Princess Call Center Has To Be Bad Business For Their Business

[charliedalrymple]

I completely agree about the frustration of dealing with the Princess call center in the Philippines.  However, I recently dealt with Holland America customer service agents in the Philippines, and they were even worse (if you can imagine that)--so bad, in fact, that I ended up canceling that cruise and booking with Princess on a similar route.

 

Unfortunately, Princess is not alone in outsourcing call centers to the Philippines--nor is this practice limited to the cruise industry.  Most help lines these days are answered by overseas call centers.  Another of my pet peeves is the need to navigate an endless list of menus before finally getting the option to speak with a live person--in any country!

 

The degradation of customer service across all industries is one of the unfortunate realities of modern life.  

[nasa1974]

I like it when you get someone with a heavy accent and they say "hello my name is David". It's like what?

[mlmbar]

I totally agree with all of the frustrations here   I have a CVP who is not very responsive   I had a question about my reward points on my Princess VISA card. Barclay's sent me to Princess and that began an hour of absolute HELL. The person who responded had no idea what I was talking about and kept reading how to cash in reward points.  Not what I was calling about. Put on hold, came back with same thing. This happened a few times. It was now Groundhog Day. I asked for a supervisor , put on hold and she came back telling me how to cash in rewards,  THEN told me to go back to Barclay's. And yes, lots of background noise., laughter, etc,  

 

My daughter works for a major online travel company that represents  major hotels and airlines. She deals with clients' issues onsite.  Her company has outsourced to SA and India./  It is awful! They make major mistakes that she has to unwind. They lie because they don't know what they are doing and often just flat out refuse to do something. There is noise in the background and it is very unprofessional. My daughter works from home with four kids and a dog. They know not to make noise while she is upstairs in her office working. Point is, this is not unique to Princess.   

[Torfamm]

On 6/27/2023 at 7:57 AM, beg3yrs said:

A friend who used to work in customer service gave me this tip (although I haven't tried it personally); if you're asked to press some number for Spanish, do it. All those folks speak English too and ... they're based in the States.

Usually a good tip. I have found a couple of places though that don't allow representatives on those lines to speak English.  

[kywildcatfanone]

Cruises are at capacity.  Loyalty doesn't matter.  It is what it is.  The reality is if you don't take a cabin, someone else will.  Doesn't impact them, in fact, if you don't get a drink package and the other person does, it's better for them. 

[cjpj]

I have a wonderful CVP. It took me awhile to find one after my first one retired, but it is worth it. I know we can't mention names here and I found my new CVP when you could direct message someone on these threads. On you next cruise ask everyone you strike up a conversation with if the have a good CVP or a travel agent they use. Get some good leads and start trying them out. They are worth their weight in gold. I recently had to use the general number as I had wrote down the wrong extension for my CVP (long story) and needed to reach her about a flight change. I got through to the call center, but the person I spoke to did not know if she could give me her extension or forward my call. She kept.putting me on hold to find answers. After about 20 minutes of this she finally took my name and number and said she'd have my CVP call me. My wonderful CVP called me within 5 minutes and took care of the issue for me.

[dave_k58]

On 6/26/2023 at 7:16 PM, PacnGoNow said:

I agree with @Lady Arwen…get a CVP or TA.  They will take care of these issues for you.  You should not have to waste time on the phone.  The agents that are offshore, seem to be there to take orders for beverage packages and to upsell products.  

My TA hates to call the PHilippines.  I suspect he doesn't do it all 

[cruising deacon]

I have several new bookings and having the same problems the CS.  Can I have my bookings transferred to my CVP?

[PacnGoNow]

2 minutes ago, cruising deacon said:

I have several new bookings and having the same problems the CS.  Can I have my bookings transferred to my CVP?

Yes. I would call or email my CVP and ask them to pickup the bookings.  If there are any restrictions, they can advise.

 

 

[cruising deacon]

4 hours ago, PacnGoNow said:

Yes. I would call or email my CVP and ask them to pickup the bookings.  If there are any restrictions, they can advise.

 

 

Thank you       I will call tomorrow.

[damiross]

On 6/28/2023 at 7:11 PM, mlmbar said:

 My daughter works for a major online travel company that represents  major hotels and airlines. She deals with clients' issues onsite.  Her company has outsourced to SA and India./  It is awful! They make major mistakes that she has to unwind. They lie because they don't know what they are doing and often just flat out refuse to do something. There is noise in the background and it is very unprofessional. My daughter works from home with four kids and a dogPoint is, this is not unique to Princess.   

Definitely not unique to Princess. I worked for UPS.  They hired some CEO from outside of the company (first time in the company's history).  She sent 1800 AMERICAN job s to India and Costa Rica.  The person I trained in Costa Rica via phone was not even at the beginning level of Excel (a vital part of the job).  I had to tell him several times while training him that he had to reduce the background noise.

 

In my case, I don't mind spending more in order to get better service, especially when it comes to be spending thousands of dollars like I do with Princess..

[OttawaJohn]

The core issue isn't language capacity, but corporate care and accountability.  I've worked in the call center industry for over 20 years and trained agents and managers around the world.  

 

A company like Princess, regardless if they outsource their call center operations or not, has a responsibility to maintain standards.  

 

Regular surveys for customer satisfaction after a call, which Princess does but clearly doesn't care about the result.  

 

They should be doing their own random test calls in and evaluating the results.  

 

Call monitoring needs to be done, not just by the local call center quality assurance team but corporate level.

 

They need to give a damn about the quality of service their end customers receive.  

 

Eventually, there is typically enough of a backlash that they take the center back in house for awhile to resolve issues and re-develop their reputation.  Then they repeat it.

 

It's a story as old as time in the industry.

 

Princess needs to give the outsourced company key deliverables, SLAs to meet and tools to make use of.  

 

I called recently to try to make reservations for dinners.  I spoke to three people, as I was disconnected twice while the agent had me on hold.  All three times it was loud in the background.

 

Not one of the three people I spoke to knew anything about the ship I was going on, and each asked me if the restaurant I said I wanted to make a reservation at was a specialty or MDR.

 

They had no tools, not even just the website loaded with a list of restaurants, despite being the department you call to make reservations (in theory, it's probably all the same team, just a different queue for reporting).

 

Agents the world over are the same: they mostly are just doing a job till they find a better one.  It's the managers, and their bosses, in this case Princess, who are responsible for ensuring they do the job right while they are there, and giving them the tools to do it right.

 

[dickinson]

@OttawaJohn As a retired call center worker I agree with most of what you said.  

[PacnGoNow]

13 hours ago, OttawaJohn said:

The core issue isn't language capacity, but corporate care and accountability.  I've worked in the call center industry for over 20 years and trained agents and managers around the world.  

 

A company like Princess, regardless if they outsource their call center operations or not, has a responsibility to maintain standards.  

 

Regular surveys for customer satisfaction after a call, which Princess does but clearly doesn't care about the result.  

 

They should be doing their own random test calls in and evaluating the results.  

 

Call monitoring needs to be done, not just by the local call center quality assurance team but corporate level.

 

They need to give a damn about the quality of service their end customers receive.  

 

Eventually, there is typically enough of a backlash that they take the center back in house for awhile to resolve issues and re-develop their reputation.  Then they repeat it.

 

It's a story as old as time in the industry.

 

Princess needs to give the outsourced company key deliverables, SLAs to meet and tools to make use of.  

 

I called recently to try to make reservations for dinners.  I spoke to three people, as I was disconnected twice while the agent had me on hold.  All three times it was loud in the background.

 

Not one of the three people I spoke to knew anything about the ship I was going on, and each asked me if the restaurant I said I wanted to make a reservation at was a specialty or MDR.

 

They had no tools, not even just the website loaded with a list of restaurants, despite being the department you call to make reservations (in theory, it's probably all the same team, just a different queue for reporting).

 

Agents the world over are the same: they mostly are just doing a job till they find a better one.  It's the managers, and their bosses, in this case Princess, who are responsible for ensuring they do the job right while they are there, and giving them the tools to do it right.

 

Training, training and more training is the key……and monitoring to see if they need more training.  

[ontheweb]

45 minutes ago, PacnGoNow said:

Training, training and more training is the key……and monitoring to see if they need more training.  

That's what it should be, but the key now seems to be cutting costs and nothing else. 😒

[Andrew J. Cat]

But at least they offer to order chocolate covered strawberries on every call!  And I mean EVERY call, regardless of what you called about.  (Ok, that was an exaggeration).  
I, too worked in call centers.  It’s all about the metrics (# of calls taken per hour, etc.), and nothing whatsoever about the quality of service rendered.

[mlmbar]

My daughter works at home for a major travel company and she is closely monitored because the supervisors are in the US. However, they have outsourced to India and Brazil with apparently little monitoring. Most they have done is set up a place for the US workers to complain. She also has issues with sone airlines who outsource and the workers cannot be bothered.  She called an airline last week and the person who answered refused to rebook her people and told her that the booking office was closed. Told her they are only open Monday to Friday!  She cannot call the airline directly so this is as a problem and it was a 20k trip 

[WhyNot4fun]

the pre-cruise experience with Princess is FUBAR. I have 5 cruises booked with them and have had 2 cancelled without notification. Resolution was extremely painful. I now have 4 cruises with their competition to find a replacement. Platinum level and casino VIP. There is zero escalation process with Princess, its all about the money. Therefore my money is now going elsewhere.

[voljeep]

27 minutes ago, WhyNot4fun said:

the pre-cruise experience with Princess is FUBAR. I have 5 cruises booked with them and have had 2 cancelled without notification. Resolution was extremely painful. I now have 4 cruises with their competition to find a replacement. Platinum level and casino VIP. There is zero escalation process with Princess, its all about the money. Therefore my money is now going elsewhere.

as it should when that is your experience.  Speak with your wallet

[charliedalrymple]

On 7/8/2023 at 6:00 AM, OttawaJohn said:

The core issue isn't language capacity,

 

I beg to differ with this statement.  80% of the time I have called Princess, I have struggled mightily to understand the agent due to an extremely heavy accent.  It may well be that their English is good on paper, but that doesn't matter if they can't make themselves understood.

[WhyNot4fun]

totally agree. typically after several long "holds"... disconnect... grrrr

 

[SargassoPirate]

With call centers, I figure it's the old "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."

 

Why bother if you can't understand what the other person is saying and why bother when it's clear they don't understand the issue or the solution?

 

I let my warehouse club travel department deal with the cruise lines.  Their agents are all articulate in English and get the job done.

 

 

[WhyNot4fun]

who do you use? I've tried 2 and neither really had a deep knowledge of cruising.

 

[dickinson]

39 minutes ago, WhyNot4fun said:

who do you use? I've tried 2 and neither really had a deep knowledge of cruising.

 

Sorry but we are not allowed to name travel agents on here.

[Steelers36]

On 6/29/2023 at 9:54 AM, Torfamm said:

Usually a good tip. I have found a couple of places though that don't allow representatives on those lines to speak English.  

I have tried the same thing here a time or two in Canada and the French-speaking reps (two different organizations) told me they weren't allowed to speak in English.