Phone CM's knowledge

[glvsav37]

****Mods please move if not appropriate here***

In the dining credit increase issue thread, a few of us called and got conflicting information as to if it was/was not official that certain restaurants upped their dining credit allocations.

In a few posts, people said that 'you can't trust phone opp CM's as they often don't know what is going on."

really??? Aren't these the people on the front line, setting guest expectations and directing their vacation money well before they arrive on property?? Why is that we often know more about WDW then someone employed there (and yes, I know that do not actually work on Main Street)?

Handcuff that with the other prevailing statement that 'the vast majority of Disney guests are not on these message boards like us" isn't more validation that phone pop CMs need to be on top of their game and have standard operating manuals at their fingertips?

Just seems that many people here feel its a justifiable excuse to have phone pop CM's with limited and conflicting knowledge.

 

[mikepizzo]

From my experience hearing of what the company's call center that I work for is like, it's typically an entry level position with many, many, scripts. People are hired near minimum wage to pick up the phone and answer a question, or direct the person to the correct department.

Everyone likes to think that there is good communication in big companies, but from my experience, the bigger the company is. typically the worse the communication is. There are so many moving parts that people tend to forget whom to notify when a change is made. Think about when the Magic Kingdom castle had the birthday cake overlay. Think anyone in the Wedding Pavilion knew about that? Think about how many angry brides and grooms there were.

And if it was in fact a glitch then the first couple CM's to hear about it would have no way of knowing. They would be the people to initiate the action to try and find out what happened and try to get it fixed.

You're correct that a lot of the phone CM's are setting guest expectations, but you also have to accept that the majority of people calling are asking pretty straight forward questions.

Just my two cents anyways.

 

[cvjpirate]

My bet is these people work for a 3rd party, Not Disney.

 

[rteetz]

My bet is these people work for a 3rd party, Not Disney.

They do work for Disney just not physically at Disney. They work at a call center in various places around the country.

 

[wilkeliza]

****Mods please move if not appropriate here***

In the dining credit increase issue thread, a few of us called and got conflicting information as to if it was/was not official that certain restaurants upped their dining credit allocations.

In a few posts, people said that 'you can't trust phone opp CM's as they often don't know what is going on."

really??? Aren't these the people on the front line, setting guest expectations and directing their vacation money well before they arrive on property?? Why is that we often know more about WDW then someone employed there (and yes, I know that do not actually work on Main Street)?

Handcuff that with the other prevailing statement that 'the vast majority of Disney guests are not on these message boards like us" isn't more validation that phone pop CMs need to be on top of their game and have standard operating manuals at their fingertips?

Just seems that many people here feel its a justifiable excuse to have phone pop CM's with limited and conflicting knowledge.

The big problem is they get all their information from updates on the HUB. Even being a parks CM I can't tell you how many times something would be on the HUB and nobody would know about it! Yes part of their job should be logging in and checking any updates around the property or checking on any big announcements but fairly often these updates get out to the public before the CMs even find out. I imagine since the dinning plan changes happened late on a weekend day then there was no management around to update all CMs on the change.

Most phone CMs plug key words into a computer system and what comes up is what comes up. Many of them believe the best answer to the no "I don't know" policy is to make something up. It doesn't help that websites like this and other blogs now have people so overly educated they are calling about rumors and non-solidified changes. So in the case of the restaurant changes some phone CMs said it wasn't changing it must have been a tech glitch. In fact they should have said that they would follow up with IT but as of now what is on the website does not reflect what they have in their cast system. This could mean there is a change that we are unaware of or there is a disconnect in the system. They should have never presented something as gospel. Same with hours and other questions they get. Instead of saying these are the hours and that is that they really should be saying our system currently shows the hours for your vacation as _____ but hours of operation are always subject to change.

 

[zaccaglin]

They do work for Disney just not physically at Disney. They work at a call center in various places around the country.

This. They are true vetted Disney employees with offices all over the country. A few Florida site offices are in Orlando, Tampa, Celebration, and Daytona.

 

[BadPinkTink]

From my experience hearing of what the company's call center that I work for is like, it's typically an entry level position with many, many, scripts. People are hired near minimum wage to pick up the phone and answer a question, or direct the person to the correct department.

Everyone likes to think that there is good communication in big companies, but from my experience, the bigger the company is. typically the worse the communication is. There are so many moving parts that people tend to forget whom to notify when a change is made. Think about when the Magic Kingdom castle had the birthday cake overlay. Think anyone in the Wedding Pavilion knew about that? Think about how many angry brides and grooms there were.

And if it was in fact a glitch then the first couple CM's to hear about it would have no way of knowing. They would be the people to initiate the action to try and find out what happened and try to get it fixed.

You're correct that a lot of the phone CM's are setting guest expectations, but you also have to accept that the majority of people calling are asking pretty straight forward questions.

Just my two cents anyways.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I have never worked in a call centre but I have worked answering the phone in a large company with many departments. The amount of times other departments made changes or introduced new things but did not inform those of us actually answering the phones was insane. Some departments just lacked basic communication skills, not caring that changes they made in their department should be told to other departments.

Just think of it this way
person who answers the phone >>> is part of a team >>> team is managed by a line manager>>>line manager reports to department manager >>>> department manager reports to area manager >>>>area manager reports to guest services manager in Orlando >>>> guest services manger reports to ???? >>> and then onwards up to the CEO of Disney.

Now each change of policy or new service, or new price change has to go though all these layers of management and teams, before getting to the minimum wage person actually answering the phone and dealing with your question. Some managers may be ontop of things have an interest in staff training and care about their team having correct information, some managers may not. Some managers may only care about targets, as in how many calls are answered as its possible there may be financial motivation for a high turnover of calls. Think about it, the shorter the call, the more they can answer in the hour. Some managers may put huge pressure on their team members to keep the calls to a set time.

 

[TrampDog]

They do work for Disney just not physically at Disney. They work at a call center in various prisons around the country.

Fixed that for ya.