Foxtel to cut call centre staff
"We do not have the work to support the current number of employees in our contact centres."
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Subscription
Foxtel has confirmed looming staff layoffs at its call centre, citing increased use of its online platforms.
In a statement to Mumbrella it said:
Foxtel continues to evolve its service model enabling customers to engage with us as they wish. Increasingly, that means using online customer service tools which are quick and convenient.
In the past year alone, we have seen an 11 percentage point increase in online sales and a significant rise in instances of digital customer service transactions. This has meant a commensurate decrease in the number of calls to our contact centres.
Unfortunately, a consequence of this is that we do not have the work to support the current number of employees in our contact centres. We have attempted to manage this by natural attrition; however, we have proposed a change to our operating model where there will be a people impact.
We’re now in a consultation period with staff to determine the full impact. These changes not only enable Foxtel to serve customers as they increasingly wish, but also to build a more efficient business, better able to compete with global competitors who employ virtually no Australians and therefore have a significant cost advantage.
Foxtel’s Australian call centres are based at Moonee Ponds in Melbourne and Robina, Queensland.
10 Responses
Currently on the website you can only change your service to an equal price level, or add to it. To downgrade you have to, as advised by the self-service function on the website, call the Foxtel phone service, which will now be more difficult then ever. Will this be changed in the ‘quick and convenient’ ‘online service tools’?
Keep shifting those deckchairs on the Titanic, Foxtel.
The sentiment towards the company has to be one of the lowest for any media organisation – who would have know that treating your customers terribly would casue damage.
This would be sad if it wasn’t so funny ………. this is the company that tells you that they are busy and puts you on hold ……. but so people can’t complain about waiting for ages they just get their automated system to tell you to call back later and then hangs up on you!
The amount of channels they also got rid off proves they are to me are on a down hill slide.Less channels same subscription,$10 HD surcharge,no Foxtel Go HD that was promised early 2017 you really wonder what the churn rate really is?
A friend told me Foxtel was on the way out – looks like it’s true!
We’ve had an IQ3 box since December, and we absolutely hate it.
We need to reboot it every few days, the menus are really badly designed, and programs are hard to find. I know I need to ring and ask for tech help, buy it’s just such a dreadful experience calling them.
It would seem that comments here would be a common complaint from most consumers using pay TV and not just with Foxtel. A recent storm caused any number of issues getting assistance from overseas call centres about my lost internet service with 60 minute waits not uncommon. Why this is so should be explained better as the common offer of using the internet for assistance is not always the best option if you would rather speak to a tech or have no internet to use anyway.
What about the Robina call centre in QLD? Foxtel have been hiring heaps of retention staff, trying to keep people from disconnecting their service and now they cut more jobs? I don’t think they know what they are doing. Just you wait until Foxtel running through the cable is switched off haha.
No wonder that more people are abandoning them and signing up to Netflix or some other service.
Sorry, but here it comes. . . deep breath …. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha (repeat that for 10 or so pages) Not enough calls (repeat the laughter again). Foxtel has been trying desperately to push people away from calling to ‘self service’ for years by steadily providing worse and worse telephone support.
About the only thing Foxtel really wants, nay forces, sucke.., err subscribers, to call them about is cancelling packages because they want to make the process of reducing spend as difficult as possible.
Yep and I say this Without Prejudice.
Going back to around this time last year I decided to trim down my Foxtel, it was as you say difficult, so I got tired of saying what I wanted to do and not what they wanted me to do and hung up. At that point I decided to ditch Foxtel all together, more useless chat of we can do this we can do that, blah, blah, blah, so I hang up. So the tact I took was to not pay my bill, within a few weeks of that monthly bill not being paid Foxtel got cut-off they asked me to send my Foxtel STB back which I did and then I paid the bill.
Have been Foxtel free since and will never return, well they probably wouldn’t let me now anyway seeing as I likely have a bad credit rating with them but eh que sera sera. Fetch TV meets my wants enough and starting and ending packages is a mere remote control click or website away.