Community

This has been my first experience with PM. I applaud the approach taken of minimal support staff, dependence on community members and no physical bricks-and-mortar presence in order to bring the cost down.   I've used this model elsewhere on the Internet for a variety of things, and created some customer service interfaces as well. As I go through the PM registration process -- during the hectic period of a popular promotion that taxes the capacity of staff and the patience of the community -- some things stood out. You can't please everyone and not everything will run perfectly. But there have been some self-inflicted wounds that I have seen that IMO can be fixed with a little effort that will offer long-term benefit.   When the dust settles next week -- but not for too long, we are going into Xmas shopping season after all -- I hope PM managament looks at the logs from here and takes away some lessons. Two ommissions clearly stand out to me:   Lack of a killer Frequetly-Asked Questions section Lack of a customer-facing support ticketing system   A number of repetitive questions could have easily been avoided with a good FAQ section. There was even community disagreement on some things (such as whether or not you can port a number to an existing account or need to start a new one) that could be solved. As the thread progresses, the original announcement (post #1 on the thread) could have contained an FAQ for the promotion that would be regularly edited/augmented based on ... questions that were frequently asked in the thread such a listing makes life easier for community support helpers and may even reduce the number of redundant posters if people have a definitive "READ THIS FIRST BEFORE ASKING" section. At very least it provides definitive answers on policy and procedures so that nobody is guessing.   Sorry, but the KnowledgeBase just doesn't work as well, at least not in my experience.   But just as critical, the lack of a good ticketing system has caused needless confusion between newcomers, mods and PM staff. Having a single place to raise a support issue -- rather than just picking the last Mod or PM staff to have posted -- will offer stability and continuity to both customer and support. A single place where someone can find the status of their request also lessens anxiety because you know your question is "in the queue" even if staff is highly backlogged. It also stops people from harrassing staff; if you know your issue is registered and awaiting action, you're not likely to pester Mods and PM staff a dozen times more, or to send the same issue to four different people who might all be trying to answer in parallel -- not a good use of peoples' time. And good ticketing systems need not be expensive, I am aware of a number of installations quite happy with the open source "Request Tracker" software.   I'm not the first one here to mention a ticketing system, but it's really important. Staff and mods will eventually be driven crazy without one. And since you depend on community members for a lot of help you don't want to burn them out either. I hope these comments are seen in the spirit of constructive feedback, and an attempt to help. I really like the concept and really hope that it can be demonstrated to Telus that this business model is viable.   Thanks for reading this far. The promotion has probably caused a rough week for everyone and it's not over yet. ... View more

Why not sell the SIM cards through a vending machine placed at major malls, telus offices/stores, and/or at points of entry like the Airport (particulary when you start taking international credit cards)? This would provide another option for those intersted in trying your service, but don't want to wait for mail delivery. ... View more

When selecting a plan it should be made more clear that if you select a 90 day plan with 6GB of data, it should be made very clear to the end user that the 6GB is for the course of 90 days and does not replenish itself every 30 days. ... View more

First of all kudos to PM for such an amazing service, really like the model on how we are engaging the community/customers and driving the plans and improvement based on their feedback.    Got an idea, sorry in advance if it was posted before:   Now that we are growing, would love to see "US Roaming" option, there are many ways i could be worked out, for example with Rogers i use to pay $5/day with same plan.    Thanks for reading! ... View more

If you go to Public Mobile's website and select "Plans" you are greeted by this text: "Create Your Plan Looking for $40/month talk, text and 2G of data? Click here and check out our 90 day plan." From comments I've seen on message boards and articles, this confuses some people.  With the promo last November, the text was the same except that it said "4G of data" which some people misread as "4G data" and took to mean Public Mobile only offered HSPA+ as that's sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as 4G.  Some carriers, such as Chatr, offer you 3G-only data in exchange for price reductions, so some people are looking for a data 'catch' as to why Public Mobile is cheaper and misread that as 2G data, instead of 2GB of data.  By changing "2G" to "2GB" it would clear up any potential confusion, and all it would take is adding a single character.  Well, two if you rendered it grammatically correct by adding a space between them (ie. "2 GB"). 🙂 Fear of slower data speeds than other Bellus brands seems to be the number one reason people on the outside looking in don't choose Public. ... View more

I've been with Public Mobile for 2 weeks now, and so far I'm pretty happy with my decision to switch. My registration and number porting went fairly smoothly and I only needed the help of PM's moderators twice.   However, my experience is not everyone's. When you read through the discussion threads, you see that help from the moderators is usually required with registration, porting of numbers and changing of plans. I notice that Community members are often tagging ALL the moderators, telling new members that @Shazia_K, @Mary_M and now @Saray_O will get to them soon.   Here's my problem with that current trend...   Notifying ALL the moderators will bring attention to a specific member's issues, yes, but I'm sure it's making a lot more work for each moderator. Imagine if one of them has their day off. When they get back to work, they will have to sort through a huge pile of notifications, figuring out what's been responded to, and what has not. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems having to do this "sorting" is rather time consuming at the beginning of the day. Don't we all have access to the "Latest Topics" listing? I'm sure the moderators are actively monitoring new topics and responding when they are able. The current practice of tagging all the moderator's names, seems rather redundant (and a great way to collect a bunch of bravos *sarcasm*)!   HERE ARE MY IDEAS:   1) Set up a permanent discussion thread called Protocol for Contacting Moderators in the Knowledge Base. This thread would outline the steps new members can take in getting their issues resolved. This thread could highlight the names of the current moderators and the times when they are available. It can also let new members know how to private message the moderators for account related changes.   2) With the idea above, could a username of @PM_Moderators be set up for when someone needs to private message the moderators? This message would go to all the moderators and once someone has responded to it, it's no longer listed as "new". With this single username, you could list it in the Protocol for Contacting Moderators discussion thread (mentioned above), telling new members to private message their phone number and PIN there for quicker assistance. This one step would eliminate the need for moderators to send the "can you please private message me your phone number" message and having to wait for a response before actually getting going on resolving the issue.   I think it's great there are now 3 active moderators, but wouldn't it be even better to free up their time for quickly responding to the needs of new (and old) members? For Public Mobile to continue growing, I'd imagine retaining new members and encouraging positive word of mouth would be key.   If you've made it this far, thanks for reading through and considering my idea!    ... View more

As I have been active recently on the Community forums, a common and very frustrating error that is being reported by new customers is that after attempting to pay with their credit card, the system gives and error, leaving them in a limbo.   I would like to suggest that Public mobile dedicate one person in the back office to address this issue until problem is fixed.     The employee should track all new activations, and as soon as this error occurs, public mobile can message the affected customer to simply acknowledge that they have a temporary technical difficulty which they are working hard to fix and an employee will activate the account and send a welcome message soon (hopefully within hours, depending on the volume).     This would put the new customer at ease.  ... View more

Hello! Recent forum post brought to light a relevant issue that it's difficult to locate which countries are on the long-distance calling list.   Perhaps adding this list below the add-on, or in the fine print in the footnotes of the page would be beneficial for those looking to add this. ... View more

Hello everyone,   I am still quite new to Public Mobile, but have really enjoyed being a part of the community and look forward to being as active as I can in the future. Since a big part of PM at this point is to encourage community involvement and member-to-member support, it would be very helpful to provide an improved structure to the forum. While the Knowledge Base is a good resource, most of the information that I found most useful came from the problem solving posts that are scattered throughout the forum.   One way to rectify this would be to have community moderators who can move posts where they belong and encourage members to post in the designated areas. Additionally, reorganizing the sub-forums to include pinned posts explaining the topics that should be posted would be helpful (I know there is a post in the KB that explains this, but it would be helpful to pin that information under each category).   While there is quite an array of possible topics that members have questions about, it is certainly overwhelming to see so many categories, which often overlap with subject matter. For new members, this could make a big difference in getting the information necessary to have a good experience.   Finally, the protocol on contacting PM is not outlined very clearly at the onset - it is explained well by senior members in various posts, but including that information in each category and pinned at the top of the forum would be useful.   Since I am a newbie, I'd be interested to hear other ideas on how to make the forum more efficient and useful - especially for those who join to solve their problems and are just familiarising themselves with the culture of this community. ... View more

Hi guys!   I believe PM need international roam services. I live in Windsor, Ontario. Detroit is very close to me. I go to there frequently. Recently I used PM instead of Wind. But I can't roam there. It's very inconvenience. I hope we can have a roaming service. It will be useful. Fido has a 5 dollar roaming service which is very good. Thanks. ... View more

Think this must be somewhere in the Lab but cannot find it.    Sell PM SIMs in locations where vouchers are available for $5. That's it that's all.   Would be cool to get 7-11 stores on board as many of their phones are unlocked. So, one could get a phone, SIM, and voucher at one location. Staples and Best Buy would also be good bets. ... View more

Some members of the community especially new members can be confused and not understand that a tag for one moderator goes to all of them. To make it less confusing an @MOD option for private messages and taging would remove confusion on how mods respond to posts. ... View more

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. ... View more

Does PM have a way to remind PPL who use CC for their method of payments that their CC's Expiration is approaching, please remember to update your CC info to avoid disruption in service? ... View more

Not sure what PM thought, but to me there are lots of problems and issues that can only be looked into by PM itself. And since they only have email/community support, i think it's not good enough.    Community support is good when issues people have are known and there is already a fix for that. I know there are some very active users who try their best to help, BUT payment issues, refund, plan change, account problems, network outage, etc. are all can only be taken care by PM itself. And through email it can take days for it to get resolved. Many users come here and first thing they say is that E-Mail support did not help.    So, may be have more actve staff so they can quickly reply to emails or simply add phone/chat support. Lots can be done by Twitter messages too.  Adding ticket system is not any different than email support.      ... View more

I had this idea in other announcement thread just now For last couple of months, Jeremy has made it a point to give credit to the french speaking member who has helped out the most   And lets be honest, even since old CDMA days Public has had a good size client base dans la belle province.   So my suggestion is create a special tier of badges (3 to 5 minimum) to give recognition to our bilingual / french speaking members who offer support   Reward level would be worked out by Public, but they would get a unique french "Haut 5%" on thier profiles (hot lol, ok maybe wording needs some discussion still)     @Jeremy_M & @CS_Agent how bout it? 🙂   ... View more

There's a number of security issues across many publicmobile.ca subdomains, all of which should be fixed. Specifically... http://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca does not redirect to secure site http://communaute.publicmobile.ca does not redirect to secure site http://community.publicmobile.ca does not redirect to secure site https://communaute.publicmobile.ca provides a certificate that does not list it as a subject alternative name https://community.publicmobile.ca provides a certificate that does not list it as a subject alternative name Some sensitive cookies (e.g. LiSESSIONID) set by https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca are not flagged as secure https://activate.publicmobile.ca does not provide intermediate certificates https://activer.publicmobile.ca does not provide intermediate certificates https://libreservice.publicmobile.ca does not provide intermediate certificates https://selfserve.publicmobile.ca does not provide intermediate certificates Obviously some of these are more serious than others. Some cause passwords to be sent in plain-text over the Internet while others lead to sometimes broken certificate chains. ... View more

With the new community format, we no longer have the ability to edit our Public Lab ideas.   Please bring this capability back.  We sometimes need to edit our Public Lab ideas to fix errors, just like our posts in the other forums.  Strangely enough, the replies to Public Lab ideas can be edited, but not the original posts themselves. ... View more

We are seeing very similar errors repeating with many new customers unable to get started with their new account.  One key source of frustration is that many such customers are left in a limbo... they don't hear back after sending PM an email for days to a week.   No matter how co-operative and helpful the Community members are, simply diverting new customer with such serious problems to the community is NOT the solution.  Community members are simply unable to resolve these issues.. no amount of hoping, wishing and showing empathy will make these new customers happy.   I raised this issue previously and would like to re-open this topic for emphasis.  As soon as a new activation fails, PM is known to have sent welcome email to the new customer with false information that their account is active.  This proves PM is able to contact the new customers with the failed activation errors.     Use this opportunity to actually address the error that occured and take the initiative to communicate to the new customer directly before they have to scramble thru the Community pages and eventually reach the "Contact Us" link.     I propose that PM set up an alarm system that goes off to your dedicated "New Accounts" staff.. this staff member is tasked with immediately acknowledging the error that occured and reassure the new customer that their account will be activated within hours.  This sort of email should go to the new customer within seconds to minutes.  I am confident that the PM can implement such a system without much difficulty.     PM needs to realize very fast that the customer experience is very unpleasant at the moment for those experiencing these activation problems and billing issues.  ... View more