Sparcells Surgery - Ratings and reviews
Reviews
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Review titled Sparcells booking process is very poor.
Rated 1 star out of 5
by Rich T - Posted on 12 June 2023
Wife calls at 08:00 and straight away in a queue of 8. Hung on to 09:30 to get to 'top of queue' but it just rings for 20mins before we give up. I then try at 11:25 and into a queue of 9. Hung on to 12:35 until I decided to stay on my phone, and actually drive to the surgery to see what's going on. By the time I arrive, my phone is now number 1, and it's just ringing and ringing. I enter the surgery. No ringing phones. I ask the front desk. Yes, phones are routed to there. Turns out that the phone ringers are all off. I get that. Constant ringing would drive anyone mad. But here's what I discovered about Sparcells. The staff there have other things to do besides answering calls. However, the other tasks they do, are not quick tasks. So phone calls can wait a long time before being seen to. That's assuming they task switch regularly between a phone call and their other tasks. That's assuming they're not hampered by whatever computer system issue they may have. That's assuming they're not lost with some missing admin, or trying to figure out a timeline or a chain of events or something. The call queue, they have no sight of from what I can see. They have no idea how long the queue is, to give the impetus to speed up or dedicate more time to the phones. The call queue also, once you are 'number 1' in the queue, you are actually now in a queue of 2 on the actual desk phone itself! 2 flashing lights on the phone and you are dependent on that person answering the call and not busy handling some other task. I know this because I looked at the phones, whilst I was on my phone, stood inside the surgery! I hung up my call and saw one of the green blinking lights on the reception's desk turn blinking red, and then disappear and then a short while comes up again blinking green - which I guess is the person behind me moving up the queue. Maybe dedicate one person to answering the calls. Maybe get a booking system, like when we had to book covid test centre appointments. I don't know but whatever, something needs to happen. This was a truly dreadful and stressful experience, especially when it's a child's health I wanted advice on. They've been off school all this morning. It's now 2pm. We've been trying since 8am. and the best solution was - call again at 8am tomorrow, and try your luck again. Luckily one of the ladies at Sparcells has tried to help me, as I was on the verge of tears. So we hope to speak to the pharmacist next door soon. Don't blame the players, blame the system. It's truly broken. (although two of the players sat there listening to my conversation with the lady trying to help me, could have just got on with answering the phone calls, to be brutally frank).
Visited June 2023
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