Chat

[bwyatt]

Honestly, if you are not going to support the chat feature on the website, you should take it down. For months now, anytime I attempt to resolve another one of what seems like a constantly reoccurring VOIPO issue, no one answers the chat. I've waited an hour a couple of times and no one ever answered. I can call and someone answers right away. Why offer the service if you are not going to respond to requests from it? It makes VOIPO look bad and frustrates the customer.

[VOIPoTim]

We handle tons of chats every day, so this is very odd.

Are you just not getting a response? Is there any error message in the chat client?

[bwyatt]

Tim, with all due respect... my post here went three days with no response from anyone. No members saying "that's never happened to me" or "samething here." Nothing. Don't really no what to say except it was about 6 months ago I began noticing a delay in the chat that didn't exist previously. The delay became progressively worse until most of the time no one answers at all. I called one time and specifically asked why the chat is never answered but someone answers the phone immediately... the gentleman poked around and said "oh... I see it now" and responded to it. It's like they are getting chat requests but don't know they are getting them. Anyway, I've found that my VOIPO service does require fairly regular service from you guys. You have always been able to fix the problem... but it seems there is not a very long stretch of time without problems. I'm ok with that as long as I've got good service and it's accessible. I'd prefer to chat than talk... but that's just me.

[MarkTomlinson]

Tim, with all due respect... my post here went three days with no response from anyone. No members saying "that's never happened to me" or "samething here." Nothing. (snip)

I see you are a "Senior Member", so surely you know the difference -- but your first sentences imply that you are referring to the public forums rather than web chat.

That said, I did have an incident once where I got in the web chat queue shortly before chat support closed for the day. Support closed and presumably everyone went home with me still sitting in the queue waiting for a response.

[VOIPoTim]

Tim, with all due respect... my post here went three days with no response from anyone. No members saying "that's never happened to me" or "samething here." Nothing.

This post was in a customer discussion forum which is not an official medium for support. It's not something we monitor regularly...we just periodically check in on the forums. That's why you didn't receive a prompt response to your post here.

In terms of the chat, I understand your frustration if you have unanswered chats. I'm just saying that we handle so many chats every day that it's definitely a medium we do monitor and I'm not really what would cause them to be missed. During business hours, there are always chats going constantly. Like I said, I'm almost wondering if it could possibly be a browser issue or something of that nature. There's always the chance of a glitch with the software, a browser issue, or something like that and if we have an example it'll be easier to narrow it down. We definitely do monitor chats though.

It could also be a case where we employees are simply not answering the chats as they should and this is something I'm going to send out a reminder on internally. The chats are distributed in a round-robin fashion to one agent at a time (which is not the most efficient). If an agent does not answer it within a few seconds, it goes to the next one and keeps going until one answers. This is why sometimes you may get someone on the phone who does not get your chat request at the same time (it's waiting for another agent).

After the new vPanel rollout this week, we have some enhancments we're going to be working on for support including new chat software, a new employee structure for support, new support software which integrates all the data (so can see all your history of account changes and know what other agents have done without having to dig through it and keep your chats, tickets, calls etc all in one clean place to document it all) and some new quality assurance tools (quality surveys to isolate bad experiences or employees who need more training, etc). Once we upgrade the chat software, we'll have better access to analytics in terms of chat wait times and maybe then we can pinpoint any issues.

The chat software we're switching to has more stats and management-oriented tools (such as seeing a full list of all the waiting chats, etc) vs just a basic round robin interface and total chats taken stats (per agent).

That said, I did have an incident once where I got in the web chat queue shortly before chat support closed for the day. Support closed and presumably everyone went home with me still sitting in the queue waiting for a response.

Yes, hitting it right before closing is a possibility. The current chat software does not handle that well and it's something we're hoping to correct when we swap it out. I'm pretty confident we can resolve the closing time limbo situation once we do the swap.

[bwyatt]

I see you are a "Senior Member", so surely you know the difference -- but your first sentences imply that you are referring to the public forums rather than web chat.

Sorry for the implication. As a "Senior" Member" I was attempting to point out that in the beginning (although officially unsupported) a post in this forum would generally receive a quick response from many members including a number of people on the VOIPO staff. What was a bustling source of discussion appears to have dried up significantly. I realize it has nothing to do with the Chat issue I was describing. I shouldn't have included it here.

Tim, the changes sound wonderful. So many times there are little things that do require assistance. A brief chat resolves the problem almost all the time. As a customer, it's certainly efficient for me as I would think it would be for you as well.

I use chrome as my default browser. I could try IE next time and see if it makes a difference. The one clue that indicated to me that the chats were being qued but unanswered (as opposed to a browser issue or some problem on my end) was the phone call I made recently with my chat still holding and the tech telling me he "found it" and answered it with me on the phone and in chat. It was simply overlooked. There are no error messages on my end.

[redoneusa]

Let's just be truthful here most live chats are "service agents" who handle your problem and pass it one to someone who can really help. Most issues don't get resolved by the first line support - though great for many basic issues.

Opening a ticket is always, always the best idea.

[bwyatt]

Back a couple of years ago you would get top level techs on chat. They could remote in to your computer, verify the settings of your router, and effect some pretty heady stuff IMO. I suppose as VOIPO has grown it has become more as you suggest redoneusa. I'm basing by opinion and frustration from what I had come to expect from VOIPO. It is my experience that most matters are resolved once you get the right person on the line. That used to be the guy on the other end of the chat. Lately, it's been the other end of the phone - but both (when the chat is answered) generally result in a near immediate fix. My experience with the ticket system is the response times are several hours to a business day before and more often than not there has to be two or three exchanges within the ticket before the matter is resolved. Unless it's a completely non-critical issue I find the ticket system the least preferred solution.

[VOIPoTim]

Back a couple of years ago you would get top level techs on chat. They could remote in to your computer, verify the settings of your router, and effect some pretty heady stuff IMO. I suppose as VOIPO has grown it has become more as you suggest redoneusa. I'm basing by opinion and frustration from what I had come to expect from VOIPO. It is my experience that most matters are resolved once you get the right person on the line. That used to be the guy on the other end of the chat. Lately, it's been the other end of the phone - but both (when the chat is answered) generally result in a near immediate fix. My experience with the ticket system is the response times are several hours to a business day before and more often than not there has to be two or three exchanges within the ticket before the matter is resolved. Unless it's a completely non-critical issue I find the ticket system the least preferred solution.

Sorry to hear that you feel that way. Things are definitely different than a few years ago due to size and we are constantly hiring/training new employees in order to keep up with demand.

If you ever do run into a bad experience with an agent, feel free to e-mail me at tim @ voipo.com and let me know so I'll know that they need additional training or are not following policies and I can address it with them.

[bwyatt]

Tim, I'm not expressing a feeling here... just being candid about my experience. Quite frankly, I cannot recall a "bad experience" with a VOIPO agent ever. They are courteous, helpful to the extent they can be, and speak English clearly... a real plus!

What I'm saying is that many of the same service requests I have today are the same ones I had in the beginning... a number I'm trying to dial won't ring through... a caller calling me goes straight to voicemail and doesn't ring my phone... the other day the system quit emailing me my voicemail messages. Often times of late I have to get bumped up to Tier II and then Tier III for problems the lowest level agent used to resolve with me on the other end of the chat. That's my experience... not my feeling. I have four devices now with VOIPO and one of them just crapped out... quit working. It would light up and "phone home" but I had no dial tone on the primary or secondary lines. We went through all the trouble shooting over the phone and my problem kept getting pushed upline until it resided with the developers. There it stayed without response for several days. I finally called again and the agent reviewed the problem, initiated a replacement device, and the problem was solved. I realize I can't be considered your typical customer... I have developed a first name relationship with a number of the agents (lol).