Reorganization of the Community landing page?

[WearySky]

There seems to be a non-trivial number of people creating threads without bothering to read any of the extremely helpful Knowledge Base threads.  I think it might not be a bad idea to do one of two things, to help avoid such situations (so many angry folks that don't understand how PM's support works!):

1 - Permanently make the important Knowledge Base threads "featured topics"

2 - Move the Knowledge base section (currently located below the "Community" section on the homepage) closer to the top.

While I find it mildly humourous (as a non-PM employee) seeing the number of people complaining about how PM is a fraudulent company stealing money and not providing a contact phone number or any way to contact them, it might not hurt to try to make the visibility a bit better so we have a few less of those.

[Luddite]

Totally with you. There are MANY tiny changes, like this, PM could make to clarify its service model, but don't hold your breath.

[WearySky]

@Luddite what can I say, I'm an optimist.  🙂  Of course, even small changes (or big ones, for that matter) like this won't eliminate *all* the lunatics, because there's some percentage of people that just don't bother to read.  As a web developer, I've gone out of my way to put messages in big bright banners on our websites to make sure that they're impossible to miss, and we'll still get people calling our customer service line asking questions answered by said big bright banners.

[Luddite]

Too true; most port-in failures are from typos. Not being a programmer I don't know which changes are simple. For example, when activating a SIM is it easy or hard to remove the "Port your number" button? Clearly, to me at any rate, forcing customers to activate an account BEFORE porting their old number would at least prevent total loss of service on their old and new accounts.

[CaNuCk07]

I did find it very helpful when the important knowledge threads were pinned to the first section.  That would definitely be a good idea!

[rwhitley]

Or you know.....actually offer better support.

Customers shouldn't have to learn your system.

Live chat would help immensely.

Plus there is very obviously an activation technical issue that needs to be addressed.

Also, answering the emails within the 48 hours stated would help, I'm well past 72 and still no reply.

[WearySky]

@rwhitley the support model works just fine and dandy for the (vast majority of) PM customers who take the 5 minutes (really, not even that long) to learn how it works.  Unfortunately, there's the occasional person who isn't patient enough to take that time, hence my suggestion to make it a little bit easier to navigate for folks who may not be tech savvy enough to be able to learn the ropes quickly.

I do agree that the contact us page seems to cause an awful lot of headaches though - the number of complaints from people for whom it just does not work seems to be more than normal lately, and I'm not sure why that alone is in a separate queue from the rest of the forum moderation (where messages generally get responded to within minutes, if it's during business hours).

[NDesai]

@Luddite Removing a button is as simple as editing post. Just have to remove the code for the button and other linked items. 

But with that change, they have to have so many numbers available to choose and we know that is limited....having porting option at least eliminates users to pick new numbers.

At some point, they will have to change the layout to this community to have a new fresh look like many other communities do. Hopefully, that will bring some features to better customize the design to make navigation easier for users.  

[TheOldVR]

Agreed - as I look at the message board I see people posting anything anywhere just to get help.

I have no idea how to fix this as the layout is fairly straight forward, perhaps it would help to be able to have a mandatory field selecting the correct discussion group for your inquiry whenever you start a new post.

Changes would align with a new service structure in case PM has opted to act on some of the feedback received over the past few months.

Happy Tuesday All!

[stonechucker]

So many good thoughts, and more I'm sure will come.

For me, the most drastic thing that needs to occur is changing the "muted" colour scheme, to something more contrast.  Colour selection makes some highliting unreadable as the difference in brightness / clarity is diminished.

Removing defined sizes of areas based on pixel count would also help, as I do not use a normal setup due to my vision issues, but rather use zooming software and half screen sized (ie in Windows, drag your browser to the left or right edge) browsers, the body skirts behind the right edge of screen, forcing me to scroll.  Using relative sizes (ie. 80% width) would help this.  But this is an issue with the majority of websites, so it's an industry issue, rather than a cellular providers main concern.

I like the idea of getting rid of the large graphics at the top, or at least reducing the size of them.  Move the knowledge base to the top (ie show 5 topics, with a link to more) for easy access.  I would even suggest, making a menu option for KB and/or Tips right at the top to load the KB and/or tips in a new tab or window.

So many small changes would certainly help, but as this is the value cellular carrier, funding to do these changes doesn't come cheap, or quickly.

[Watoko]

Totally agree with this. I just answered a question in which the customer could have easily searched the Knowledge Base articles. Obviously it was not their fault as the visibility of the KB articles are poor. I support moving the KB articles pane all the way to the top of the Community Forums page for increased visibility.