PM Help Model Broken - Stop Random pm's to Moderators.

[KK]

As PM continues to grow sending copious help pm's to individual moderators is impractical. It results in numerous requests creating extraneous work and ill will.

There is already a infrastructure in place on the main webpage to submit a help ticket. This method organizes requests by topic, generates a queue and sends out a confirmation email. Plus it places no expectation on individual PM employees.

Moderators who are contacted directly should be directing clients to submit tickets through the existing ticket system. Direct messaging to moderators should only be supported in response to a specific request by a moderator via the forums or in reply to a help request.

These changes would make a significant impact in improving the fairness and effectiveness of managing help requests.

[magical]

This all adds up to BAIT-N-SWITCH tactics:

The bait portion was, a resonably priced cell phone, with ZERO "HUMAN" customer service.  Something most people can live with.

The switch portion is, give them NO CUSTOMER SERVICE and leave them hanging. Having a piss poor system(s) in place for dealing with such issues, with no way to PRIORTIZE customer service other than having them NAG you ON FORUMS. 

Whatever people are saying good about PM is because they have no issues. 

IF I was PM, I would offer my employees deals to work as much OVERTIME as possible (of course if they wanted) to fix this issue. I would offer up *FREE* service to people affected by outages longer than 48 hours. 

I'm surprised TELUS OWNS this company and is backing the way they are chosing to handle the support issues. 

I feel for EVERYONE in the same boat as myself, who, is recieving nothing as of yet. 

There is no way PM should hold any more PROMOS until they get their stuff in order. 24-48 hours (business days) MAXIMUM TIME FOR A RESPONSE. PERIOD. NO EXCUSES.

NOSERVICEPUBLICMOBILE

[KK]

@Luddite, I wasn't actually wondering about the process. 😝 Though I admit, the. PM get help page is really poorly designed. It primarily directs people to self serve for help. Community support gets second billing and it's content is hidden on the mobile platform. If PM's objective is to get people to go to the community first, this page isn't helping.

The more PM grows, and it will, the less practical tagging individual moderators becomes. Afterall, the scuttlebutt is that all the moderator private messages get dumped to a common mailbox. I personally find it very rude to have a system where you are encouraged to contact a specific moderator but they can't be bothered to reply. I understand this is just optics, but optics do matter. You can see from many of the comments that this is how many clients perceive it. There is a lot of unnecessary angst and ill willl caused by this approach. That is why I also suggested an @moderator profile. It is based on the old approach but with much better optics.

[Luddite]

@KK @mimmo I believe the Contact Us webform, aka tech supporg email, is totally separated from Moderator contact. Prior to the support fiasco caused by the promo the "system" was working well. What was the system, you may well wonder?

1. Post to the forum for member support.

2. Member support insufficient during moderator hours of coverage, then tag any moderator 

3. Member support insufficient outside moderator hours of coverage, then use webform in Contact Us OR use #2 and wait for the morrow.

NOTES:

- Coverage hours currently: Mon-Thursday 9am(EST) to 9pm(EST) and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9am(EST) to 5:30pm(EST)

- Resolution was nearly always within 24 hours for #3, and 5 hours for #2

- There had been discussion about private messaging vs tagging (to save time) but it was really a mute point considering resolution time.

- I am extremely pessimistic that any system "upgrades" can diminish port-in problems, but may actually trigger more unusual really bad bugs; like the new bug. 

[Balanceman]

I am for the ticketing system, but the ticketing system must be bulletproof before it can be relied on.

Given that Canadian consumers always had the luxury of speaking with live agents as part of their phone plans, it is not unreasonable that many of them use private messages as it is known to be the quickest way to get something done in PMs infrastructure.

What may work better is livechat. I know Rogers is already doing it. And best of all, customers don't have to wait 48 hours (maybe longer now) to find out that their issue is being worked on and that help is around the corner. Livechat is still online with PMs business model as it is done 100% remotely.

But yes, the model is broken because the feedback loop is typically longer than what a consumer is accustomed to, which results in more direct messages then needed and of course more time filtering out messages and requests that had been completed/solved.

[mimmo]

I think they want to keep the forum as the first line of customer support, ie community members  hepling other members first.  as often solutions can be found here,  Once that fails i think people should then be instrutced to use the  ticket system(once it is implemeted) and not send private messages.  

This way mods will also be able to  jump into the forum when they have time.  

[KK]

@ajanda, actually Dave's comment was the impetuous for starting this discussion. The impression I formed was they intended to keep the model where people were encouraged to PM random moderators and I think that.model is impractical ankd should be discouraged. 🙂 That's my two cents anyway.

[KK]

@mimmo, Yes. That is why ticket system is better. It can request the information needed. If they continue with private messages as an initial contact option, then they should create an @moderator profile with a message received function. It is only human nature to send multiple messages when you don't get a response. (Though I still think formslized system better.) Plus they should implement a cancel ticket option. So they do not have to waste time commenting on fixed issues.

[mimmo]

the orriginal model was to

1) post in forum

2) if no solution send private message

3) issue fixed

I agree with you model is broken, PM knows this and will fix it eventually. I think biggest issue however is sending messages multiple times  to multiple people repetedly.  1 message should be enough.

Also another problem is sending incoplete information to the mods, and undescriptive subject lines. 

[ajanda]

A ticket system to any major issues was suggested in the public lab I believe. Also Dave_M had made a post about the update on support on Thursday.

http://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Announcements/Update-on-support/m-p/114863

I think they have realized the support needs to be streamlined into a more seamless system after all the promo plan issues they have faced.