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THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF EIR has told an Oireachtas committee that the company made a “mistake” in locating its customer service center in Sligo.
Carolan Lennon told the Oireachtas Transportation and Communications Networks Committee that it took “longer” to train employees in the county because they were unfamiliar with working in a call center.
“There was no history of contact centers in Sligo before we got there, which meant that when we hired local staff and people traveling from the surrounding area, local staff, a lot of them came from retail or hospitality.
“That was a challenge, it took us longer to train them,” he added.
Lennon made similar comments about the Sligo call center location on RTÉ’s PrimeTime last night.
State Minister Frank Feighan, who represents Sligo-Leitrim, said he has received phone calls today “from angry Eir staff and the Sligo business community, who are concerned about the consequences of such comments on future investments of the companies. call center companies “in the region.
“I will write to the CEO today as after speaking with local stakeholders on the ground in Sligo, I do not believe the comments made on Sligo are accurate,” Feighan said in a statement.
He said other call centers operating out of Sligo or Leitrim have not experienced the same “problems” as Eir.
Fianna Fáil Sligo TD Marc MacSharry echoed Feighan’s remarks, who said Eir’s management team “needs to admit when they are wrong, admit when service is poor and support their staff.”
“And I think, frankly, your staff at Sligo requires an apology from the management team,” he said.
What the committee heard today from Eir’s chief was a “fluffy showcase” that blamed the staff, “rather than admitting their own national failures,” Mac Sharry said.
When asked about saying that it was a mistake to locate in Sligo, Lennon told the committee that he did not intend to offend people who live in the county.
‘Committed to Sligo’
Eir released a statement after the meeting to clarify Lennon’s position.
Lennon said Eir is “committed to Sligo” and its Rathedmond care center, and all of its employees across Ireland.
“When I discussed the mistakes made in relation to Sligo, I want to clarify that I was referring to the mistakes my management team and I made in underestimating the complexities of building a spotlight on totally new ground.
“We have a talented team in Sligo and we also have all the support we could ask for from IDA and the regional authorities, for which we are grateful.”
Lennon added that, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the center was “meeting all the goals set for care.”
“We are constantly making progress on our plan to return to an acceptable level of care and I wish to apologize to any clients who have faced long wait times in recent months and thank all of our colleagues for their continued commitment and hard work during the pandemic. “
During the committee meeting, Lennon also apologized “unreservedly” for Eir’s poor customer service since the start of the pandemic, acknowledging that customers have faced “unacceptable wait times.”
She blamed remote work, a reduction in staffing and IT problems for the disruption of Eir’s customer service operations.
Lennon told the committee that the company’s challenge had been to provide quality care service to customers at a time when their retail stores were closed, they had moved hundreds of service agents to remote work, they had an effective freeze. of new hires and training due to Covid -19 restrictions and saw a 30% increase in call volume compared to the same period last year.
“The result was longer waiting times than is acceptable to our customers and I unreservedly apologize for that,” he said.
Low salaries
Fianna Fáil’s TD Timmy Dooley said he was “shocked” that 80 people quit their jobs in Eir between March and July amid the pandemic and when so many other people were losing their jobs.
Dooley said it was “strange” for him, but when Lennon told the committee that the call crews were being paid a salary of between 21,000 and 23,000 euros plus an annual bonus, Dooley said that he “shouldn’t be surprised if the salaries are so low “.
“If you present what you are offering at such a low level, you will get people who are less skilled and less committed to your business,” said Dooley.
“I would say, with respect, that if you really want to do what you are talking about and start permanent jobs with pension rights, then you will have to pay more.”
In response, Lennon said, “We will have to agree to disagree, I don’t think that’s the problem.”
Lennon said that once the first lockdown restrictions were lifted, the company began hiring again.
“We have hired 120 people. We have not finished yet, we continue hiring, “he said.
‘Left in the cold’
ComReg Commissioner Robert Mourik told Prime Time last night that Eir’s problems were “so deep and so troublesome” that clients had been “abandoned.”
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan met with representatives from Eir and Vodafone Ireland last week to express their frustration at poor customer service.
The committee heard that of the 5,354 complaints between July and September to ComReg, only two-thirds of those were related to Eir. ComReg the statutory body responsible for regulating the electronic communications sector.
Lennon told the committee that she was “shocked” to hear Mourik’s comments and that she disagreed with the telecommunications watchdog.
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“I don’t think Eir’s clients have been left out,” he said.
But he said he was not surprised by the high level of complaints.
“If a repair goes wrong or a member here wants broadband access for a constituent, they don’t contact the director of Sky or Vodafone. They get in touch with Eir’s boss. We do all the repairs, all the installations, so we’re likely to get more complaints, ”Lennon said.
“That is no excuse. I’m not saying that the service during the summer was acceptable or even where we are now is acceptable, it is not. “
Lennon told the committee that Eir had lost up to 80 employees during the pandemic, that the number of calls that other staff members had been able to take had decreased, and that the volume of calls had also increased.
He also said that customers who called the company had an average wait time of 30 minutes during the early stages of the pandemic, but that it had now been reduced to less than 10 minutes today.
However, the committee chairman, Kieran O’Donnell, said he had contacted customer service on Wednesday and had waited 29 minutes to connect with a staff member.
The Fine Gael TD “made an exception” to Lennon’s excuse that Eir is a bigger company, so he ran into more trouble.
“It’s unacceptable, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” he said. “It’s a lame excuse.”
In his opening statement, Lennon said that Eir had completed the rollout of its rural fiber broadband program during the summer of 2019, serving a total of 340,000 rural homes and businesses.
She also said that she was aware that TDs and senators were obtaining representations from voters who had homes near Eir’s rural fiber network who wanted to be connected but that she could not connect them because Eir had already given the witness to National Broadband. Ireland.
He said the company had connected 150,000 new customers to fiber broadband and repaired 200,000 faults since April this year.
In a statement issued after the committee meeting, Sinn Féin Communications spokesman Darren O’Rourke said it was unfair for Eir to “blame Covid for his own failures.”
“Eir has a terrible reputation for the service it provides, and that’s long before this year’s pandemic.
“The CEO apologized to the committee today, but there is no point in apologizing at Leinster House, they need to apologize to customers who have disappointed.”
O’Rourke said he “does not trust the issues raised in the committee today to be addressed by Eir” and called for ComReg to have “the enforcement powers they need to solve problems in this sector.”
With reporting by Christina Finn, Órla Ryan and the Press Association
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