Long Moderator Response Times

[darlicious]

It appears several service issues occurring at the same time are causing long delays in moderator response times. There have been several reports of no response at all or over 48 hours up to 72 hours. While recent and current promotions certainly increase moderator workload there have been a few other unusual issues appearing including:

1. US roaming add ons not working at all. The fix appears to be an account reset.
2. A secondary US roaming dropped calls issue that ìs not widespread.
3. Activation issues that are causing sim cards to not provision correctly.
4. Self serve accounts not being created properly or at all.(Login/disabled message)
5. A secondary issue of #4 is porting numbers in limbo (porting dept. reports issue on pm's end)
6. Reports that there are double and triple charges appearing on credit cards.
7. All of the above causing long delays in response times being compounded by extra tickets being created for the same issue.

We as community members can help alleviate some of the backlog by only recommending moderator contact for the above issues and other very urgent issues. Try to solve all issues that are not account related. Advise customers who have non-urgent account issues such as rewards or credits not being applied to wait if possible a few more days to submit a service request. Explaining to new customers (especially) that this is an unusual circumstance and to only submit one service request per 48 hr period will go a long way in eventually getting the back log of service requests cleared.

[prairiedogbob]

@gpixel 

I'm with @darlicious on this one I hate that annoying little Simon guy. I prefer using private messages I haven't had to contact them much.

[darlicious]

@gpixel 

I guess my experience with private messaging has been the opposite of yours....and personally I don't mind waiting however long it might be in order to avoid simply stupid simon who for me is an exercise in frustration, then there's some shouting involved, a fair amount of profanity and it just might end with a flying device or tears or both.

If I took my last 10 interactions with the moderators as an example then Ive had....

• 1 contact made in 5 minutes with my request already applied.
• 1  double the maximum wait 2×48 hrs=96 hour wait.
• 1 reply at 24 hrs+ overnight=36 hours.
• 1 reply at 6 hrs overnight. submitted at 10:30 pm pt reply at 4:30 am pt.
• 1 at about the 4 hour mark.
• 2 at less than an hour. 
• 3 between 1 and 2 hours.

Very few of my requests have been urgent they are usually reward based or the application of credits for a referral. I haven' had an account issue since my renewal failure last December that caused weirdness in my account til March when it was finally straightened out.

[gpixel]

I don't think mods are that backed up... let me do another one in the morning and see how long it takes lol. jk, jk 

in my experience private messages have always been slow. only when SIMon maintenance was going on did I notice a speed in response times.

I think @darlicious has the best version of how to send a private message to mods. but its limited to urgent issues. meaning there probably won't be a fast response without it

[HALIMACS]

It's all about balance, @Anonymous 

I do agree with you - not sure sending requests to Moderators just to test response time is a valuable exercise but if anything it establishes they're still on the job.

Here's a thought @darlicious & @gpixel  - Public Mobile could post Moderator's average response time based on current volume.  It doesn't have to be totally accurate but it would at least provide users with a window for expectation of reply.

Kinda like the recording "your number 4 in the queue", and "your average wait time is  xxx minutes/hours"

[Anonymous]

 @HALIMACS Ha ha touche. But this also now wastes the moderators time let alone others time. Waste ones own time figuring out things for oneself. Not costing others their time.

I'm probably a little crabby with the other thread. Trying to hold it together. 🙂

[HALIMACS]

A little experimentation never hurt anyone, @Anonymous , or so I've once been told by a very wise one.   😉

[darlicious]

@Anonymous 

That was not my intention it was more of an FYI.

@gpixel 

I sent a follow up to cancel my request as the member I as helping finally made contact. I mentioned the bf's reward issue and left info just in case. 5 min later rewards applied. I think the backlog is cleared! Though i messaged to confirm.

[Anonymous]

So in a thread titled as such, people thought it fit to test out their own response times needlessly stacking up in the queue wasting everybody's time. I see.

[gpixel]

@darlicious so these were my results

a response the next day made sense since it my request was done late afternoon PT

sorry Carlos

[darlicious]

@gpixel 

So they have...and ** poof** the magic dragon eating post is back! I just lost my post!!

[Anonymous]

I agree with HALIMACS. We also hear from people finally coming in here after trying to contact mods. I can well imagine many people wouldn't be bothered to come here and just go straight to the mods and we'd never be the wiser.

[HALIMACS]

Hi @darlicious 

I generally agree with you in principle - the idea of the Community is to attempt to help customers get quick answers to questions which WE know the answers to, or have some level of experience with.

On the other hand, every customer has a right to be heard by the employees of a Company to whom they're paying money to receive service from. 

In the case of Public Mobile, I've received quite varied help from Moderators since joining a few months ago -  there have been cases when I've wondered if they even read my question since the response has had little semblance of value toward the request being made.

It's been my experience that the members on this Community may be almost more capable of getting customers to resolution with many of the issues brought forth.

[gpixel]

@darlicious let me do a test

it looks like mods have also changed their operation hours

- Monday to Friday: 9AM- 9PM EST
- Saturday and Sunday: 9AM- 7PM EST

[darlicious]

Maybe if I try this again more than @gpixel  will get the point. I have a private message sent to the moderators on behalf of a member who has had no response in 7 days and many tickets. I still have an unread service request sitting at 74+ hours.

If the issue an OP is havjng is not urgent or can be solved any other way we should be encouraging that....not recommending moderator contact for every little issue. Unless account access is absolutely necessary the moderators need to be helping customers restore or get access to their services. Everything else can wait.

[darlicious]

@gpixel 

There's a nickname?

[gpixel]

@darlicious I've found the mods replying to private messages arent as well versed as the mods responding to SIMon. 

I know that certain mods are designated to certain issues. ie. port security, rewards etc. either that or their just using the nickname assigned to that category

[darlicious]

@gpixel 

Hmmmm......I know pm prefers the simon method but in my experience private messaging doesnt take any longer and can be very quick if you include the proper information and it depends on the request. I have feeling there are a lot of duplicate tickets and non urgent requests. There has been far too many members suggesting moderator contact without taking the time to diagnose the issue and give appropriate advice.

For example every new customer requesting their credits/promos whether they signed up before or after email registration should have been told to wait until 3 to 5 days before renewal to recieve the credits. Only then if not recieved should they contact the moderators to have it applied.

[gpixel]

I think one of the main reasons for the delays is because customers keep using the private message option and mods aren't replying to those requests. I've spoken to a few customers and have told/taught them how to use SIMon and their issues were resolved within the day.