topic Re: Communicating with Plusnet in Plusnet Feedback

Communicating with Plusnet

johnwnice — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 13:41:59 GMT

How does a person with severely limited hearing communicate with Plusnet when the online chat facility seems to be permanently unavailable?

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:23:05 GMT

You need to check your adblocker... to make sure "live person" and Google Adsense are not blocked... then it will "probably work"... but after you have "unblocked them"... you need to reboot your plusnet page with the live chat on..

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

johnwnice — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:43:32 GMT

@shutter wrote:

You need to check your adblocker... to make sure "live person" and Google Adsense are not blocked... then it will "probably work"... but after you have "unblocked them"... you need to reboot your plusnet page with the live chat on..

Thanks for the tip; it worked. All I need now is for the 29 people in front of me get answers/hang up.

John

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 15:12:13 GMT

Glad to be of assistance..... at least on the live chat, you know where you are in the queue, but on the phones you don`t know, and could be on there for hours listening to MUZAK and adverts about contacting plusnet on line, ( a bit daft if you are phoning up about not having any connection ! ! )..

you may find it is less of a wait, later on in the day.( after teatime, when people are busy eating ! ! )..

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

Anoush — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 22:22:56 GMT

Welcome back to the forums @johnwnice and I'm sorry that you find it difficult to contact us over the phone.

I'm glad that you managed to get webchat working, did you get through in the end? If there is ever anything we can help with on here, just let us know.

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

johnwnice — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 11:31:47 GMT

Yes, it works now, thank you. Hearing I was 30th in the queue I gave up. Pity you don't simply accept Emails - though I suppose it wouldn't be so easy to restrict caller numbers.

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Full quote of preceding post removed as per Forum rules

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 08:55:30 GMT

@Anoush wrote:

Welcome back to the forums @johnwnice and I'm sorry that you find it difficult to contact us over the phone.

I'm glad that you managed to get webchat working, did you get through in the end? If there is ever anything we can help with on here, just let us know.

@Anoush nice one.... you are glad that he "managed to get webchat working".... isn`t that something that Plusnet should have addressed a long time ago..

I, too, struggled to get it working, ... it was only through using the forum that I was informed about WHY it was always "not available at the moment.... please try later"..

Instead of that message.. why don`t you take some action, and provide a reason why, and suggest that the user should check their adblocker to unblock the two items I suggested.

That ... @Anoush would be Plusnet "doing us proud"... and also it would "improve the customer sevice level" just a teeny bit.... to help get back some of the credibility into Plusnet stating that they have the best customer service...

Surely it would be a small simple and effective answer to the frustrations of new ( and some older ) customers. to put this message on, in place of the present one

You could say that by not doing so, you are contravening the disabilty act by preventing disabled ( hard of hearing ) customers access to the service.

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

rongtw — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 10:11:39 GMT

Would also be helpfull that is it put on Chat page DISABLE add blockers !! before using chat

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

johnwnice — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 11:33:03 GMT

But that would only increase the number of chatterers. I suspect Plusnet is more interested in keeping them down. After all, what's wrong with Email - apart from the fact that they queue without holding the caller on the line and have to be answered?

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Full quote of preceding post removed as per Forum rules

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

jaread83 — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 11:27:34 GMT

@rongtw wrote:

Would also be helpfull that is it put on Chat page DISABLE add blockers !! before using chat

This is something I have implemented this week and will show up on the contact pages if chat is being blocked by adblocking software on a users browser. The change will be in the next release of the plus.net website being updated (within the next week or so)! Hopefully this will help inform users to disable their adblocking software for chat instead of having to phone or post on the forum about it It is something I had raised a while back when I saw how many posts there were about it and it landed on my desk to fix as part of my work to do this week.

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

Chris — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 12:20:39 GMT

Shutter,

As per my reply here, this is not something Anoush can directly fix:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/No-online-chat-how-to-raise-a-ticket/m-p/1384768#M742...

Also please see @jaread83's response here:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/Communicating-with-Plusnet/m-p/1384741#M74291

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 13:49:45 GMT

@jaread83 Well, I did suggest this to be sorted many many moons ago... good news if it actually gets done.

I did start a thread about the terrible waiting times on the phones way back in 2009 ( i think )... and @Chris kept on assuring me, ( and other users via the forum ) that when the Leeds office was opened, and the new staff trained up, then waiting times would come down.... in his own words.... " Give us time and we`ll get there"... at the same time I suggested using a queueing system to notify callers where they were in the queue.. Which I was told would be impossible to do.. yet other large companies seem to manage to do it...

Live chat has been implemented, to, presumably relieve pressure on the phones... and it probably has done so... strangely... when you eventually got connected to Live Chat , you get a notification of how many people are before you, and this reduces over a period of time..

so it CAN be done.... maybe, because of the number of callers waiting, it would not be so good to be told ,... Thank you for calling Plusnet... all our operators are busy, however your call is important to us.... your turn is number 98. .... ( or worse)..

Looking at recent Plusnet Feed back, I recall someone saying they had to hold the phone against their ear for over 1.5 hours... and eventually had to hang up the call, as it was way after 10 pm..

Perhaps a message on the phone answering machine, to re-direct callers to Live Chat, may help to reduce the waiting time on the phone... ( but would,... obviously, .... increase the waiting times on Live Chat.... unless, MORE STAFF to answer the phones AND LIVE chat were available..

Great idea to shut down the night time phone service... Yeah ? ? ? when a lot of people would have been served, reducing the number of daytime calls... Live Chat, and the phones SHOULD be open until Midnight... at the very least. due to the number of calls at present..

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

jaread83 — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:08:48 GMT

I can't possibly comment on how the phones or online chat is handled by CS agents.

@shutter wrote:

@jaread83 Well, I did suggest this to be sorted many many moons ago... good news if it actually gets done.

It has been done, peer reviewed, sent to QA and is now ready for the next release... so yes this has actually been done. By me.

If you have an adblocker on like UBlock or Ghostery, you will see a notice under the 'start chat' button if you have Google Tag Manager blocked by these browser extensions. This will come into effect when the site gets updated in the next couple of weeks.

On the subject of calling CS, I had a positive experience with an energy supplier recently (npower I think it was) where after going through the menu options and getting the right department, it promptly told me that they were very busy and if I'd like a callback, press 1 or press 2 to stay on hold till someone was available. I thought that was a pretty good way to deal with having to stay on hold by offering to let the system call someone back automatically when it was their turn in the call queue.

Anyway, I digress.. when the next release happens, anyone who is blocking chat will be notified to disable the adblocker to enable chat We should see less people posting here or calling CS to tell us that Chat isn't working. That's the idea anyway.

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

jaread83 — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:28:30 GMT

As an aside:

If Plusnet Chat is showing up as 'not available' and you are within the opening times, it's because your browser has blocked the Chat facility. To fix it you must ensure that you allow Google Tag Manager and LivePerson in your adblock software or whitelist www.plus.net in the settings for your adblocker.

If you use Ghostery, these show up as the following:

While testing, we found Adblock Plus works fine but uBlock and Ghostery adblocking completely disables the Chat functionality due to blocking the above.

A fix has been put in place that will let you know if your browser is blocking chat (will appear within the next couple of weeks).

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:30:20 GMT

@jaread83 - You said the code’s been peer reviewed, did that amount to someone peering at it and saying ‘Looks good to me.’

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

jaread83 — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:36:39 GMT

Haha, yeah that would be funny.. and that's how I used to do it when I worked for an agency! When I worked in the world of corporate web development, a look over the shoulder was what passed as a peer review. It's not the same here (thankfully).

It's a lot more high-tech here and we use a system for it

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

rongtw — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:52:21 GMT

Personally I do not believe PN support will get any better 😳
Over the years I have been here I have seen many posts by PN saying give us time and we Wil get there.
And where are we ? Still in the same situation, but with more customers trying to contact CS .
Nowt will change until them upstairs realize quantity is no good unless you have quality support.

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 15:28:20 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

As an aside:

If Plusnet Chat is showing up as 'not available' and you are within the opening times, it's because your browser has blocked the Chat facility. To fix it you must ensure that you allow Google Tag Manager and LivePerson in your adblock software or whitelist www.plus.net in the settings for your adblocker.

If you use Ghostery, these show up as the following:

While testing, we found Adblock Plus works fine but uBlock and Ghostery adblocking completely disables the Chat functionality due to blocking the above.

A fix has been put in place that will let you know if your browser is blocking chat (will appear within the next couple of weeks).

Which is exactly what I have been saying for months... and it takes THIS LONG, to actually get that message put on to the Live Chat button?????

Does the message actually list the items that should be "unblocked" from the Adblocker...?

or do customers still have to blunder about in the dark, to work it out for themselves... ( many of whom haven`t a clue how adblockers actually work, or what they work on/against).. All they know, is, they don`t get advertising flash messages... if they use an adblocker... which does not relate, in any form, to not being able to use a Live Chat facility...

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

198kHz — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 15:50:55 GMT

@shutter wrote:

I did start a thread about the terrible waiting times on the phones way back in 2009 ( i think )... and @Chris kept on assuring me, ( and other users via the forum ) that when the Leeds office was opened, and the new staff trained up, then waiting times would come down.... in his own words.... " Give us time and we`ll get there"...

I remember it well @shutter - it would have been a year or so after I joined PN in '08.

That jam tomorrow is taking an awful long time!

Re: Communicating with Plusnet

shutter — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 15:56:19 GMT

Well, just checked out the linky...

https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/Suggestion-employ-more-staff-to-answer-tickets-and-phones/m-p/657498

and the date on it is EXACTLY 7 years ago.. (plus a couple of days) 7 November 2009...