How long is a "short wait" ? ? ? ?

[#1]

I've not missed that point as I wasn't aiming for it. I appreciate what you are saying, and I can see the appeal of it but for the normal user I think it's a waste of resources.

[#2]

@JonoH 

@LordFoul 

@Mads 

In light of how @Mook  sees this abortion of the Live Chat service.... 

How about making Live Chat ONLY available to customers with hearing disabilities or speech disabilities.....

This could be achieved, with some careful thought... by those who wish to use the service , registering with Plusnet as a disabled hearing / speech customer....

Confirmation that the system was not being abused by "well hearing" customers posing as diabled hearing... by a telephone conversation direct to the person who registers...

Of course, the call would have to be carefully prepared. so as to not give away the reason for the call, to the recipient of the call...but the caller could ascertain the "correctness" of the called person as disabled...   ( or not  ) as the case maybe.

[#3]

@Mook 

As well as the appeal for disabled / deaf users, a means of contact such as the old ticketing system does have appeal for customers who do not require an instant response and who do not want to hang on the phone forever. It should also be of benefit to Plusnet as their staff can then concentrate on phone calls for urgent matters when busy and fall back on tickets in quieter times. As they are also monitoring forums and social media for customers' questions and complaints, I can see no reason not to have a method for "written" support directly on the Members' Portal. Do plusnet not have a backend platform that allows them to monitor the forums, Facebook etc., for posts which require Plusnet action / response. If so then incorporating the ticket system should not pose serious issues.  But then Plusnet do have a poor record whwnever they update and "improve" their systems!

When the ticket system was abolished (apart from a few select topics) the Live Chat was, I assume, deemed by Plusnet to be a more efficient medium for them. If it has turned out not to be so, then reinstate the ticket system.

[#4]

@jgb  100% agree.... seems that the famous PlusNet Customer Service is not living up to the advertised specifications..

.nor is it living up to the customers expectations..

and ... as usual... we are seeing "naff all" responses from Plusnet....

probably because they are all too ashamed to respond, in case they get the flak...

what a diabolical shambles it has been

just seems to be  going down the pan..... with every "improvised" change ..being done "on the fly"...with no real "forward thinking" as to how it affects the customer base... .

Customers used to be the people who kept a business .... in business...

now it seems they are just a hindrance. especially if they are old and disabled....

The thinking in the management seems to be.... get rid of the services they need, and we get rid of them with no problems... must be an improvement    eh ?

[#5]

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@JonoH wrote:

Thanks for your feedback, by the end of next week we're hoping to have all of the pages that offer chat advise you that the service is closed.

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That .... definitve  statement  was   posted    at   least   TWO WEEKS AGO....

However.... true to form....NOTHING IS POSTED on "all of the pages that offere chat ....

advising you that the service is closed...

the customers are still trying to access Live Chat... and being KEPT IN THE DARK that it is

NO LONGER AVAILABLE

@JonoH  also stated....in the same post above....

  Hopefully this should make it easier for customers to make a choice about how they'd like to contact us from our available channels.

How? 

[#6]

It's taken a little longer than we had hoped. Sorry for the delay. It's one of the reasons why we don't usually give timescales. 

I'll let you know when it's done.

[#7]

@JonoH 

Why does it seem that everything Plusnet do takes longer than they say it will? Is it lack of proper planning - in this case the Live Chat should have been kept in service until the plans to close it down had been fully developed and only then should the service have been shut down; not the other way round - shut it down them think about what to do!

[#8]

Or put it another way, it could simply be incompetence.

[#9]

@JonoH  WHY  do you seem to think that your answer is sufficient to cover the absolute shambles regarding Live Chat.

I did suggest .. .in one of my earlier posts.....  

                               to put a "Sticky" at the top of this board...

                                                      . LIVE CHAT IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

However... such a simple way of announcing it... seems to be beyond expectations... and will probably  take a couple of weeks for someone to actually copy and paste it....

the thread

Chat service availability

by Townman on ‎26-01-2018 3:00 PM Latest posted on ‎08-06-2018 9:50 PM

is now OVER TWO YEARS OLD.... AND STILL THERE ....  

Do yourselves proud....   no chance......

[#10]

@jgb you speak like a systems engineer, what you suggest is common sense, though it might be somewhat presumptious to assume that these sort of decisions are made by systems engineers - invariably they are not.  Such was a strong influence to me getting out of system management some 8 years ago.

@Mook incomptence - were you thinking of systems management or management decision making?

@shutter in your raging over things, have you ever stopped to consider that you might be shooting the messenger ... who might well not like the situation any more than we do ... but is prevented from saying so?  I doubt that anyone in the front line support here actually thinks this is ideal ... there is a fair chance that they have been told to "Just make it so...".

Ultimately we need to remember that Plusnet is managed by big bad BT ... who have never listened to what their customers want or feel about service ... that's how Openreach have managed to get away with such dire performance over so many decades.

[#11]

Shutter - I have been trying to contact them for 2 weeks now regarding an issue I have raised in my own thread (I won't bore you with it) so I was glad to see you have highlighted the incompetance of their failure to add a web message on live chat pages to say it has been removed.

I wanted to add a little bit of context too, I believe they use "Whoson" to provide their live chat service, I use them too for my business and tested just now how long it would take to add a warning message advising it was no longer available. Unsurprisingly, this was achievable in less than 10 minutes with help from their ready made web videos. Regardless of who they use to provide the service (I've used 5 or 6 different providers), I am absolutley sure it does not take more than 30 minutes to add a message stating the closure of the service. So the widget answer is a lie. Not saying the forum user lied but wherever that information came from it simply cannot be true that it's taken 2 weeks (Still not sorted) to resolve.

Finally, even if it was a "Widget" issue. It takes no more than a few hours to add a message on the web page itself to inform consumers the service is unavailable and to not refresh the page as yourself, me and I'm sure plenty of others users have painfully done these past few weeks.

I do think you should sit back a little and realise that the forum members are likely being fed this information and are passing it on in good faith in that they believe what they are being told. I would recommend writing and making an official complaint to the company because it's clear that the mods are not providing you or us with much more than telling hard hearing/disabled/deaf customers to use a text relay service. 

On a side note from a business point of view, I also run a Telecommunications business, our chat statistics are 40% chat, 60% calls, why a business would turn their backs on live chat is beyond me as it is a vital communication tool for customers and adds goodwill as customers know if they have an issue, they only ever have to chat. I primarily only use companies who offer this, as I'm usually on the phone all day anyway and can chat online and talk at the same time, only when I absolutley cannot find an alternative will I opt for a company who does not offer this function.

I hope they resolve this for the better and good luck with your complaint should you wish to go down this route.

[#12]

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@mezzor wrote:

I wanted to add a little bit of context too, I believe they use "Whoson" to provide their live chat service, I use them too for my business and tested just now how long it would take to add a warning message advising it was no longer available. Unsurprisingly, this was achievable in less than 10 minutes with help from their ready made web videos. Regardless of who they use to provide the service (I've used 5 or 6 different providers), I am absolutley sure it does not take more than 30 minutes to add a message stating the closure of the service. So the widget answer is a lie. Not saying the forum user lied but wherever that information came from it simply cannot be true that it's taken 2 weeks (Still not sorted) to resolve.

We don't. Also, without meaning to sound condescending turning off your chat is likely hugely different in scope to ours. Ours firstly required our vendor to add some code, we didn't feel the message was clear enough so we had it redone. We now have to post this in 113 different queue journeys. Other things also popped up that were more immediate and so we had to juggle other priorities. 

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I do think you should sit back a little and realise that the forum members are likely being fed this information and are passing it on in good faith in that they believe what they are being told. I would recommend writing and making an official complaint to the company because it's clear that the mods are not providing you or us with much more than telling hard hearing/disabled/deaf customers to use a text relay service. 

Please feel free to lodge a complaint should you wish, it's absolutely your right as a consumer however I think you're being a little unfair here. Firstly, the Mods are unpaid volunteers, they don't provide any information. It was I the community manager that informed you that chat was switched off and gave you the reasons that we were prepared to share, as a commercial organisation there's no compulsion on us to explain our every business decision but we do try to, where possible explain what we've done and why.  we're advising customers who are hard of hearing to use Text Relay services because thats the industry standard. 

[#13]

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@Townman wrote:

@Mook incomptence - were you thinking of systems management or management decision making?

---

This one appears to fall into both camps @Townman 

[#14]

@Townman 

I am not a systems engineer but was, before I retired, a professional structural engineer and in that field it was of paramount importance that the methodology was sorted out and checked before implementation otherwise the consequences could be dire.

Maybe not so dire here but it does seem that there has been a failure to use common sense, no doubt driven by some edict from the bean counters above.. 

[#15]

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@Townman wrote:

@shutter in your raging over things

Too right, I`m Raging.....   .. You are obviously one of those people who do not see that being deaf, almost deaf, or hard of hearing through tinitius, loss of frequency range, or people with speech impediments, as "disabled"...   and they should be able to use a telephone just because they have an ear each side of the head, the same as you.  I suggest you try to use a phone with blu-tack stuck in your ears... and see how "disabled" you become, trying to make out even the simplest of words... or even getting the gist of what someone is saying to you... yes...you may be able to hear them speaking... but.. not be able to hear the actual "words" they are sayingn

so....YES>..I`m RAGING..

, have you ever stopped to consider that you might be shooting the messenger ...

No,I am not "shooting the messenger"...  What a stupid thing to say... my "raging" as you call it, ( and confirmed by me)   is THE MESSAGE... (aka feedback)  

so I would not be "Shooting the messenger" because.... 

What is the name of this Board, on the forum ? 

PLUSNET FEEDBACK...

and who am I addressing the "message" too?? ? ?  

the messenger....(Plusnet staff on the forum) ..  and FEEDBACK is the word ..

.who else am I, and others to address concerns? 

except to the "staff" and "admin" that are the "messengers" of the gods... ..

It is their job, which they get paid for,        to receive the messages, ( aka feedback) and then do exactly that....

feedback those messages to the gods that employ them. (otherwise the feeback is pointless...)

who might well not like the situation any more than we do ... but is prevented from saying so? 

They may not like the situation any more than we do....but....

THEY are in a position to forward the FEEDBACK to those that can do something about it...

.if they don`t like doing that.,... or are too frightened of losing their postion, promotion, bonus, or whatever, then they are in the wrong job, and should move to another, or retrain to some other department.

I doubt that anyone in the front line support here actually thinks this is ideal ... there is a fair chance that they have been told to "Just make it so...".

Ultimately we need to remember that Plusnet is managed by big bad BT ... who have never listened to what their customers want or feel about service ... that's how Openreach have managed to get away with such dire performance over so many decades.

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IF the PlusNet do not want "bad news" cirulating on the "PLUSNET FEEDBACK " board of the forum,.... the should be taking note of the various points raised on the PLUSNET FEEDBACK and taking appropriate action to remedy those points/complaints....

once they have  achieved that... then maybe they can shut down PLUSNET FEEDBACK ....

or

They can continue to ignore their customers, as you have intimated above... and suffer theconsequences..

. which, in turn, amounts to corporate bullying of their staff by neglect...

In my posts, I have tried to add in some useful and helpful points... but... as with the rest of the posts, the suggestions have been ignored... 

If the staff feel that they have been bullied by my posts, then they can only blame the management for that...

and not the person who has the guts to post their grievance, for the benefit of all other likewise disabled customers.

LIVE CHAT, whoever provides it, to PlusNet... IS... i repeat IS.... a VITAL SERVICE for disabled customers,...

and the costly alternative, is cumbersome to the extreme...

Hearing people do not have to speak to an intermediary, who then speaks to the customer service member of staff  and then the CS staff speak back to the intermediary,  who then repeats it back to the customer... 

SO WHY SHOULD WE, DISABLED CUSTOMERS,  HAVE TO BE TREATED SO DIFFERENTLY...?

we should be able to speak DIRECT to the customer service staff... and be treated with the same respect by the company..

As we did, when Live Chat, was exactly what it said it was.... ....... "Live Chat"... ....