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Korth
Mayor / Maire
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12-04-2016
07:47 PM
Status:
Brand new
A more specialized version of the (apparently unpopular) Online live chat room idea posted last year by @Ali.
A Live Chat button should be displayed on Public Mobile's pages (at least somewhere along the Get Started pages and on the Community home page). Clicking this button should open a live chat interface which requires the user to submit essential information (Name, Email, PM Account#, SIM card#, phone#, etc), prompts the user to describe the issue (and perhaps offers a list of common issues like No Phone Service After Activation, Failed Number Port, Broken Rewards, whatever), and immediately assigns a position on the queue (along with, perhaps, an estimated waiting time). PM's mods can then respond and process queued requests in an orderly fashion.
Many service-based businesses - including Telus, Rogers, and Shaw - already implement this sort of thing. It's really become the "de facto" standard and failing to maintain the standard is not only noncompetitive but, by definition, it is substandard. It surprises me that a tech-savvy and completely-online company like PM fails to meet this standard.
I'll admit that it's frustrating to see that you're sitting at "#48 on the queue" and waiting around for a while (minutes or hours) before it's your turn for somebody to actually address your problem. But it must be far more frustrating to wait for days (many days, even weeks) without receiving anything other than vaguely polite automated emails which accomplish nothing. People come to PM, they pay for service, PM takes their payment, no service is received - and they end up getting angrier and angrier each day they have to live without a working phone. Worse, they end up spreading bad rep about PM while PM's only mode of advertising is entirely dependent on good rep. A Live tech support system at least promises that some progress can be made before the day is over, it can even preserve overflowed queues for logon sessions on subsequent days. It would certainly look more proactive than no response at all.
What I've seen over past months at PM is that the handful of PM mods work their shifts. Lately they've apparently been overworked and are heroically battling an overtime backlog. But the reality is that the mods still work shifts, and their shifts must overlap with those of all the "behind the scenes" PM staff (plus their counterparts at Telus and beyond) whom they depend upon to get technical issues sorted out. They're never able to all be online, they're not able to be online 24x7x365, and during peak demand (like the recent promo) they're not able to be online every time they're needed. The customers, on the other hand, are always awake, always logged in and doing things to their cellular accounts at odd hours, always requesting/demanding prompt resolution to their issues. Too many customers fall outside the availability of the mods.
I've also seen countless frustrated/angry customers flagging the mods in their posts. And countless helpful community members (including myself) flagging the mods for them. I realize that a system has been implemented to allow the mods to handle such things on an interchangeable and independent basis. I don't think it's really robust and efficient enough to handle anything outside of routine day-to-day service, it's obviously woefully inadequate under stress - recent hordes of angry promo customers demanding their money back are self-evident enough.
One centralized channel for accepting and prioritizing customer complaints is inherently less confusing and more efficient than searching through hundreds of daily posts on a public forum - at the very least it would segregate all the angry complaints which dominantly clutter all the Latest Topics, Discussions, Plans & Add-Ons, Self Serve, Phones & Hardware, and Paying for your service pages. I've recommend friends and had them tell me "never heard of them before *and* look at how many angry people they screwed and ripped off, not for me" after they visited the Community. I don't blame them, I wouldn't buy an unknown product which receives so many negative (and often vehement) online reviews either.
So I think a Live tech support system would go a long way towards addressing the time-availability issue, multiple-mod-flagging issue, and negative advertising (in the Community itself!) issue. At the least it assures customers they have a "ticket number" or "queue number" which will be serviced the next time they login and which will not get bumped back to the end of the line again and again by the more immediate customer urgencies which endlessly appear. It's better to immediately offer people an answer they don't want to hear than to let them think they've been ignored or brushed off, and it's better to give people these answers directly than to force them to go hunting themselves. Cellular customers have fickle loyalties and too many alternatives available, if you don't make it easier for them then they'll make it easier on themselves.
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Idea Statuses
- Brand new 620
- Thinking about it 53
- Idea completed 72
- Already exists 16
- Yes, but not yet 19
- Not for us 77
