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Posting CS agents' names

geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Posting CS agents' names

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?
37 REPLIES 37
dvorak
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Registered: ‎11-01-2008

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
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techguy
Grafter
Posts: 2,540
Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
Be3G
Grafter
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Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

I'm not following the logic here.
What is it in a ticket that could "taint" a customer's opinion of a CS agent?
techguy
Grafter
Posts: 2,540
Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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?
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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?
techguy
Grafter
Posts: 2,540
Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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
chillypenguin
Grafter
Posts: 4,729
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
Be3G
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Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
geewizz
Grafter
Posts: 1,125
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

ok, let me try this from a different angle.
Why are CS agents' names on support tickets?
Be3G
Grafter
Posts: 6,111
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Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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. Embarrassed 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.
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
Not applicable

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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.
198kHz
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Registered: ‎30-07-2008

Re: Posting CS agents' names

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?
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