The Captain's Blog ™

In the course of researching recent developments in the residential gas and electricity market, I found myself needing to speak with someone at E.ON. Just a quick phone call to check a couple of facts.

Their call centre was obviously having a busy day, as I found myself in a queue. This wasn’t entirely unexpected and could even have worked to E.ON’s advantage, if only they’d made a little effort to leave people in the queue with a positive impression of the company.

This isn’t impossible to achieve. You just get the right person for the job. In this case, you’d ideally use a voiceover artist. There are plenty of them about – and they’re perfect for jobs like recording professional “on hold” messages for telephone systems like E.ON’s.

So did E.ON use a voiceover artist? Apparently not. It seems more likely that E.ON’s “on hold” message was instead recorded by whoever it was in the call centre who drew the short straw when E.ON decided they’d do the job in-house, on the cheap.

So it was that I found my nerves being worn ever more thin as, time and again, I listened to a looped “on hold” message that contained such gems as:

… we are doin’ our best to answer your call …

… we are experiencin’ high call volumes …

… we are sorry to keep you waitin’ …

And the jewel in the crown:

… we will be WIV you as soon as we can …

Some might think I’m being snobby, but I’m really not – I have nothing against the lady in question.

Speaking purely as a marketer, I can’t help but feel that this is really shoddy work from E.ON. Anyone who has flinched involuntarily at Alesha Dixon’s grammatical errors during Strictly will, I’m sure, agree (“we was”, “they was”, etc).

E.ON should be doin’ a much better job of presentin’ itself to new and existing customers. Particularly when that phone call could actually be the only direct interaction that many of their target market will ever have wiv E.ON (seriously, how many times have you called your utility supplier this year?)

Time for a new “on hold” message, please, E.ON. Recorded professionally this time.