topic Re: Customer support stats in Plusnet Feedback

Customer support stats

alanf — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 13:52:02 GMT

"Last updated: December 9, 2016, 1:50 pm"

No information is visible for today.

http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=212&helpheader=rhmcallstats

Re: Customer support stats

rongtw — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:46:41 GMT

At least Support Tickets have fallen ,,, to 12 hours, 8 minutes and 53 seconds Mind you no one can find where to post a Ticket

But Fault times are 13 days, 6 hours, 55 minutes and 7 seconds WOW

Re: Customer support stats

alanf — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 18:16:32 GMT

I rang about 13:30 today which is a time when fewer callers are expected but perhaps also fewer staff.

Forecast wait time 15 mins. Actual wait time 30 mins. This for a transaction that I carry out every 6 months and used to be able to perform by making a request by ticket. At least this time the agent knew how to deal with the request - usually there is a long pause while they involve their manager.

Re: Customer support stats

alanf — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 18:24:54 GMT

Stats graph is now displaying information from 10:00 today. However, Longest Call Waiting Now is "Currently Unavailable". Plusnet seems intent on hiding the evidence of the ongoing issue with the time taken for calls to be answered.

Re: Customer support stats

alanf — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 10:33:35 GMT

Another quiet day a Plusnet Towers. Apparently not a single customer has called so far today!

http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=212

Re: Customer support stats

PlusnetLiam — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 14:42:16 GMT

Hi guys

We're aware of the fluctuating data with this - certainly not intentional but a legacy, manual process to update ticket response times etc. In very busy times it may get forgotten but certainly not intentional.

I'm working on redeveloping this at the moment & looking to see if such information is of any true value in that format - what would your thoughts be?

Liam

Re: Customer support stats

Browni — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 19:02:31 GMT

How can there be 20.38 current calls waiting?

Re: Customer support stats

MauriceC — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 20:58:22 GMT

@Browni wrote:
How can there be 20.38 current calls waiting?

A lack of knowledge about the Maths.

Re: Customer support stats

PlusnetLiam — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 21:22:55 GMT

Slightly unfair guys! As I said, we're aware of an issue with it & we're going to take a look.

If we got it up and running properly would it be useful to people?

Re: Customer support stats

Jonpe — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 23:09:07 GMT

I think it's useful to know when the quiet and busy periods are so that we can make an informed decision as to when it would be best to call. Knowing the number of calls waiting is of limited use unless we know how many people are taking these calls, e.g. 50 calls waiting for one CS person means a very long wait, 50 calls waiting for 10 CS people is much more manageable.

Re: Customer support stats

SpendLessTime — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 09:13:47 GMT

@Jonpe Won't get that information, commercial secret don't you know. (That's the excuse used for removing the gateway network usage charts)

@PlusnetLiam Are you also looking at doing something about the overall status information pages? You know like Zen or AAISP do, when you actually tell people that a single phone exchange (or subset) is down. Those pages are really helpful to any customer of their services and also to Plusnet's if the issue is Openreach based. Your status pages always ignore this level of issue and only report regional/national level which isn't really good enough these days.

Re: Customer support stats

PlusnetLiam — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 10:00:03 GMT

@SpendLessTime wrote:

@Jonpe Won't get that information, commercial secret don't you know. (That's the excuse used for removing the gateway network usage charts)

There is an element of commercial sensitivity to staff levels etc but we can be creative and maybe look to include in there average wait time instead? Would that be more useful @Jonpe?

And @SpendLessTime it's certainly something we're looking at, we want to make sure that we're giving all customers accurate information relating to outages & you're right, a customer doesn't care if it's a national outage or just their exchange. The challenge there is the accuracy of data we receive from suppliers & ensuring it's top notch but it's certainly something we'd like to do.

Re: Customer support stats

RichardB — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 10:51:38 GMT

@PlusnetLiam wrote:

There is an element of commercial sensitivity to staff levels etc but we can be creative and maybe look to include in there average wait time instead? Would that be more useful @Jonpe?

No wishing to answer for Jonpe but averages are often misleading and unhelpful.

Over which time period has the average been calculated?

A rather obvious example is that the daily average call wait time would be misleading, were a customer to be calling at at a call peak or minima.

Richard

Re: Customer support stats

Baldrick1 — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 11:02:32 GMT

Knowing average wait times is useful if the time period over which you are averaging is short, say the last 15 minutes. Average wait time today type statistics are useless.

The number of staff answering the phones tells us nothing, why not divide the number of staff available into the number of calls waiting to give us the number waiting for the next agent figure, which could be live data and very informative.

Re: Customer support stats

alanf — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 15:30:17 GMT

@PlusnetLiam wrote:

We're aware of the fluctuating data with this - certainly not intentional but a legacy, manual process to update ticket response times etc. In very busy times it may get forgotten but certainly not intentional.

I don't understand what is "manual" about this process unless someone is supposed to type in the stats every 15 mins.

Surely any of this information could be commercially sensitive. This did not seem to be an issue when it showed that Plusnet was performing well. We are now allowed to see Longest Call Waiting Now for Business customers because it is around 6 mins. Yet the same information is unavailable for Domestic customers.

Re: Customer support stats

PlusnetLiam — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 11:51:09 GMT

The manual element is the ticket response times & was a reply referencing the 'last updated on 9th December point' originally.

And you're right @alanf, it is commercially sensitive & always has been but we've always been committed to being a little different & being as open as we can be with our customers. That won't change & I want to make sure that if this is of value we get you the information you need.

This capability is, as you can see, quite old hence the review - there's absolutely no secrecy involved & I can assure you that any stats not being available isn't manipulation by us, it's purely that something is broken & we need to fix it.

Re: Customer support stats

MauriceC — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 16:20:31 GMT

@PlusnetLiam wrote:
This capability is, as you can see, quite old hence the review - there's absolutely no secrecy involved & I can assure you that any stats not being available isn't manipulation by us, it's purely that something is broken & we need to fix it.

The problem is that the above statement is true, and has been for a very long time, with quite a number of the Plusnet back office systems. Seven+ years in the case of the finance system with no progress, so there is limited confidence that this issue will rise to the top of the 'To Do' pile.

Re: Customer support stats

rongtw — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 18:02:37 GMT

Yes soo true and i have lost count of time PN has said give us time we will get there

Re: Customer support stats

ejs — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 19:24:53 GMT

Does this mean that Plusnet aren't actually keeping any useful customer support performance stats at present?

The website should display some of the stats Plusnet already have, I wouldn't have expected Plusnet to need to ask the wider world what stats they need.

Re: Customer support stats

PlusnetLiam — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 19:57:29 GMT

Understand the lack of trust, however, all I can say is we're working incredibly hard in the background to rectify that & give you all the service you need. That includes platform reviews to enable that.

And no, we've absolutely got the data we require - the issue here is what is then being represented on the site. The question what should we have, it was more what would you think useful to see?