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It's time to update PM's Customer Service methods

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

IMO, this PM'ing the mods or tagging the mods thing is too disorganized to get customer service going forward.

 

There is already the Get Help --> Contact Us for requesting help. I'm curious, why not have all of the customer service requests go through the Contact Us portal or else a new revamped version of that or something similar?

 

That way when someone submits a customer service request, an auto-reply email can be sent, along with a ticket number for the request. It would also be nice to have the customer service request tickets documented on the My Account page, with an option to cancel the requests. Another benefit of this is there are built-in options for triaging for Public Mobile's service agents, but at the same time, the requests are all recorded in sequential order in a single portal, as opposed to being spread out all over the Community.

 

In addition, it would be helpful to provide an estimate as to how long it will take for the service request to be read, based on location within the queue.

 

This would stop all these service requests polluting the Community. Right now it's kind of pointless perusing the Self Serve forum for example because all it is people asking for help with their porting or billing issues, with replies reminding the OPs to tag a mod or whatever. Actually, it's like that almost across the entire Community forums, just more concentrated in some places like Self Serve.

12 REPLIES 12

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Rockdaddy22 wrote:
If you guys weren't here before the promo, then you really don't know how well it CAN work. It was working beautifully before the promo and was constantly getting better.

I was here before the promo, as I set my wife up on PM back in September. I was wary of the mods method of customer service back then too, but was willing to chance PM for the plan that was appropriate for her because PM had at least had an email-based customer service portal. I chose to use PM's email service for an issue instead of PMing the mods since I wasn't sure the PMs from the mods were reviewed in a completely consistent manner. Actually, I didn't even know about this method until I read the forum and saw some posts about it. It seems odd to have to read a bunch of forum threads in order to learn how to get basic customer support, through PMing moderators.

 

I don't know what the truth is about the email portal vs. PMing mods, but it does worry me that some users using the latter method were waiting up to 2 weeks with porting issues, while other more vocal users were waiting less than a week, during the same time period. That might suggest inconsistent attention being paid to users', based on their forum posts and PMs.

 

I have no idea if using the email portal would have resulted in the same delays occuring, but the big problem is the users have absolutely no idea what's going on. But at least with the email, the website states the email was received. With PM, nothing is indicated whatsoever, and the customer is left in the dark.

 

 


@RLBL wrote:

@Rockdaddy22 wrote:
If you guys weren't here before the promo, then you really don't know how well it CAN work. It was working beautifully before the promo and was constantly getting better.

That is a fair point.

 

I hope this promo serves as a "lessons learned" experience and hopefully the next time it will be smoother (more detailed procedures, best practices etc...)

 

It has been shown that a lot of the issues were caused by the users themselves, but not at their own fault because there was not enough information given (e.g. step by step guides and use cases).  With the gotchas that happened this time around, the solutions can be stickied helping people do it right the 1st time so additional support will not be needed, or even considered.


Some of the issues are caused by the users themselves, but I'd wager most of them due to the buggy system or just the issues surrounding porting in general. And anyways, even for some of the issues caused by the users, people shouldn't be expected to be experts at navigating the Public Mobile system or the technical issues of porting. As you suggest, unless it is totally braindead easy and bug free and on a website that is completely responsive, and with always consistent behaviour, there are going to be problems. And that's what customer service is for. BTW, even back in September, the PM website was slow, so it's no surprise it was brought to its knees at times during the promotion.

 

P.S. Getting rid of this PM method or at least restricting it to a specific support subforum would go a long, long, long way to making this Community more pleasant to read. The forum as it stands now isn't about Public Mobile. It's mostly about everyone's individual issues with their Public Mobile accounts. Who as a customer wants to read all of that all the time? I betcha not even the mods (but they have to). I'd rather read about specific points about their US roaming service or about coverage or about plan pricing or whatever. Yes, those threads exist, but it's irritating having to sift through the other 90% of the threads which are created to tag a mod.

Rockdaddy22
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité
Of course a lot of lessons learned. The tech needs a lot of work. If we eliminated the bugs, a lot of these backlog issues could have been avoided.

RLBL
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Rockdaddy22 wrote:
If you guys weren't here before the promo, then you really don't know how well it CAN work. It was working beautifully before the promo and was constantly getting better.

That is a fair point.

 

I hope this promo serves as a "lessons learned" experience and hopefully the next time it will be smoother (more detailed procedures, best practices etc...)

 

It has been shown that a lot of the issues were caused by the users themselves, but not at their own fault because there was not enough information given (e.g. step by step guides and use cases).  With the gotchas that happened this time around, the solutions can be stickied helping people do it right the 1st time so additional support will not be needed, or even considered.

Rockdaddy22
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité
If you guys weren't here before the promo, then you really don't know how well it CAN work. It was working beautifully before the promo and was constantly getting better.

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Somehow I think this will serve as an interesting case study for a business management course somewhere in the near future.

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Somebody in another thread mentioned outsourcing. While PM might want to be open to that idea, I'm not sure it would solve much on its own since they'd still need to fix the basic issues which include a fubared account system, a disorganized way of requesting customer service, and basically just not having enough people.

 

They could fix all these things and still keep everything in house I'm guessing.

 

But of course, we're just armchair managers.

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@ShawnC13 wrote:

@EugJust read your post again and sorry I do agree with you.  You weren't talking about increasing overhead or anything like that just a centralized system that registers the work ticket and trackable by the customer.   Nice idea!!


Actually, I did edit my post later to mention that I do think they need to spend some more too. Not with the horrendously expensively phone support and stores, but with some more agents working the online side. To put it in simple terms, if the staff is 4, and just one person goes on vacation, then they've lost 25% of their workforce. And if another gets sick, they've lost 50% of their workforce.

@EugJust read your post again and sorry I do agree with you.  You weren't talking about increasing overhead or anything like that just a centralized system that registers the work ticket and trackable by the customer.   Nice idea!!

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@ShawnC13 wrote:

It would be great but we also have to remember why we are getting the pricing we are getting.  Low staffing costs and low overhead.  Their whole business model is based on a different way of doing business. 


But it's terribly confusing IMO, and just adds to the complexity. Furthermore, right it just makes the Community incredibly irritating to read. I'm not suggesting PM open up stores with customer service agents or start up with phone support. I'm saying the online help should be much more streamlined. They do need more staff though, that's for sure. 4 mods (or 6 or whatever) in a forum doesn't cut it.

Eug
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@mohammedessam wrote:

Great idea and i love it.

Public mobile will definitely have to upgrade their support system and add different type of customer service channels, another option would be through social media (FaceBook Messenger, Twitter)


Actually, I am arguing the opposite. I am saying maybe they should scrap the idea of multiple confusing channels of getting customer service. Social media doesn't seem to be a great way to get triage customer service IMO, and neither does tagging mods in a forum.

 

I wondering if it might make more sense to have everything go through a single portal like Contact Us. 

 

If people must create a new thread in the forums and tag a mod, the mod can simply reply: "Please contact us through our Contact Us customer service portal", etc.

It would be great but we also have to remember why we are getting the pricing we are getting.  Low staffing costs and low overhead.  Their whole business model is based on a different way of doing business. 

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

mohammedessam
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Great idea and i love it.

Public mobile will definitely have to upgrade their support system and add different type of customer service channels, another option would be through social media (FaceBook Messenger, Twitter)

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