Ways that Public Mobile can improve customer support

[Alex-M]

Step 1: Create a live chat, or at least integrate one into an online service that customers can freely use. Note: This saves both Public Mobile, customers and the community in whole a lot of frustration, and better time management when resolving issues experienced a lot quicker. It also helps cut down the time of having to read pages and pages of posted threads of complaints lauched by every single customer with an issue. I imagine it would take a whole entire day to address every issue, and possibly stretch out into a week or more to resolve each different one, and really who has the time for that?

I do not think that it would take much effort to address to the owner/webmaster: namely Telus, if Public Mobile asks to have an online chat session integrated into their system that both customers and PM could use.

If Telus, (Public Mobile's Parent company), does not agree with this simple and easy solution, or thinks that it might incur some costs to the business, there are many free alternatives that will work just as easy as paid services.

One such free live chat application that can be used for any website is called tawk.to and integrates a chat widget directly into any site owned and operated by the webmaster, and best of all there are no fees, completely free.

You can take a look at it here, read the details and simple instructions, and even watch a demo video of it in action: https://www.tawk.to/

There are many other free, live chat alternatives, but tawk.to seems to offer a wider range of features with which to freely create and have a supportive live chat session which both customers and PM could use, as opposed to the online only community forum. Plus, you can see for yourself that a lot of respectable and reputable big businesses are already using the free live chat, if you just scroll down to the bottom of the tawk.to website.

Step 2: Use and integrate a simple, online payment notification form that will alert Public Mobile of when payment has been made by individual customers with different mobile plans and services.

Form Builder by JotForm is one such simple and easy to use online form builder with many features and templates one can use, to easily create and build a payment notification form, that can then be easily applied to Public Mobile's own site with a simple copy / paste method of code integration. There is even 24/7 support offered by the JotForm support team, should PM find itself stuck in the simple to follow creation process.

The free Form Builder by JotForm can be found here: https://jotform.com/

Note: My ISP (Internet Service provider) uses an online payment notification form that can be easily filled out by it's customers to alert them automatically when payment has been made online through their payment system. It's an easy one step process, and all it takes to submit the form once completed, is just a simple click of the Notify button to alert my ISP that payment has been made.

The simple, online payment notification form itself just asks for a confirmation number (provided by your bank after bill payment made), name of Institution (your Bank's name), the Date payment was made on, and the amount paid. That's all there is to it. This simple and easy payment form helps my ISP keep track of the payments I've made. No fuss, no errors in payment history updates, and most importantly.. no missed payments.

Step 3: Please bring back, or at least provide a direct customer support line such as live telephone support. This will greatly minimize the time spent having to read through pages of community forum threads addressing and resolving issues. You will also greatly cut back on having to rely on community support and feedback, while increasing the number of live support and maximizing overall customer support service, which I am sure that Public Mobile customers will greatly appreciate.

Note: If Telus (your Parent) company is not in full support to financially back Public Mobile with it's own live customer support service by telephone, then I hope that it will be more agreeable and open to the first two suggestions I made, that will neither cost Telus (Parent company) or it's subsidiary (Public Mobile) any money, because they are both free to use alternatives.

I sincerely hope that Public Mobile takes these suggestions I have made into serious consideration, and does not choose to ignore them, as in the long run it will not only affect it's customer base, but will also greatly diminish the overall experience of what a true customer support team could be.

[PBForMe]

While I do agree with you on all points, I think the live chat options and definitely the phone support isn't there simply because of costing issues and PM's budget oriented approach. That kind of support would likely throw their costing out of wack. 

I think a happy middle ground should be an urgent live chat/phone support that can be instantiated by the PM staff for certain situations that warrant it. 

Most mundane port issues and such don't really require it, but when the rare wacky problem arises it'd be nice to know that there is a more immediate form of help. 

Just my two cents. 

[Alex-M]

@Luddite, I became aware of this when I was looking through the community forums yesterday, before I had realized that there was a seperate thread for ideas and suggestions called Public Lab.

This needs to be made more clear, with an added sticky on the front page of the Community Forums, that should clearly state, that if anyone has any ideas or suggestions to make to Public Mobile, to make them in the Public Lab thread.

Simply making a thread and giving it a topic title of Public Lab does not clearly outline what that thread is about, and makes it sound like it is some sort of topic that was created for developers only.

Believe me when I say, that I belong to some other online community forums outside of this Public Mobile community forum, and when I see some community thread posted with a topic title such as Public Lab, well.. you can guess what my first initial thought is going to be. I'm going to be under the impression that it's not your standard community discussion thread, and it's more of a developer only thread, meant for developers to share their own thoughts and ideas amongst each other.

On the other hand to make things more clearer and to really drive the input of other community members to act as a collective group, why not make a simple catergory that looks simplistic like this so that everyone who has an idea or suggestion about something, knows where to properly post it:

Example Thread Topic Category Layout:

Discussions - Post anything you wish to talk about in here.

Issues and Resolutions - Post your issues with service, self-serve, or website and find resolutions here.

Ideas and Suggestions: Public Lab - Share your thoughts and ideas with Public Mobile. Community Members Welcome. Not just for developers.

Do you see how much more simple, clean, and easy to understand this category thread layout would be if Public Mobile were to follow this format.

This is just an example of one of many website forum layouts that I have seen some if not all website owners use for their own community forums.

This is especially useful and simple to follow for newer members who do not clearly know where to post proper thread topics and where to properly insert them into the correct topic categories, and I have seen this happen many times before in improperly disorganized, online community forums where actual members were asking website moderators if they were posting in the proper community threads. Sometimes, the moderators would be kind enough to forward the member posts to the proper category threads, and other times the moderators would have to tell community members what proper category thread to post to.

Trust me when I say that the above Thread Topic Category Layout: that I gave as an example actually works when utilized with a simple format that is easy to follow.

Furthermore, I would like to point out, that if it wasn't for my general curiosity to find out what the topic thread Public Lab was all about when I entered it, I wouldn't have even known that it was a place where you could leave suggestions and ideas for the Public Mobile team.

As I have said, I only discovered this yesterday and hadn't known about it before. Now that I know where to post any ideas or suggestions that I may have for Public Mobile, I will post it in the proper community thread, but let me be clear, that this needs to be clearly outlined on the very first page of the community forums here at Public Mobile.

Note:  Also, please be aware that when you create a new topic, you only have a limited amount of options you can work with including the ability to edit a topic or post that you have already made. You can not move your post to another community thread without creating an entirely new topic or post, or copy and pasting over to another community thread.

This is clearly another feature that the Public Mobile community forums lack, because I can do this on other online community forums easily if I happen to post in the wrong section of a community thread.

[Luddite]

@Alex-M Ideas for consideration by the PM development team must be posted under Public Lab. 

[TroyDaBes]

This is definitely a good suggestion but I doubt we will ever see them giving PM a live agent or a telephone support. There's a reason why the plans are cheap.