Slooowwww responses to email requests

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sleemanj

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#948134 9-Dec-2013 15:07

Some people prefer and are faster and more accurate with verbal communication.

Some people prefer and are faster and more accurate with written communication.

People are different. Clearly you (Jaxar) are covered by the first statement. Clearly I am covered by the second statement.

Businesses who offer to service those in the second statement, should do so with the same enthusiasm as they do for those in the first statement.

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James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

graemeh

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#948152 9-Dec-2013 15:30

sleemanj: Businesses who offer to service those in the second statement, should do so with the same enthusiasm as they do for those in the first statement.

Totally agree.

I see no reason why a customer sending an email request should be responded to after one who places the same type of request by phone.

mattwnz

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#948180 9-Dec-2013 16:00

graemeh:
sleemanj: Businesses who offer to service those in the second statement, should do so with the same enthusiasm as they do for those in the first statement.

Totally agree.

I see no reason why a customer sending an email request should be responded to after one who places the same type of request by phone.

Exactly. You also find the same thing with physical stores, where an incoming phone call will get often priority over someone who is waiting to be served. So for some reason, phone seem to get priority over all other methods of communications. The best support I find for email, is those companies that don't offer phone support at all. But it can also be the worst support for free services such as facebook, where you have to hunt for an email form to fill in, and you rarely hear back from them.

Demeter

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#948848 10-Dec-2013 17:08

In an ideal world, all our support queries would be dealt with immediately. I wish it were possible. But speaking as some who has surfed both the phone and the email queues, I can say from experience that email inquiries can take up to three times as long on average to resolve. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook, although the handling time there is slightly quicker. We offer it as a service channel option for customers who choose to use this avenue and we dedicate as much resource and priority to it as we can, but the unfortunate fact remains that the turnaround will never beat the phone queue, even when you take hold times into account.

As an alternative to email, I can suggest to look us up on our community forums as we have a small dedicated team that currently deal with requests as they come in and the turnaround at the moment is pretty quick. We also have product specialists reading and contributing to threads there and they are often able to answer questions quickly.

sleemanj

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#948857 10-Dec-2013 17:25

Demeter: email inquiries can take up to three times as long on average to resolve. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook, although the handling time there is slightly quicker

Correlation != Causation

Speaking to email support queues at ISP's, I would postulate that a possible cause for your anecdotal experience is that people who send email enquiries may typically be more technically oriented and competent and thus have more technical enquiries (simple ones being things such technical people have no need of support for) requiring more detail, and perhaps more thorough investigation.

Twitter and Facebook enquiries I would hypothesise to have a slightly larger proportion of technically minded people with smaller issues, larger issues being sent by email.

Therefore, I would present the possibility that email enquiries are in fact at least as important as telephoned ones if not more so, precisely because they take longer to resolve due the fact that they are on average more technical problems.

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James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

Demeter

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#948860 10-Dec-2013 17:40

sleemanj: Speaking to email support queues at ISP's, I would postulate that a possible cause for your anecdotal experience is that people who send email enquiries may typically be more technically oriented and competent and thus have more technical enquiries (simple ones being things such technical people have no need of support for) requiring more detail, and perhaps more thorough investigation.

Incorrect. The reason is takes longer, is because often customers fail to articulate their needs clearly. Further correspondence is then entered into to find out exactly what the problem is, to obtain contact detail so we can call the person because (shockingly) the phone makes it easier to clarify some things - especially when they are technical.

Twitter and Facebook enquiries I would hypothesise to have a slightly larger proportion of technically minded people with smaller issues, larger issues being sent by email.

May I suggest you pay our feeds a visit before extrapolating your hypothesis further? Especially Facebook. :)

Therefore, I would present the possibility that email enquiries are in fact at least as important as telephoned ones if not more so, precisely because they take longer to resolve due the fact that they are on average more technical problems.

I did not suggest that they are less important, merely that the turnaround time is extended. If something is urgent, calling us will elicit a more urgent response, especially since you are able to reiterate to the agent how urgent your request is. Emailing us leaves you in a queue, and the person who emailed in broken English with no contact details because they can't top up their mobile calls are in the queue ahead of you. They will be dealt with first.

Cheers,

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sleemanj

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#948870 10-Dec-2013 18:02

I can imagine my next urgent support request to Vf, which we now know must be by phone...

"
Hello, there seems to be a problem with the proxy, here is a traceroute
one, one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one open parenthesis One one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one close parenthesis one three decimal one four milliseconds.........
[ half an hour later ]
so as you can see a standard udp traceroute succeeds but a tcp traceoute over port 80 fails as follows
one, one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one open parenthesis One one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one close parenthesis one three decimal one four milliseconds.........
"

/almost serious

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James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

gregmcc

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#948872 10-Dec-2013 18:06

sleemanj: I can imagine my next urgent support request to Vf, which we now know must be by phone...

"
Hello, there seems to be a problem with the proxy, here is a traceroute
one, one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one open parenthesis One one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one close parenthesis one three decimal one four milliseconds.........
[ half an hour later ]
so as you can see a standard udp traceroute succeeds but a tcp traceoute over port 80 fails as follows
one, one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one open parenthesis One one nine two decimal one six eight decimal one zero decimal one close parenthesis one three decimal one four milliseconds.........
"

/almost serious

I find that any problem that is more technical than a password change then it's a waste of time ringing, as the phone support staff seem to read from a script, emailing just takes painfully long, i've got supports tickets from over a year ago that have *never* been replied to, and some marked "solved - no reply" and the problem not solved

MikeHales

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#948883 10-Dec-2013 18:18

Interesting thread, the model I'm partial to is one where you (and obviously the order would vary and assumes you don't find the answer in the previous line)
- search online
- find web content
- find FAQ content (not the same as web)
- ask in the Community
- online chat
- email
- phone

But as mentioned it depends on the urgency of your info request and sometimes the question is so specific that web/FAQ/community tools can never be accurate enough.

r2b2

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#948991 10-Dec-2013 21:41

MikeHales: Interesting thread, the model I'm partial to is one where you (and obviously the order would vary and assumes you don't find the answer in the previous line)
- search online
- find web content
- find FAQ content (not the same as web)
- ask in the Community
- online chat
- email
- phone

I do most of those things although finding support information about the old TCL based products is a little like finding a (wrong) needle in a haystack. As a TCL customer I've never really heard much about the community site and I definitely did not realise there is online chat available - is that chat available for TCL based products or will the people answering that queue not know much?

[Edit: err actually strike that - can't find online chat - does it actually exist? :) ]