Caring For Our Customers At Every Step
Wow what a busy few months we have had here in the Customer Care Department, we’ve sadly said goodbye to 3 amazing team members (although two have only moved across to other departments so they are only a coffee break or IM Chat away). We’ve welcomed Sam and Jenny from Moderation into the Adult and General Teams. We have a new starter, Holly Munn, who has settled in brilliantly and has already become a valued member of the team and finally we want to say a big congratulations to Emma who has been promoted to General and Mature Team Leader, she has taken to the job like a duck to water!
This week, Customer Care Executive Stacey Pragnell has put together an update of what’s happening in our department – it’s been a very busy time as you will see below!
We thought we’d use this blog as an opportunity to share with you a little bit about what it’s like to work in the crazy Customer Care department. We are the biggest department at Global Personals with 24 people in the team and still growing! This is broken down into 3 sections- Customer Care Teams for General, Mature and Adult Networks, the Moderation Team and our Retention Team.
We deal with all queries our members have both via email and over the phone. Our Support inbox which is located on the site can be accessed from Sunday 5.30pm till Friday 5.30pm and our external inbox is available 24 hours, 7 days a week with all queries responded to within 24 hours. During May alone we responded to 20,319 queries within the Support inbox- that’s an average of 81 emails replied to per hour with each member of the team sending an average of 2,540 emails each. The majority of the queries that we deal with will be profile amendments (for example, changing the date of birth or gender (happens more often than you think!) plus payments and general enquires relating to the features on the site. Each query is answered personally and if there is an opportunity for up-sell, the sales man in us kicks in!
In May we took a total of 2,529 support calls with an average call time of 1m 50s. Calls range from logging-in difficulties, setting up a profile, general queries regarding the site and subscriptions. We have recently introduced the Upgrade Line for our members to call who may have questions regarding their subscription, need help to upgrade their account or just feel more comfortable paying over the phone. Members can contact us 7 days a week from 9am – 10.30pm and this is live across all Networks and sites in the UK. During May alone we took 3,210 upgrade calls! Since the introduction of the Upgrade Line the Customer Care team have had a huge impact on incremental revenue.
The job is constantly changing for us- we need the ability to adapt and change to keep up to date with all new sites, introductions of new features and improvements. We are always looking to improve the service for our members. It’s our job to introduce them, walk them through the benefits and steps and to help fix any bugs or issues that may occur. The job is a varied role that involves quick thinking, problem solving, ability to multi-task and above all, to care and understand the experience our members are going through. There is nothing we like more than hearing that our hard work is appreciated and that we are doing a great job for our members, other than a success story of course 
“Thank you Support staff in being so efficient. All the best to you” – Hazel, (Over Sixty Dating).
“Many thanks for the quick and professional service, the lady I spoke to is a credit to your company. Kindest Regards, Dave (Singles 365)”
So how do we manage to provide such excellent customer care? it’s simple- we’re great at our job. We know our sites inside out, we fully understand each process of the member journey as we take each step with them from that huge leap to register, through to their profile moderation, the first message they send and finally the happy moment when they find ‘the one’ they are looking for and we say goodbye. (Yes we are true romantics over here, we all love a happy ending). We add the personal touches which can sometimes be lost through an online company.
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