How to haggle with Sky.... an anonymous insider dishes the dirt
After writing this article I was e-mailed by a very recent ex-employee of the Sky call centre. I took the opportunity to ask her if she'd be willing to write a note on how it works and how to haggle properly. Fantastically she was, and below is the result, happy hunting.
The Turnaround Department
First of all the department is known as Turnaround and deals with people wanting to cancel their subscriptions because of cost, dissatisfaction or technical problems. It also deals with customers who are moving house. So a very busy department!
Always threaten to cancel!
The week goes from Friday to Thursday, this is important because each advisor only gets a set number of "deals" to offer customers each week. No-one wants to "give them away" on the first day and no-one has any left by Thursday, so the best days to call are Tuesday and Wednesday. Weekend staff and evening staff have their own small allocation of deals.
These deals can ONLY be used when the customer states they wish to cancel. You would be penalised if you gave a deal without the customers stating clearly that they want to cancel, so it's very important you do this.
The type of deal available varies, but typically you could expect 1/2 price sky packages for 3months, free Disney channels and sky movies at the cost of the basic pack. You're not usually able to put a customer onto a second deal when they reached they've reached the end of the first deal.
Moving Home
The normal cost of moving home is £40 (including sky+) if you have more than one box it's about £10 extra per box. Not too bad when you consider the engineers time, but if you threaten to cancel because of cost, or cancel and rebook under another name at new address, then you can nab the deal for free.
However a word of warning - good operators always make sure they get the new address first so that the sky system can follow up on people moving, cancelling and rebooking a new system at their new home. It IS done and customers will find their new installations cancelled.
In an average weekly shift I would take over 100 calls, and have only 6 of the 1/2 price deals, and maybe 6 of the moving home deals, so they really are scarce. It is only the cancellations/Turnaround dept that can offer these promotions.
Time it Well
The time of year also affects the offers available. January and February are bad times for the department as many people cancel after Christmas, and Mr Murdoch needs to keep his figures high for the end of the financial year, so generally there are more offers available!
Techie Troubles
If a customer has a technical issue (broken box, loss of signal) then they first go from Customer Service to Tech help, where they will be offered a service call at £65. This will be to fix, repair or replace the equipment. No additional cost will be raised during the job and this is a fixed price.
However, if the customer finds this unacceptable and wishes to cancel they are passed to Turnaround dept. The cost and service are once again offered to the customer; if they still wish to cancel then this department has the ability to offer the service at 1/2 price, or for free. Again the customer must state clearly that they are going to cancel. Some operators will hang out for the 1/2 price because you earn more in commission, but they will give the free of charge service in the end because it is still a customer saved. When I was there we always had unlimited numbers of free of charge and 1/2 price service calls. In certain weeks, we sometimes had the ability to give customers a brand new box, not reconditioned, if they had received a number of call outs and the problem was not resolved.
Sky +
Finally Sky+ is available at a lower cost to new customers than existing customers. Many customers call in looking for the cheap deal for new installations and found that they would need to pay 4 times the cost. If the customer then threatens to cancel, there was sometimes (not always) a deal around to match the new customer price. Not all operators would know how to input the codes. This was very time consuming and difficult to do on the system as well.
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