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Developers Blog: Introduction & the support enhancement journey thus far

Alan_K
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

What’s the Developer’s Blog?

 

Last month, I reached out to you, our Community members, for your help to be testers of our new support enhancements. Once again, I’d like to extend a big THANK YOU to those who rose to the call and dedicated your precious time to help us make support better. Your candid and honest feedback really opened our eyes and helped to take the project to the next level. The team and I were overwhelmed by the number of eager volunteers we had and regretted that we didn’t have the chance to talk with everyone who expressed interest.

 

With that said, we’d love to include the rest of the Community members who weren’t picked for testing to be able to still get an insider’s look into the development of the new support forms as we ramp up for launch. That’s why I’m excited to share more about the development and work behind-the-scenes on our latest support enhancement (which I’ll now refer to as “smartform” as it’s less of a mouthful!) as we approach our anticipated launch date of late August. I’ll be using this Developers Blog as an opportunity to share more about my day-to-day work on this exciting project with you! Think of it almost like an editorial or a DVD commentary, if you will 😉

 

The journey we’ve been on with support

 

Did you know? In the early days of Public Mobile, support was done via e-mail. A small subscriber base and far less complicated business demands made personal responses via e-mail a simple yet effective model. Then, as our business changed, we transitioned to Community private messaging as our sole method of reaching out to our Moderator team to better organize our interactions with you, our customers. While this has worked well for us in our early stages, we’re increasingly feeling the pinch on all sides for a better way to do things. We have heard a number of you voice your frustrations with our support model and we especially heard this in April & May of this year when we had some technical issues that regrettably impacted some of your services. 

 

I recently had the chance to do a deep dive with our Moderator Team and observe them in action helping our customers. They’re truly a busy bunch and I assure you it’s not easy being a Mod! One thing I couldn’t help but notice was the sheer volume of messages they handle on a daily basis. When I looked at the types of interactions they were having, a lot of the times they couldn’t action a customer’s request right away because they didn’t have all the information they needed. When you think about it, how many extra messages are caused by:

  • The need to authenticate a customer
  • Requesting more information about the account
  • Requesting more information about the problem
  • Clarifying other details

When you consider that these easily create 3-4 responses, and that if each had a gap of a couple of hours in between, that's a lot of time added up! Unfortunately, with today’s open field private messaging, we’re not making things easy for you OR our Moderators.

 

Which made me think- what if the first message of each ticket was “the perfect first message”? I’m talking about a ticket with all the details laid out for the Moderator in which what needs to be done is clear as crystal. That’s how we landed at the concept of a form to create a ticket - by asking you the right questions to help you tell us your story, we set you up for success by guiding you through the ticket submission process. By aiming for this one and done approach, we hope to improve the timeliness of getting help and giving help in a simple but powerful way. 

 

Capture444.PNG

A teaser of what’s to come (nothing is final yet!)

 

The journey to improve support is a long one, but this is the first change of many that we will be co-building with you to help improve the support experience here at Public Mobile. We recognize there’s a lot of opportunity here for us to grow, and we plan to involve you in every step of the way.

 

What’s next?

 

In our second entry in the Developer’s blog, I’ll share more details about what testing was like, what our customers told us to work on, and what feedback we’ve focused our efforts on to be ready for launch by late August. Let me know what you thought of this little blog entry of mine, or what you’d like me to share in future entries!

 

Best,
Alan

55 REPLIES 55

I agree that customers can't expect the same level of support here that they got from the Big Guys though it seems to have come as a surprise to many customers who post here on the community. That said as others have said, the turn around needs to be quicker. Elimination of the initial customer verification by including it somehow in the trouble report can only speed things up. A reduction in traffic to moderators certainly would help as well. Fixing some common problems like the return to Canada after using the US add-on and the apparent voucher problem will help. Also I have seen the Facebook moderators referring simple things like "how do I change my plan" to the moderators! Really? So I told the person how to change their plan.

Terry


@will13am wrote:

@ShawnC13 wrote:

I know the system isn't perfect and sometimes it isn't even adequate but I do find it funny how many people are saying it is the worst and not a great idea for a community based system.  I know there was a call centre  for the customer that joined a long time ago but the majority of users signed up knowing this was the way things are done here.  If you don't like the system  or it is the worst system ever, why are you still here?  It must work or this still wouldn't be in operation and supporting something that you don't like well then that is an issue you will have to deal with yourself.  

 

Sorry for the rant and scrambled up post but to keep reading how bad this place is and people not moving on to something that works for them  is pointless you are showing that it is worth supporting.


Are you condoning a 3 day moderator response time?  I do agree that customers can choose to stay and suck it up or just leave.  I am sure Public Mobile is not content with the current level of customer service.  Well hopefully they are not content.  Those that have chosen to stay are merely reminding the service provider that they could do a lot better. 


@will13am  I did not condone any such thing as stated in the first sentence.  My point was people should have known the business model and customer service method when they signed up.  To have people posting that this system never works in any other place they have seen it makes me wonder why they signed up here?

 

Using one of your frequently quoted remarks "people need to take the system for what it is and not what they want it to be"  That isn't saying there isn't room for improvement just saying if people are exp[ecting call centres and live chat they better not be holding their breath until it happens.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *


@ShawnC13 wrote:

I know the system isn't perfect and sometimes it isn't even adequate but I do find it funny how many people are saying it is the worst and not a great idea for a community based system.  I know there was a call centre  for the customer that joined a long time ago but the majority of users signed up knowing this was the way things are done here.  If you don't like the system  or it is the worst system ever, why are you still here?  It must work or this still wouldn't be in operation and supporting something that you don't like well then that is an issue you will have to deal with yourself.  

 

Sorry for the rant and scrambled up post but to keep reading how bad this place is and people not moving on to something that works for them  is pointless you are showing that it is worth supporting.


Are you condoning a 3 day moderator response time?  I do agree that customers can choose to stay and suck it up or just leave.  I am sure Public Mobile is not content with the current level of customer service.  Well hopefully they are not content.  Those that have chosen to stay are merely reminding the service provider that they could do a lot better. 

@ShawnC13I think people just need to calibrate their expectations. Seems most people who have problems were expecting same service levels of their previous providers (often from a high tier provider). The reality running a call centre whether in Canada or foreign is magnitudes more than Lithium + selfserve + staffing. People wants to save money just can't expect to have support immediately come when you beckon.

 

I got a feeling selfserve is like it is because of the interface with the legacy systems. I would think Telus would have done a roi study on whether off the shelve ticketing system is worth it or go with the route they have. Off the shelf things works great on paper but integrating things always come with unknown challenges.

I know the system isn't perfect and sometimes it isn't even adequate but I do find it funny how many people are saying it is the worst and not a great idea for a community based system.  I know there was a call centre  for the customer that joined a long time ago but the majority of users signed up knowing this was the way things are done here.  If you don't like the system  or it is the worst system ever, why are you still here?  It must work or this still wouldn't be in operation and supporting something that you don't like well then that is an issue you will have to deal with yourself.  

 

Sorry for the rant and scrambled up post but to keep reading how bad this place is and people not moving on to something that works for them  is pointless you are showing that it is worth supporting.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *


@computergeek541 wrote:

@mimmo wrote:

 

I really hope @Alan_K  and team took the  feedback to heart, will be able to tell once it rolls out, fingers crossed.  I still think, and agree with @srlawren,  that an off the shelf ticketing system possibly linked to selfserve would have been a much better system (with an option for people wthout accounts)  than what we tested, (unless things have changed). And it could have been implemeted much quicker and less costly. 


I just had a thought about that how if the ticketing system were from within the self-serve system, that would make sense to me.  You're logged in?  That means you're authorized to talk about the account and have changes done to it.  I know that part of the idea of the community is to weed out some questions that don't need to go to the moderators, but really, Community participation should be optional.  From a customer's point of view, I should not have to create a membership for a discussion board to receive customer service.

 


You bring up an interesting point.  I am a DUCA credit union member.  To contact support, I am required to initiate the contact from within the account.  Of course, the limitation is that any issue affecting account login will require a different means of interaction.  That said, it is conceivable to perhaps use the private messaging system for login problems only and have all account matters not related to login initiated from within the affected account.  This way, it's unequivocal that verification is not required nor the need to identify affected account. 


@computergeek541 wrote:

@mimmo wrote:

 

I really hope @Alan_K  and team took the  feedback to heart, will be able to tell once it rolls out, fingers crossed.  I still think, and agree with @srlawren,  that an off the shelf ticketing system possibly linked to selfserve would have been a much better system (with an option for people wthout accounts)  than what we tested, (unless things have changed). And it could have been implemeted much quicker and less costly. 


I just had a thought about that how if the ticketing system were from within the self-serve system, that would make sense to me.  You're logged in?  That means you're authorized to talk about the account and have changes done to it.  I know that part of the idea of the community is to weed out some questions that don't need to go tAgreeo the moderators, but really, Community participation should be optional.  From a customer's point of view, I should not have to create a membership for a discussion board to receive customer service.

 


Quire agree; one account for self serve activity and for Community posting. Folks who lose/forget their login would need a separate process; i.e. lost password recovery process that actually works.


>>> ALERT: I am not a CSA. Je ne suis pas un Agent du soutien à la clientèle.

Lithium is meant to be a discussion board, and not a support ticketing/service application.  it's meant for sharing and socializing, and being friend amongst those of similar interests.

 

I've been a part of moderated support forum previously, and that was certainly much better run this community, but the support wasn't based around account services per se, but rather a peer-to-peer 'How can I do this' in office applications, specifically those from Microsoft, and associated Operating Systems and other Business/IT software and hardware.

 

The idea of using a community to be the hub for customer tech and account support is ridiculous at best, and wrong from the start.  A ticket-based system, with a blog for How To and Knowledge Base/FAQs documents and discussion makes way more sense.

 

Moderators should be keeping things civil and in order, while 'tech support staff' deal with issues.

@smp99Pretty sure Lithium was chosen because it is a widely used hosted solution that doesn't require any admin effort on Telus part, I doubt they can / will modify Lithium. Its use cases are often to provide minimal support to free software and services of large companies eg Google etc.

 

In fact I always suspect the lack of thread organisation is intentional on Lithium's part so that in amplifies the signal, for the underlying analytics to work better (especially if you read some of their CTO's previous works). It is not interested in user comfort but what kind of profile / information they can glean analytics from the users not as individuals but as a whole.

 

smp99
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@computergeek541 wrote:

 

I just had a thought about that how if the ticketing system were from within the self-serve system, that would make sense to me.  You're logged in?  That means you're authorized to talk about the account and have changes done to it.  I know that part of the idea of the community is to weed out some questions that don't need to go to the moderators, but really, Community participation should be optional.  From a customer's point of view, I should not have to create a membership for a discussion board to receive customer service.

 


While I agree with this for many issues, there are still a lot of support issues that deal directly with problems around your self-serve account, not being able to log-in or initial creation, etc. 

 

This board/forum format is one of the worst I have ever had to deal with. But I don't see any changes in the future. The organization of the threads is awful. 

 

The slow service that often occurs on the self-serve area is also a sore point for me and many others. It's one thing to be slow if you are a landscaping company and just have static pics up on your site for advertising, but PM is an on-line only company. Come on. Even Koodo and Telus have a better on-line experience when I have used those sites. 

 

I do hope this new ticketing service does work. If it does, I might not be as upset with the other parts of the customer experience. Fortunately, I provide much of the tech support for my family/friends so they don't have too much direct contact with PM 

 

XionBunny
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

Nice to see a glimpse of what's to come, i hope this does lower wait times, maybe also make an announcement when the final form is out educating customers on being clear with the information they provide so that the not so tech-savvy customer can learn and have their problems solved more quickly as well, I've noticed quite a few people who would benefit from a nice upbeat how to post on how to resolve issues.


@mimmo wrote:

 

I really hope @Alan_K  and team took the  feedback to heart, will be able to tell once it rolls out, fingers crossed.  I still think, and agree with @srlawren,  that an off the shelf ticketing system possibly linked to selfserve would have been a much better system (with an option for people wthout accounts)  than what we tested, (unless things have changed). And it could have been implemeted much quicker and less costly. 


I just had a thought about that how if the ticketing system were from within the self-serve system, that would make sense to me.  You're logged in?  That means you're authorized to talk about the account and have changes done to it.  I know that part of the idea of the community is to weed out some questions that don't need to go to the moderators, but really, Community participation should be optional.  From a customer's point of view, I should not have to create a membership for a discussion board to receive customer service.

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

@will13am wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

@AE_Collector wrote:

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomple detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but never enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry


There's just so many variables. Uncertainty or incorrect use of terminology and ESL being at the top. (or French as a second language for Lieux 🙂 ).

My phone working. Um. Ok. Do you mean not? Did it ever work? etc etc. Like extracting teeth out of a mouse.


Language barrier may increase the time to resolution, but that has no bearing on initial contact.  The first step to improving resolution time is not with finger pointing at the customer.  It has to do with improving the time to first contact.  Fact is Canada is highly multi cultural.  Service providers better get use to this.  Take a look at the dog brand, they offer Chinese speaking customer service.  BTW, English is my first language.  In spite of this, my last private message took greater than 24 hours of working time for initial response.  While I am grateful that my issue was dealt with correctly the first time, I cannot say that I am a happy camper to wait that long for a response.  


 @will13am 

Sorry. My interpretation of AE-Collectors comment was about in the open forum. If my interpretation is incorrect (with an eye to the topic) then I apologise.


@Anonymous wrote:

@AE_Collector wrote:

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomple detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but never enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry


There's just so many variables. Uncertainty or incorrect use of terminology and ESL being at the top. (or French as a second language for Lieux 🙂 ).

My phone working. Um. Ok. Do you mean not? Did it ever work? etc etc. Like extracting teeth out of a mouse.


Language barrier may increase the time to resolution, but that has no bearing on initial contact.  The first step to improving resolution time is not with finger pointing at the customer.  It has to do with improving the time to first contact.  Fact is Canada is highly multi cultural.  Service providers better get use to this.  Take a look at the dog brand, they offer Chinese speaking customer service.  BTW, English is my first language.  In spite of this, my last private message took greater than 24 hours of working time for initial response.  While I am grateful that my issue was dealt with correctly the first time, I cannot say that I am a happy camper to wait that long for a response.  


@AE_Collector wrote:

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomple detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but never enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry


This is a contributing factor, not a root cause by any stretch of the imagination.  We are seeing too many reports of customers sending a private message and not getting an initial response for days.  Lack of detail in the message doesn't contribute to a protracted initial response.  


@pm-smayer97 wrote:

Thanks for sharing insights into the development roadmap for this.

 

I have communicated extensively with mods over the past 1 1/2 years; literarlly HUNDREDS of communications back and forth, so I have a lot of personal experience with PM in a short matter of time.

 

If I may share a few pain points that hopefully will be addressed:
1. authentication: inconsistent in the past as to what method or what is required...even if I supply all the right info, I have been denied support-- and yes, for NO legitimate reason, asking me to re-authenticate based on info I ALREADY SUPPLIED, requiring starting over again or simply giving up. Strange but true. Hopefully the authentication process will be clear, consistent, and more objective and systematic.

 

2. follow through: many MANY times I have had inquires simply go unanswered. The most often reason is when I may have submitted another inquiry (or more) before the previous one was completed. This should NEVER happen... It is one thing to take a long time to reply due to volume but submitted inquiries should never not be answered. That suggests a process flow that is not capturing all sumbissions or provides a way for some to be skipped, overlooked, etc. Please make sure the process flow does not allow missing any submissions. (this relates to 5. closure below)

 

3. maintaining/tracking threads of conversation: This relates to 2. where mods either combine, or split up issues submitted, based on the whim of each mod. Each submitted inquiry should be treated as an independent whole. Along with that is the tracking of replies to the respective issue submitted. Often replies get lost, not being tied back to their original thread. I hope the process will have iron-clad tracking. Again, process should be similar to 2.

 

4. addressing only parts of an inquiry but not the whole: often true if more than one question/issue is submitted in one inquiry (oftern because they are related), only some, sometimes only one of the issues gets addressed, leaving the rest unanswered. 

 

You claim 2 hours turnarounds but FREQUENTLY turnarrounds are measured in DAYS. Now imagine an inquiry not authenticated properly, or only some of the issues addresssed but not all...this now turns the time to resolve a set of inquiries  into WEEKS of back and forth. In contrast, if this was handled via phone or chat, sometimes these can be resolve in MINUTES. (these are not exaggerations...I have encountered this type of scenario MULTIPLE times).

 

This is a TRAINING issue... please make sure mods take the time to READ AND REPLY to ALL the issues in a submission.

 

5. Closure: there should be a way to make sure that submissions are brought to a closure. This is especially true when an issue spans more than one shift in a day and multiple mods, each in turn, try to pick up where another left off (not always)... but then there is no further follow through, requiring an additional inquiry to follow-up. All this adds LOTS of time to resolve some of the simplest of issues. Please make sure there is a status 

 

6. visibility of status: the lack of visibility to the status of an inquiry is most frustrating as you do not know the stage it is in: 1. received? 2. active and being investigated? 3. follow-up received? 4. is it still open or was it closed? Without this information, this will naturally generate more traffic as requests get re-submitted or an update is requested. I hope there will be some form of visibility to the status.

 

7. Reference #: many of the problems above are made worse because there is no easy way to reference all related communications. So I hope there will be an easy referencing system that is communicated to the customer in some way. 

 

8. staffing: this is a challenging one but making sure there are adequate number of mods on hand, especially when promotions are coming or when broad system problems arise. 

 

9. escalation path: not all issues can be handled by mods. Mods should know how to handle escalations and not stonewall customers, especially when an issue arises BECAUSE of a mod. Please make sure there is a way to make sure that mods do not brush off issues, as is so easy to do behind e-mail messages. (again, should relate to 5. closure and 7. reference #). If a customer has a reference # it is far easier to pursue and esacalate legitimate issues, because there is a trail that can be referenced, so there is a measure of accountability.

 

Of course, what would alleviate the burden on customers and PM is the resolution of many outstanding bugs in the system, some dating long before I started. Hopefully there is good triage and effective staffing in first, capturing all the right issues, and second, resources to plan and effect change. Because one way or another, PM pays for it; either for the resources needed to fix a problem or by poor quality of service and reputation. This goes beyond the scope of this thread, but runs parallel and directly impacts customer support.

 

Though it should not matter, I have worked as a business process analyst for many years, leading large international teams, so I have lots of experience in this area. Though there are many ways to do the same thing, I hope the above touch-points are taken into account.

 

Thanks for taking the time to process feedback from the community.

 

 


Well said.  I too have had lots of moderator team interactions over the past 3ish years as I manage many account.  What I am finding is that the process gets ever so complicated for reasons that escapes my logic.  Back in the day, we authenticated by supplying the account number/phone number and account PIN.  Somewhere along the way, this was considered too personal and we have to use a fancy verification link to authenticate.  Now we are going to have forms to guide customers on how to present their issue.  I guess that works, but if people are not inclined to tell all about their issue, those boxes could go quite empty still.  For the past year, the biggest impediment to good customer service is the crazy wait times.  Apart from the complete catastrophe in fall 2016, moderator team wait times were generally measured in minutes to a few hours in 2017 and the early part of 2018.  Yeah, we can make excuses that the customer base has grown.  And now there is no achievable formula to striving for the same response time?  Is the up to 48 hour response time a disclaimer or a performance target?

 

The long moderator team response times is exacerbated by the litany of problems affecting the service that wasn't so prevalent back in the day.  We have major problem after problem with near regularity.  The most recent is the bad vouchers.  Is there adequate effort to rectify these problems expeditiously and ensure they don't happen again?  Due to the lack of transparency and with each complaint registered in the forum, one might surmise that feel good stuff like this is getting in the way of tacking the real important issues.  Let's not forget about the renewal bug, SMS bug, dropped calls.  Each of these are learning opportunties that customer service is not where it needs to be and that priorities have been grossly misplaced.

 

For me the journey to support enhancement ends with simple processes and a 2 hour response time.  

 

/rant

Anonymous
Not applicable

@AE_Collector wrote:

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomple detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but never enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry


There's just so many variables. Uncertainty or incorrect use of terminology and ESL being at the top. (or French as a second language for Lieux 🙂 ).

My phone working. Um. Ok. Do you mean not? Did it ever work? etc etc. Like extracting teeth out of a mouse.

Probably. Whatever the system, it better have good consistency, control, and follow-through procedures or it will not be much better than what we have now.

mimmo
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

I don't recall having any interaction with mods, where they asked for additional infomation on my part.  I believe much has do with how people ask for help, and how much incomplete information is provided, and how much troubleshooting is done on the forum first.  so many issues can be solved by community faster than with mods.  Hopefully this apect does not change.   who know maybe a tutorial (do's and dont's)  on how to ask mods questions would have been helpful. 

 

I really hope @Alan_K  and team took the  feedback to heart, will be able to tell once it rolls out, fingers crossed.  I still think, and agree with @srlawren,  that an off the shelf ticketing system possibly linked to selfserve would have been a much better system (with an option for people wthout accounts)  than what we tested, (unless things have changed). And it could have been implemeted much quicker and less costly. 


@AE_Collector wrote:

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomple detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but never enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry


Yes, that is true. And it is equally true that even when you supply all the details a mod needs to execute, they turn around and ask for info that was already supplied. 

It always amazes me how people ask for help or support here or on other totally different forums and provide such incomplete detail. You get the problem loud and clear and all the threats but frequently not enough info to diagnose the problem without asking a bunch more questions. Sometimes a one or two sentence problem takes 6 more questions to get all the detail needed.

 

Terry

pm-smayer97
Mayor / Maire

Thanks for sharing insights into the development roadmap for this.

 

I have communicated extensively with mods over the past 1 1/2 years; literarlly HUNDREDS of communications back and forth, so I have a lot of personal experience with PM in a short matter of time.

 

If I may share a few pain points that hopefully will be addressed:
1. authentication: inconsistent in the past as to what method or what is required...even if I supply all the right info, I have been denied support-- and yes, for NO legitimate reason, asking me to re-authenticate based on info I ALREADY SUPPLIED, requiring starting over again or simply giving up. Strange but true. Hopefully the authentication process will be clear, consistent, and more objective and systematic.

 

2. follow through: many MANY times I have had inquires simply go unanswered. The most often reason is when I may have submitted another inquiry (or more) before the previous one was completed. This should NEVER happen... It is one thing to take a long time to reply due to volume but submitted inquiries should never not be answered. That suggests a process flow that is not capturing all sumbissions or provides a way for some to be skipped, overlooked, etc. Please make sure the process flow does not allow missing any submissions. (this relates to 5. closure below)

 

3. maintaining/tracking threads of conversation: This relates to 2. where mods either combine, or split up issues submitted, based on the whim of each mod. Each submitted inquiry should be treated as an independent whole. Along with that is the tracking of replies to the respective issue submitted. Often replies get lost, not being tied back to their original thread. I hope the process will have iron-clad tracking. Again, process should be similar to 2.

 

4. addressing only parts of an inquiry but not the whole: often true if more than one question/issue is submitted in one inquiry (oftern because they are related), only some, sometimes only one of the issues gets addressed, leaving the rest unanswered. 

 

You claim 2 hours turnarounds but FREQUENTLY turnarrounds are measured in DAYS. Now imagine an inquiry not authenticated properly, or only some of the issues addresssed but not all...this now turns the time to resolve a set of inquiries  into WEEKS of back and forth. In contrast, if this was handled via phone or chat, sometimes these can be resolve in MINUTES. (these are not exaggerations...I have encountered this type of scenario MULTIPLE times).

 

This is a TRAINING issue... please make sure mods take the time to READ AND REPLY to ALL the issues in a submission.

 

5. Closure: there should be a way to make sure that submissions are brought to a closure. This is especially true when an issue spans more than one shift in a day and multiple mods, each in turn, try to pick up where another left off (not always)... but then there is no further follow through, requiring an additional inquiry to follow-up. All this adds LOTS of time to resolve some of the simplest of issues. Please make sure there is a status 

 

6. visibility of status: the lack of visibility to the status of an inquiry is most frustrating as you do not know the stage it is in: 1. received? 2. active and being investigated? 3. follow-up received? 4. is it still open or was it closed? Without this information, this will naturally generate more traffic as requests get re-submitted or an update is requested. I hope there will be some form of visibility to the status.

 

7. Reference #: many of the problems above are made worse because there is no easy way to reference all related communications. So I hope there will be an easy referencing system that is communicated to the customer in some way. 

 

8. staffing: this is a challenging one but making sure there are adequate number of mods on hand, especially when promotions are coming or when broad system problems arise. 

 

9. escalation path: not all issues can be handled by mods. Mods should know how to handle escalations and not stonewall customers, especially when an issue arises BECAUSE of a mod. Please make sure there is a way to make sure that mods do not brush off issues, as is so easy to do behind e-mail messages. (again, should relate to 5. closure and 7. reference #). If a customer has a reference # it is far easier to pursue and esacalate legitimate issues, because there is a trail that can be referenced, so there is a measure of accountability.

 

Of course, what would alleviate the burden on customers and PM is the resolution of many outstanding bugs in the system, some dating long before I started. Hopefully there is good triage and effective staffing in first, capturing all the right issues, and second, resources to plan and effect change. Because one way or another, PM pays for it; either for the resources needed to fix a problem or by poor quality of service and reputation, both affecting the bottom line. This goes beyond the scope of this thread, but runs parallel and directly impacts customer support.

 

Though it should not matter, I have worked as a business process analyst for many years, leading large international teams, so I have lots of experience in this area. Though there are many ways to do the same thing, I hope the above touch-points are taken into account.

 

Thanks for taking the time to process feedback from the community.

 

 

Hey @Alan_K, thanks for this update, we now know that proving all information up front is what is needed to do, because as @Anonymous remembers above, we ALREADY did this before, and authentication happen after explaining everything in a message to the moderators.

 

Way o go on reinventing the wheel, discovering fire, and wait for it, We’ve landed on the moon.

 

Yes, I’m disgusted with this effort and lack of response from the moderators, and frankly, updates from Public Mobile.  Can you at least update the current issues as to why vouchers are failing so often?

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@Alan_K thanks for pulling back the curtain a little, always enjoy inside glipmses.  But I've got to say, what you're describing sounds an awfully lot like a ticketting system.  There are quite a few decent off-the-shelf solutions (cloud or self-hosted) out there that are mature systems for support requests.  Hopefully your team is looking at adopting one of these rather than trying to roll your own.

 

EDIT: I should also say, I'm not sure if this qualifies as a Developer's blog, from what I've seen so far.  It's a tad light on technical details!


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Anonymous
Not applicable

Consider me teased.

My confusion on all this comes from a change in requests a few months ago where it was said to simply send a pm and a verification would come back and then to carry on with the problem.

Now it's looking like the problem is being provided up front. Which kinda makes more sense.

This is a little like before where the deal was to send a pm with all the details you could want to write.

Still in all of this...some kind of acknowledgment of reception of the request I think is paramount. Not just successful completion of the forms either.

 

Thanks for trying to improve things. It's been awfully trying these last few months.

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