Community Team

[#1]

I saw this: https://community.plus.net/t5/Community-Announcements/Meet-our-Community-Team/m-p/1994887#M8512 and thought it meant that those of us Community members who spend quite a bit of time trying to help would get a little more assistance from the company.

From what I have seen since, it appears, once again, that it is merely window dressing. Not only do the three mentioned rarely seem to post, but I notice various other 'staff' showing as online, but they don't seem to pick up on queries either.

I understand that these individuals are supposedly 'highly trained' to help, but so far...

[#2]

@jab1 there were 3 updates to threads on the Community Announcements board in the past year - I don't know what more you expect?

[#3]

@corringham I don't quite get what you are saying there.😕. If I recall correctly, the information I received about the Community Team, as the 'Help Team' has been rechristened, was in private discussions, and my point still stands - I was told (by a reliable source), that there would be 'fully trained staff monitoring and responding to forum posts - that demonstrably isn't happening, although the three individuals mentioned in the linked topic do occasionally surface.

[#4]

@jab1 

Agreeing with what you are saying, but not sure how three staff can cover 12 hours 7 day support model, that staffing level is more like five days allowing for sick days, leave, off shift etc, only one staff member can be off for ever reason at a time, this assumes a 7 hour day + 1 hour lunch break.

Perhaps we the forum members hold the key to improving the cover here by NOT helping with issues which are clearly faults that need a staff member to review.

[#5]

@Dan_the_Van I agree with you, to an extent anyway. As I have observed over say, the past couple of months, the number of posts that need staff input is falling rapidly for some reason which I am not going to speculate, but it is taking a while for those which only staff can handle to be picked - I am thinking here of reverse DNS changes specifically.

I am not expecting these 'specially trained' staff to be on call 12 ours/7 days, but surely  there should be some kind of 'regular' monitoring, so such requests are picked up and acted on more rapidly?

Personally, I don't like the thought of 'not helping' with fault queries - sometimes, we can help to speed up the resolution of such by offering constructive advice.

[#6]

I think issues such as reverse DNS changes will go away soon - static IPs are no longer available for new customers,and I wouldn't be surprised if they go away soon(ish) for everyone. It would allow Plusnet to simplify its network and there would only be OR managed network left. 

Similarly webspace, email etc are being phased out, so there will only be provisioning, faults, and billing issues that Plusnet needs staff to deal with (which just happen to be the areas staff claim to be trained in). Most customers won't have any issues, so won'r realise that support isn't as quick as you might expect from an award winning company. 

It might be helpful for there to be a flag to raise for issues that do (urgently) require staff action - I guess Superusers have that power, but there's a limit to what they can cover.

Fora traffic does seem to be falling, so I guess that it will continue to dwindle until it becomes irrelevant.

[#7]

I used the reverse dns example merely because it has cropped up two or three times recently, and definitely needs staff input although I appreciate it will disappear as an issue over a short time.

However, whilst there are still customers on ADSL/FTTC connections there will be a need for some form  of support - and who knows what gremlins may emerge in the FTTP network over time, although I am aware that said network is 'under constant monitoring'.

Think we are diverging from the initial reason for me starting this topic though - which was the lack of staff engagement from these 'specially trained' individuals.

[#8]

I understand your disappointment. My initial facetious response was intended to say that I'm not surprised - there isn't any real intent to provide great customer service. It is just a box ticking exercise so that Plusnet can claim great customer service.

As I mentioned, most customers won't have issues so won't realize the actual reality of the level of support available.

[#9]

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@jab1 wrote:

From what I have seen since, it appears, once again, that it is merely window dressing. Not only do the three mentioned rarely seem to post, but I notice various other 'staff' showing as online, but they don't seem to pick up on queries either.

Considering that today is a Monday, when customers are likely to have posted questions here over the weekend and expecting a staff response during the work week, it is a pretty poor show when only one of the three staff logged on today, and then only replied to one customer query -

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@jab1 wrote:

Personally, I don't like the thought of 'not helping' with fault queries - sometimes, we can help to speed up the resolution

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I agree, the collective knowledge of contributors to this forum will often reveal a solution that staff might take a while to reach.

@jab1  don't you get disheartened when you've spent your precious free time trying to help, only for your posts to be silently deleted - or is it just me ?.  This will be my 111'th post and I've already had at least five of my replies silently vanish - even after having had >60 views.  It is pretty annoying when you've spent half an hour writing a concise technical reply, with references, links, pictures, etc - just for something or someone to later delete your hard work from the middle of a topic thread.  It does leave me wondering whether Plusnet actually value our contributions, or are we just suckers spending our time here, and have our efforts randomly deleted for reasons unknown ?

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@corringham wrote:

Fora traffic does seem to be falling, so I guess that it will continue to dwindle until it becomes irrelevant.

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I guess that is to be expected if customers with questions don't get a staff response on the "Support Forum", and those here who try to help have our replies deleted.  Sigh !

.

[#10]

@jab1  don't you get disheartened when you've spent your precious free time trying to help, only for your posts to be silently deleted - or is it just me ?.  This will be my 111'th post and I've already had at least five of my replies silently vanish - even after having had >60 views.  It is pretty annoying when you've spent half an hour writing a concise technical reply, with references, links, pictures, etc - just for something or someone to later delete your hard work from the middle of a topic thread.  It does leave me wondering whether Plusnet actually value our contributions, or are we just suckers spending our time here, and have our efforts randomly deleted for reasons unknown ?

If that happened to me, @outcast  - AFAIK it hasn't - I would be raising Cain about it, but not on here, I would be using official channels very quickly.

[#11]

@jab1 

I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on everything I post, to see if I can see a pattern.

I don't yet know whether it is the forum platform 'losing' posts, or whether I'm being censored by a Moderator, or both !

So far -

• Two posts only lasted a few minutes before vanishing.
• One post was showing for maybe 5 minutes - I then edited it for clarity, I viewed the update within the topic, later it had gone
• One reply was visible for at least an hour with around 60 views, then vanished.
• Another post I lost was in a topic, where the entire topic vanished.

.

[#12]

@outcast Can't comment on scenarios 1-3, but what was the topic that 'vanished'?

[#13]

Looking at the forum rules, there are 5 staff around here...

Cri Ignatti (Tina11192), Josh Sharpe (Marsh), Joe Elliot (Windings), Lex Keehner (LexLex2020), Lee Brannan (lahbrannan1)

Granted, only three have introduced themselves on the more recent announcements post.  Which reminds me ... we superusers have been asked for profiles too!

Yes SUs do have the means of flagging and escalating things which need attention; I hope we do a fair job of covering the ground.  Between the mods and SUs, there's generally good cover most days, for longer hours!

[#14]

@outcast 

Sometimes the spam filter is over zealous ... the mods know more about that!

• Another post I lost was in a topic, where the entire topic vanished.

As likely as not, that would be the ever diligent mods moving topics to the right board.  It seems to be a characteristic of the product platform: I have been in the situation of replying to a thread and by the time I finish writing and press post, the topic has "gone" ... well actually it has been moved elsewhere and the system cannot join my post started on the original thread to where it is now.  Copying the response and refreshing the page, pasting and posting usually works fine.

[#15]

We still don't see much input from those staff though, @Townman .

I know you SU's have the means - and use them, for which I am grateful at times, and as you say those two groups are around for a long time.