Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
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- Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 6:41 AM
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I found the page here http://www.plus.net/support/phone/troubleshooting.shtml ; , followed the instructions to check my equipment then tried the link 'please contact our Support Team' which took me to the page here. I'm an existing residential customer so I called 0800 432 0200.
The automatic system gave me two options so I selected option 2 for technical support. There followed a message about how to find my wireless key then a message that I was in a 15 minute queue. Whilst waiting for an answer I attempted the online reporting system but the implication of the message there was that my report would not even be read for a couple of days until it reached the front of the queue!
My feedback is that I would like to see a means of accelerated reporting of a telephone fault that does not place you in the same queue as people unable to find their wireless key. If I could have got through to a Plusnet operative they could have established in seconds that my line was dead and at least set the wheels in motion to do something about it.
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 10:23 AM
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Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 11:20 AM
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Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 12:33 PM
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From personal experience of delivering end user support, having a larger number of multi skilled staff capable of handling a wide spectrum of issues is more productive, in that anyone at first line should be able to take a first pass at nearly any problem. I was very impressed when 10 days ago i phoned up (13:30) to report total loss of my phone line (severed under water cable). The call was answered in 4 minutes and the support guy was "on top" of the issue and required action more or less as i said the words about what was wrong.
I calked in off my mobile and noted that the voice prompt system was different to what I'm used to - it asked for my service landline number. I'm wondering if by the time the call had got put in front of the CS rep a line check had already been performed. Intelligent system process - call is coming from a non-service CLI - get service number - wonder if there is a line fault - do background check before passing to agent - (now may be getting a bit far fetched) fault found so give call priority for multi skilled service agent pick up!
![Cheesy Cheesy](/html/@69488338D0B3891CC5F8AEAEEB30C648/images/emoticons/cheesy.gif)
Individual experience around here is just that, individual and clearly not universal - i was impressed by my experience; the chalkenge is to make that experience universal throughout the day, every day.
Kevin
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Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 12:51 PM
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The point is, this would not be necessary if queues were reliably short but that isn't often the case at present. I wanted to check that I had not missed an option in the automated phone system so called the support number at around 6am this morning to be told that the waiting time was 30 minutes You were lucky that your call was answered in four minutes. It aint necessarily so and if you had had to wait 30 minutes you might feel differently.
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
28-06-2014 1:52 PM
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What I sought to suggest, is that if you want a particular type of call to be answered quicker than other calls there needs to be specialist resources waiting to respond to such calls, for there to be the capacity to answer them quicker than they would be in the general pool. If you want a particular type of call to be given priority within a single operation over others then there needs to be...
1. A means of identifying such calls from others in the pool
2. A means of allocating such calls to specific staff or allowing staff to see the nature of pending calls before picking up
3. Staff allocated to priority pick up by whatever means
4. An institutional acceptance that calls of some types will be answered ahead of other types of call which may have been waiting longer
5. An acceptance from users that the support organisation at the behest of other users considers your issue to be of less concern and importance than other calls and the priority to have your call answered may be progressively reduced during your call
2 is likely to lead to cherry picking of calls
5 is really going to pee other callers off big time - having joined the queue then I do not expect others to be allowed to push in front of me unless we are talking about medical emergencies in an A&E department. A dead phone line is a gross inconvenience (especially if your mobile service goes out at the same time as did mine) but a few more minutes wait is nothing compared to the days it takes to get BTOR out to do fixes.
If we want improvement in this area (or indeed any area of this part of the service supply) it should be within BTOR's management domain. BTOR's equipment knows when a line is down - why should a user or a CP / ISP have to raise a fault report at all? On the ADSL / FTTC side the DLM has all of the line stats / error rates etc, so why when they have passed a given threshold is there not within BTOR automated actions raised for investigation? If BTOR did a professional job of managing and monitoring THEIR infrastructure call wait times on PN's support desk would be dramatically better overnight.
I agree that my experience is better than most - I did say it is not universal, but that it needs to be. I just do not think that fast tracking one type of call over / to the detriment of others is the way to go. Elimination of the need to phone up in the first place is what is required.
Automated non-intrusive line tests every N hours cannot be beyond the wit of man and machine. Checking for Q PPP Session drops / synch drops in (say) 24 hours could also be considered as a signal of an issues requiring investigation if not necessarily action. And finally a means of reporting phone fault on line which leads to an issues being lodged with and promptly acted upon by the faults team would be helpful.
Getting the right action promptly though a route which avoids human contact is the way forwards.
In another browser tab, login into the Plusnet user portal BEFORE clicking the fault & ticket links
Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.
If this post helped, please click the Thumbs Up and if it fixed your issue, please click the This fixed my problem green button below.
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
29-06-2014 8:21 AM
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Yes, the lower priority calls will have to wait a little longer but they won't be aware of this and I doubt that it will have much impact until there is a big cable cut (like you experienced recently) and lots of customers are cut-off at the same time. I think 'no service' is the telecoms analogue of a medical emergency in A&E and should be treated with a higher priority
That's not to say that ideally BTOR should not be much more proactive or that Plusnet should have more technical support staff and shorter queues. But I think changes are needed now to deal with current circumstances.
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
29-06-2014 10:52 AM
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When Plusnet can come near offering the same level of service as their owners I'll consider swapping!
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler) Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!) Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20) Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month) Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month) |
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
29-06-2014 12:01 PM
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There's a good example of Plusnet's current system failing here: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,128706.0.html ;
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
04-07-2014 11:21 AM
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Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
09-07-2014 7:47 AM
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What I was told by the BTOR engineer was the automated line test is simply the equivalent of a network ping - to ensure there is equipment responding on the line. This is all fine and fair enough, but when your line is connected to several pieces of equipment in the exchange, which should have been removed if a former supplier had raised a cease order like they were supposed to...........
The point is, that in my 3 months or so with Sky, they refused to accept my telephone was not working properly because, "the line test passed successfully."
Strangely, when my line speed was being tested by Plusnet, the fault was discovered, an engineer was booked, and I was informed I had a fault on my line that I hadn't even reported.
Engineer turned up on a Saturday afternoon and the fault that Sky claimed did not exist was fixed.
Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
09-07-2014 8:02 AM
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Re: Difficulty reporting a telephone fault
09-07-2014 8:45 AM
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jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler) Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!) Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20) Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month) Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month) |
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