topic Re: Posting CS agents' names in Community Site Feedback

Posting CS agents' names

geewizz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:46:55 GMT

The forums rule :

Quote
Contact Us ticket posting
The posting of Contact Us tickets is permitted but the CS Agents name must be removed, unless prior permission has been given by the agent in question.

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind this rule, please?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

dvorak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:02:38 GMT

Stop abuse and colouring your opinion of someone should you talk to them on the phone perhaps.
As we have seen anything that is amiss then that is dealt with in house. Good enough for me.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

techguy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:31:35 GMT

Would agree with the policy as hey everyone can make mistakes (heck I know I have) but the agent should not be looked down upon by the customer.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Be3G — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:48:55 GMT

Yep, that's exactly the reason we conceived the rule back in the day. We didn't want posters to start getting tainted opinions of PlusNet staff, particularly as a number of them (not just the Comms team) did and do participate in the forums themselves.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

geewizz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:58:24 GMT

I'm not following the logic here.
What is it in a ticket that could "taint" a customer's opinion of a CS agent?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

techguy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:30:47 GMT

Ok geewizz
Fred Smith (who is new) in broadband support mistakenly responds to a ticket and tells th customer that a broadband fault will be raised with BT on a Saturday and it should be fixed within 6 hours because that maybe the current performance on a weekday and he doesn't know that faults raised on a Saturday wont be dealt with until the following week.
Fault is reported at 9 a.m. and the customer thinks he should be fully up and running by 3
3 comes and goes and still painfully slow broadband which Fred diagnosed as a line problem, customer logs in, checks the ticket which states that it has been passed to BT.
Mr Angry isn't happy with this and so phones CS to see if he can speed things up a bit, this time he gets Sam who has been there a while and tells him that it wont be looked at until Monday, at this point he boils over and slams the phone down and decides he's going to tell the world how stupid Fred is, he stumbles across this forum, registers and unloads his anger and decides to copy and paste the entire ticket thread.
Six months later, Fred has undergone thorough training on the workings of ADSL and BT procedures and has absorbed the info like a sponge and can apply it without difficulty.
Another customer who is having similar issues turns to the forums first to see if there is an easy solution, here she stumbles across Mr Angry's thread, cannot find a solution to her problem, phones broadband support and poor Fred (who has no idea what's about to hit him) picks up.
Miss. Irritiated tells him in no uncertain terms that she wants to speak to someone else as she knows he's incompetent etc.
So therefore now do you see geewizz?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

geewizz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:37:13 GMT

So what you're saying is that it's a system put in place to allow incompetency to be untraceable?
If Plusnet are so worried about such widespread incompetency then surely they should be training staff or taking on a better calibre of agents?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

techguy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:46:08 GMT

Not at all, what I'm saying is that it might not be down to incompetency, it might just be down to not knowing but that forum posts endure so the training issue might have been picked up by the person's Line Manager and they may turn out to be one of the most knowledgeable and competent members of the team but because someone has looked at a forum post (which is six months) mentioning their name the customer that speaks to them with a similar problem treats them with contempt because of what was written six months earlier before the person fully "knew the ropes"
Let me put it this way, it took me a good 6 months to get a full handle on my current job (which I've been doing for the past 6 years) because of all the procedures I had to learn.
The job of weeding out the truly unsuitable needs to be left to supervisors and managers, not customers

Re: Posting CS agents' names

chillypenguin — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:54:12 GMT

Quote from: geewizz
So what you're saying is that it's a system put in place to allow incompetency to be untraceable?

No, Plusnet can trace the user's name and therefore ticket history from their forum name.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Be3G — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:03:02 GMT

What also has to be remembered is that often customers will feel support responses are unsatisfactory just because they don't get the result they want, not because the agent actually made an error. This behaviour has been observed with PN's contact us smiley face ratings... people will rate tickets with an unhappy face just if they didn't get what they want, irrespective of how helpful and knowledgeable the agent(s) in the ticket was/were.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

geewizz — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:51:23 GMT

ok, let me try this from a different angle.
Why are CS agents' names on support tickets?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Be3G — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:54:44 GMT

Because it's polite to sign off things with one's name, I should imagine. I used to do the same to my forum posts, until I realised I was the only weirdo who did so. Same reason they're at the end of service status posts - there's no need for a name to be included, but it just makes the posts seem a bit more personable and friendly.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Peter_Vaughan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:06:56 GMT

Another important reason why the names should not be posted in the forums is the CS agents concerned often have no way to respond to any comments / accusations etc made against them here. So it would only allow one side to be seen which may or may not have been distorted to make the situation appear worse that it actually was or a misunderstand had occurred. People do do things or misunderstand what was said in a text reply when they are angry or don't get their way.
So it is only fair that the Agent concerned is not mentioned. This does not mean the reason for the complaint / post should not be taken seriously.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:12:17 GMT

Peter is 100% correct - no customer service personnel should be named in these forums. The majority of my experiences of CS have been good - only last Saturday I rang in and spoke to a polite and helpful person. Rarely the experience has has been not so good.
I haven't posted on here in either case - these are public forums and the people concerned deserve their anonymity. We are here by choice and can communicate relatively freely (within rules) but staff wouldn't have the choice to retaliate in the case of unfounded accusations. None of us is perfect - we all have to learn new things (in a fast changing world) and we all have 'off' days.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

198kHz — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:11:11 GMT

I'm with the consensus on this one - it just doesn't seem right that PN staff, even if they might "deserve" it, should be in "in the firing line" on a public forum.

Quote from: geewizz
ok, let me try this from a different angle.

Turning the whole thing around - what purpose or advantage do you see in allowing agents' names?

Re: Posting CS agents' names

geewizz — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:16:17 GMT

4candles - If the rule didn't exist then there would be no need for mods to edit people's posts and no need to remind them of the rule.
I don't see any need for the agent's name to be on the ticket in the first place. If they didn't put their names on the tickets then there would be no need for a rule and no need for all the editing and annotating of posts.

And if they have no way to respond to the posts, that shouldn't matter. I'm sure I can find plenty of quotes posted on these forums from other people who have no access to them.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

mal0z — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:52:04 GMT

I really think agents names on tickets is very important:
anonomous messages are so less customer friendly
if you reply, you need to see that the same person or someone different replied.
It enables you to praise or chastise if you need to elevate problem to management.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

198kHz — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:59:52 GMT

Quote from: geewizz
I don't see any need for the agent's name to be on the ticket in the first place. If they didn't put their names on the tickets then there would be no need for a rule and no need for all the editing and annotating of posts.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to deal with real people, even if it is via an electronic ticket.
On videos, blogs, EODs, Usenet and forums internal and external, PN staff are painstakingly transparent and accountable. On my tickets, they make themselves accountable to me. Should I wish to 'publish' a ticket, there are potential problems, outlined in this thread, if the agent's name is included.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

Spider — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:24:18 GMT

After giving some thought to this subject and seeing the pro's and cons on both sides I would suggest a slight variation. If a ticket is quoted verbatim (in quotes) then the CS name can be included, however if it is just an extract or comment then it must not be used. The reasoning behind this is that the person said what they said and it can be verified by other Plusnet staff to be accurate. However if the full message is not used then this could easily change the context of what as been said and I do not thing it is right that an actual person be linked to those comments on an open forum. It also means that people can't post targeting individual staff members.

Re: Posting CS agents' names

jelv — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:31:49 GMT

That still doesn't answer the point of a ticket they answered poorly when they had only just started and then someone looking many months later.