Eir chief apologises for drop in customer service standards

Eir CEO Carolan Lennon: 'We have lost 80 staff between March and July when we were unable to recruit due to lockdown restrictions.'
Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

The CEO of telecoms company Eir has apologised to the Oireachtas for a dip in customer service standards during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Carolan Lennon told the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications Network the company had seen increased wait times and a rise in average calls handled due to the loss of on-site support systems.

"We moved hundreds of care agents to remote working overnight, we had an effective freeze on new hiring and training because of health and safety regulations and we saw a 30% increase in call volume versus the same time last year. 

"The result was longer than acceptable wait times for our customers, and I apologise unreservedly for that."

She said the issues had been compounded by the nature of the call centre staff, who tend to be younger and work from shared accommodation.

In fairness its difficult to fit new @eir technology in a bedroom pic.twitter.com/PvhGm5Pd8x

— Damien Mac Conchoille - @bohola4.bsky.social (@bohola4) November 24, 2020

"Working in a bedroom or at a kitchen table is not the job that our staff signed up for and we have lost 80 staff between March and July when we were unable to recruit due to lockdown restrictions.

“To account for the increase in calls, and the lower productivity of working from home, we needed to add 70 new staff, and instead we lost agents during the lockdowns. When you add all these factors up, the result has been unacceptable wait times.”

Ms Lennon said that as soon as restrictions were lifted, work was undertaken to hire new staff, but IT issues were ongoing.

If an agent faces a systems issue today, we have to courier their computer back to our IT team, meaning an issue that could have been resolved in a few minutes pre-Covid now could take a day.”

She added that the average wait time for a call had dropped to 10 minutes in recent weeks. She said she expects it to be half that by Christmas while saying this is "not where we want to be".

Watch live as the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications Networks meets with @eir to discuss Broadband, Phone Connectivity and handling customer requests and complaints #seeforyourselfhttps://t.co/5C8P3AMQrd https://t.co/VpU22BsePX

— Houses of the Oireachtas - Tithe an Oireachtais (@OireachtasNews) November 25, 2020

She said every person at the company had "heard stories" of poor service being offered, but that this was being addressed.

The appearance comes after an extraordinary criticism of Eir by Comreg Commissioner Robert Mourik. Speaking on the RTÉ's  Prime Timelast night, he said the service had been "unacceptable". 

“The problems with Eir were so deep and so problematic that customers were really left out in the cold.”