Punjabi (though I can understand it perfectly) or I would make it my primary language for help-line conversations.
So that's the rant of the day from me, the soon-to-be-grumpy-old-man.
good mentioning 🙂
please keep posting these smallish yet important issues.
Most of the IVRs are same. Like ABN Amro keeps you on wait till they push all of their campaigns through you.
By the way, Alfalah’s brick-and-mortar service is not up-to-the-mark as well.
Great posts here. I have suffered at the hand of so-called service providers at these banks.
cheers, Raza
I read this post just a min ago… from past 5 years IVR system becomes common but most of companies still lacking in its proper implimentation. My experience is also not so good :)… like i called for technical support at PTCL Broadband, during coversation with CSR he asked me to hold on… then he press IVR system’s on hold tune… i can’t express what the hell was it is… but it hits my ear’s nervous directly. Its looks a like locally available china made hand set’s tune… i am amazed how these business gaint’s are working…they should need to work professionally
Thankfully, I have only had to use the PTCL 1236 number once, and that was when I ordered my broadband package. They don’t have a queuing system in place, after 5-6 bells, you are prompted to press 1 if you want to continue trying, and after 10 or so times of pressing 1, it automatically drops your connection. I had to keep the phone on hands-free for 30 minutes and had to keep pressing buttons until I finally got through. Other than that, the PTCL service itself is not bad at all.
lol very true & easy to understand nyc post by shoib