Tired of stumping CR?

[EjandMD]

Anyone else tired of that? I am, I'm currently on hold cause she couldn't answer yet another question. After of course, the litney of "what's your email?" "how many times have you been here?" and guessing who I'm bringing this time.

Okay thanks for letting me vent!

 

[go cowboys]

I do hate having to teach them about the ins and outs of reservations.

Why do we have to go through the whole e-mail/phone/trips questions each time? can't they just ask for any changes since last time?

 

[iliketoby]

I got put on hold for 13 minutes once, and when she came back on the line she had the answer for a question I didn't ask! And the call is, of course, on my dime! Ug.

Sometimes I hang up and call back and ask another person.

Good Luck!

 

[srfrgrl07]

As you probably already know, they ask you that info because they have to. It's part of their job and, just like most call centers, the calls are monitored.

If it's just a general question, tell them you just have a question and they usually don't have to verify your personal information. Only if it has something to do with your reservation or checking availability.

There is a Disney info line for questions like park hours, how often does the transportation run, what restaurants are at my resort, how much is a 5 day hopper ticket, do the rooms at Pop Century have coffee makers, where is the nearest grocery store, do I have to buy a ticket for my 2 year old, how many people can fit in a room at the Contemporary, what characters are at Chef Mickey's....etc..you get the point. 407-WDW-INFO.

Just curious, what was the question that "stumped" the CM?

 

[FirstNo]

Anyone else tired of that? I am, I'm currently on hold cause she couldn't answer yet another question. After of course, the litney of "what's your email?" "how many times have you been here?" and guessing who I'm bringing this time.

Okay thanks for letting me vent!

As someone who worked CRO this past summer, let me clue you all in on this. The agents don't want to ask you those questions; they HAVE to. The agents are evaluated on three calls each month. They do not know when they will be evaluated. They only find out after the evaluation and they see their score. These scores are important because they are one of the factors as to whether or not the agent receives their incentive pay. I had been told by many agents (and found myself doing it) that once they know their three 'tests' are done, they don't bother asking the questions that cause the most friction.

When I was in training and all of those 'dumb' things we had to ask came up, I asked why do we have to be so nosy (as someone who went to DW frequently, I know I would not have liked some of the questions)? I was told that Dis did numerous studies and found out the ONE thing that topped the guests' list was they wanted to be recognized and acknowledged for coming to DW so often. So, Dis devised all of these questions so the system would retain the information. That way, if the prior agent had done his/her job, I could see that Mrs. Mary Smith has been to Dis 8 times (and welcome back!), is married to Robert and has 2 kids; Susan who will be 9 and David who will be 6 and oh, David will be here during his birthday. We'll have to be sure to note that on the reservation. And is your email addy MSmith1@blah.com? Great.....

And do you plan on spending your whole vacation here at DW? No? You'll be visiting St. Pete, too? Well, did you know we have a partnership with some resorts out on the coast? You didn't?! Well, let me help you with those reservations, too... Blah blah blah

These are just some of the things that if the agent doesn't ask, can take off BIG points and may hurt their revenue. While CRO is some of the highest paid hourly workers on property, it still isn't much (hence the reason I'm no longer there). That incentive pay helps and there are few people working there who don't need it.

We were told that some people will not want to answer those questions and to just move along. We couldn't get 'dinged' for it since we can't make people answer. All we HAD to do was ask the questions.

Before I left, I know a new rating system for the agents was supposed to come online in Oct. If I remember right, they did still lose a lot of points for the more 'crucial' questions (like email), but not as many points were taken off for others and you could actually gain points if the guest made certain positive comments. But again, all of this only counts if that particular call is being rated.

I hope this helps to make some of you who get irritated with the questions understand that most of the agents no more want to ask you these intrusive questions than you want to answer them. Their employer forces them to do so if they want any chance of making some additional money at the end of the month.

 

[goodferry]

I don't mind the questions, but it is frustrating to have to call back three times before you can find a CM who knows how to book the room you want. I had one tell me that my family of five would not fit in one room in the Grand Floridian, I would have to book two rooms or a suite. Now I know that's not true, but do you think I could convince him of that, no, he knew more than I did. So I call back. No mam, we don't have concierge rooms in the main building of the Grand Floridian. Not they are full, there are none. Call back again before I finally get the reservation I need, and the only reason I did was because the third girl was willing to listen to me when I told her how to enter the information in the computer. I know it is not a high paying job, and I know that there are a lot of different rooms and room types and views, but to me that is not right. They need to change something at CRO, and I know it goes back to a willingness on the part of management to invest in training and pay a decent wage to the CMs who are the first contact that some people will have with a Disney employee.

 

[EjandMD]

Amen Good!

I agree. Why don't the CRO's know the answers we know? "Can I hear Wishes from the beach at the Poly?" I don't know let me put you on hold for 25 min. while I ask around, and sorry it's on your dime. Yesterday I had to change rooms from Yacht to two rooms at the all Stars. She said that since I had changed it once already "It's all screwed up" I was on hold for about a half an hour, when she came back on and asked me if she could call me back. Finally they got it right.

If they want to acknowledge our stay and make it personal how about a frequent visitor card like they do at the casinos? I would perfer that over "welcome back" Okay I'm being a bit sarcastic, I understand it's part of the job and that's fine, they just never know the answers to my questions and are always putting me on hold.

 

[FirstNo]

Amen Good!

I agree. Why don't the CRO's know the answers we know? "Can I hear Wishes from the beach at the Poly?" I don't know let me put you on hold for 25 min. while I ask around, and sorry it's on your dime. Yesterday I had to change rooms from Yacht to two rooms at the all Stars. She said that since I had changed it once already "It's all screwed up" I was on hold for about a half an hour, when she came back on and asked me if she could call me back. Finally they got it right.

If they want to acknowledge our stay and make it personal how about a frequent visitor card like they do at the casinos? I would perfer that over "welcome back" Okay I'm being a bit sarcastic, I understand it's part of the job and that's fine, they just never know the answers to my questions and are always putting me on hold.

Why doesn't CRO know the answers you know? Probably because some of the people you talk to have never been to DW and don't even reside in FL. I was amazed at the number of my co-workers (at the DRC in Orlando) who had never stayed on property....not even once! Of course, living here, there isn't much reason to throw away money on a room when you can be home in 30 min or less. But, I was a guest long before I was a FL resident or a CM so, I had the 'guest knowledge' that most of my coworkers didn't have.

One of the things during training that I liked, and thought was very helpful, was the two 'field trips' we took to the property. We visited almost every resort. Having either stayed at some, or visited others, it was nice to get a 'refresher' course in the different resorts and was a big help when I got on the phones. We walked around the resort and saw a room or two, depending on the type of resort. However, for people who have never stayed at the umpteen resorts DW has, it was overwhelming for some and they would have no way to retain all the info they received.

I know I've mentioned this in another thread, but it bears repeating: Dis has a great system for information that agents are to use if they don't know the answer (and it's not bad to double check it even if one thinks they know the answer because things change). But, even for someone like me who has been to Dis numerous times as a guest and a passholder, the system was intimidating and not entirely user friendly. It didn't have particular info (such as "Can you hear Wishes from the Poly Beach?"). There is a search feature, but if you don't use the right 'key word', you may come up with two dozen, or more, entries. It's hard to sort through them when you know your guest is on their dime.

We had our own guest services. Actually, we had two; we had the guest services that we would transfer you, the guest, to if the need arose and then we had an internal GS for ourselves to help us. Well, if you think the different attitudes and responses you get from CRO is bad, you should have seen what we got from our own people. When you're new and trying to get the right answers for your guest, well, let's just say it was a bit discouraging.... And, just as you would have to hold to talk to someone, we had to wait our turn in queue, as well. If it was during a busy time, yes, it could be 20+ minutes before we were answered to even try to begin to help you out. We were encouraged to ask our neighbors for the answer if we couldn't find it ourselves first, but our neighbors were usually helping out their own guests. As for managers/supervisors, if you weren't seated around one who was on the floor, you were out of luck. I always tried to update my guests every 5 min or so that I hadn't forgotten about them and was still on hold to be answered. I also constantly apologized for the delay as I knew it was frustrating for them, as it was for me.

The computer system they use for rsvs is archaic, to say the least. Other than money, that's the second reason I left. It was slow. It would lock up. All sorts of problems and we weren't allowed to tell the guests what was going on. Oh no....we could say things like, "Thank you for your patience. I'm just having a little 'discussion' with my system right now..." I got tired of it and just started telling guests the system was giving me issues. I was tired of the guests thinking I wasn't able to do what they asked and wanted them to know it wasn't me. That could be part of the reason changing your reservation took so long. Not that it's a good excuse. Before I left, rumor had it another computer company would be redoing what was there to help make it better. They couldn't make it much worse, although I was constantly told how much worse it used to be. My response was just because it isn't "as bad" doesn't mean what we have is very good.

Heck, I'm right there with you for the "frequent stayer card". Do you know how stupid it feels to tell someone "Well thanks for coming back again! We appreciate your business!" and then try to segue into finding out what they want? Even better, we weren't supposed to ask what you wanted. We were supposed to ask questions to help you figure out what you really wanted. Couldn't ask you where you would like to stay. We'd have to ask leading questions and then when you made a decision, we were supposed to ask if you actually had first hand knowledge of the resort. As someone like yourselves on the board, you can imagine I'm sitting there, just shaking my head, thinking how I would feel if someone wouldn't shut up and let me tell them what I wanted (we were being trained to take calls from people like my and yourselves....people who have been a lot and know what they want).

It truly was an eye opening experience in how things work from the CRO perspective. I have a new found sympathy for the agents, having been there, made to do that, myself. While Dis has some great discounts for its CMs, they can't force their agents to stay at these places and experience what DW has to offer. While it would be great and, IMO, enhance the agents' conversations with their guests, Dis is just too darn expensive on the salary they pay for many of them. Buyer beware and do your homework; as you would with any thing you're going to be spending thousands of dollars on. As many of you have mentioned, if you get someone who acts like they're doing you a favor, sounds bored, sounds unknowledgable, doesn't understand you or you can't understand them, hang up and call back. 99.9999% of the time, you will get someone completely different and will have a better experience.

 

[FirstNo]

I don't mind the questions, but it is frustrating to have to call back three times before you can find a CM who knows how to book the room you want. I had one tell me that my family of five would not fit in one room in the Grand Floridian, I would have to book two rooms or a suite. Now I know that's not true, but do you think I could convince him of that, no, he knew more than I did. So I call back. No mam, we don't have concierge rooms in the main building of the Grand Floridian. Not they are full, there are none. Call back again before I finally get the reservation I need, and the only reason I did was because the third girl was willing to listen to me when I told her how to enter the information in the computer. I know it is not a high paying job, and I know that there are a lot of different rooms and room types and views, but to me that is not right. They need to change something at CRO, and I know it goes back to a willingness on the part of management to invest in training and pay a decent wage to the CMs who are the first contact that some people will have with a Disney employee.

They told us in training the most important thing we could do as agents was to listen to our guests and question if we didn't understand. And they really did impart that we were the first line and first impression for our guests. Unfortunately, not every one takes it to heart.

The first agent sounded like an idiot, or he was trying to up his daily total for bookings (two rooms or a suite is much better than just one; esp at the GF).

The second agent may have been confused. While I am familiar with the GF, I have never stayed there. The info we had to look things up, esp the concierge info for the GF, was confusing as to what was located where. On more than one occassion, I had to bring up the GF map so I could figure out the names of the buildings and which concierge was located where. But, I always told my guest what I was doing and why (wanted to be sure I was giving the correct info and getting the guest what he/she really wanted).

There were a few different ways we could search for room availability. If a guest specifically asked for concierge at the GF, we could search for that. Unfortunately, if you didn't pay attention to what you asked for, you might get an answer back that concierge was not available because you forgot to choose that concierge button. I know it happened to me a few times (a guest requesting suites or concierge level is not common). The system would usually give a total of two or three different resorts and usually two or three different room styles that were availble. That stated, we had a way to go searching for a specific room type in each of the resorts. It's a feature we were told in training shouldn't be used often (because if you had asked your leading questions, you would know exactly what the guest wanted). Something to do with eating up a lot of memory. But, I didn't find my system working any worse than usual so, I did use it. It was a way to double check myself to ensure I hadn't made an error or the system wasn't going glitchy.

And please don't think I'm taking sides. Having worked that end, I only want to provide some insight into what *may* have happened. I know first hand there are a number of crappy CMs who should not be dealing with the guests. All they care about is getting the guests to book as much as they can on each call so they have a bigger paycheck (or worse, they don't care at all). And, there are a number of stars who bend over backwards on each call to make it a great experience regardless of whether you're booking a $20K stay or a $500 weekender for your anniversary or birthday.

 

[CaliforniaDreaming]

FirstNo, I appreciate you sharing your CRO experiences with us! Very informative!