Poor ticket reply times

[#1]

Hi everyone,
I'll say my piece here to anyone whose queried since Adam's post:
@AndyH - There's no priority system. However, certain ticket pools are likely to be picked up quicker than others. E.g. Delayed orders, expedites, anything that puts people out of service etc....These are more likely to be picked up over something like directory entry changes.
@gofaster - I think Adam was hinting that we need to be selective when recruiting, and put them through rigorous training as an alternative to putting them on the front line as quick as possible.
@Steevo - Our faults department are open 9am-9pm Mon-Fri, 9am-5.30pm Sat, Sun. I can see that somebody has responded to your ticket.
@grizzly - Thanks for feeding back, it's why we're here. I can honestly say that the ticket response times are one of the main drivers of complaints at the moment so it really is in our interest to start improving upon them.
@Anotherone - We'll take that on board! I can see where you're coming from, particularly on Mondays like today.

[#2]

Thank you. I hadn't noticed this as the ticket had been closed as soon as the message posted, meaning I didn't get a notification. It was only because I went looking for it after you mentioned it that I loaded the closed ticket section. Because there is no notification you don't go and check it. I think this is an area PlusNet could improve.

[#3]

The whole Ticket processing procedures need improving, we've been moaning about it for some considerable time now.

[#4]

I raised a ticket on my business account and its approaching 5 days with absolutely no response   
From someone who was around when the ticket system was introduced and how unpopular it was then it feels like we are back in those early days of the system with long response times.

[#5]

I personally like the ticket system. But you could with guaranteed replies within 24hrs max, ideally 2-3 for a simple issue.

[#6]

There's nothing wrong with the basic concept of the ticket system, it's the way they are handled that's the problem.
Tickets going to the back of the queue if you put an update on them, different agents following up who don't read the previous ticket history, the length of time responses are currently taking, the list goes on - there's plenty been posted on these forums in the last couple of years.

[#7]

Indeed there is nothing wrong with the basic concept.
All the things you mentioned in your post Anotherone was things that was unpopular with the system when it was introduced, and given the length of time plusnet have been using the system you would have thought that the adding extra information to a ticket pushing it to the back of the queue could have been resolved by now.

[#8]

I made the suggestion of having a LiveChat type system (http://www.liveperson.com/) - it would allow staff to deal with multiple people at once.

[#9]

That's something that we're considering, AndyH - I can certainly see the benefits from it.
With regards to the ticket system, I agree, it could and should be much better. It's something that we will get to, that said, we can't fix everything all at once, we simply don;t have the resource to do so.
I know it's been a problem for a while, but the bottom line is, we can't fix everything right away, it takes time, we've started with our Provisioning side and Billing will be next.

[#10]

@ Chris
I think it would be a good idea and I imagine it would make an instant impact on reducing ticket response times and call centre waiting times. It's something that Sales, Provisioning, Faults and Customer Service/Billing could use.
One staff member on a telephone can only deal with one customer at a time, whereas they could deal with multiple people via a LiveChat. In this way, it's a far better use of staff resources.
The problem with the ticket system is that if someone has no phone service, they raise a ticket which seems to take 3 days to be picked up by a staff member at the moment. A fault is raised with Openreach and they can take anything up to 4 days to come out, so the delay in raising the fault due to the ticket system just leads to unnecessary delays and unhappy customers.

[#11]

No phone service (dead line) should be a top priority of all the queues. Maybe you should trial Live Chat asap just for dead phone line faults.
The trouble is Chris, we accept you can't fix everything at once, but the problem is Plusnet have never put the resources into fixing any of it. It's always been Fire-fighting action.
Clearly Provisioning is a big issue with cancelled appointments, but why isn't someone spending time looking at why they are getting cancelled and tackling that specific issue to relieve the call centre of the consequential problems. It'll be all very nice having an automated system at the EOD that flags appointments cancelled by Openreach and processes it through the system, but I would have thought fixing the causes of those cancellation with your suppliers was THE top priority (and that also covers more than provisioning). Cancelled appointments and Openreach engineers not turning up has got to be the thing that gets everyone very annoyed even angry more than anything else.
Are Billing issues a high percentage of the calls to the call centre? Having the incorrect (larger) amount taken by Direct Debit will also be something that can anger anyone on a tight budget. If there is that many issues perhaps you should trial LiveChat on that then asap.
Fixing the issue of updates to tickets putting them to the back of the queue has also GOT to be a priority.
Any of the aforementioned that may have a significant impact in reducing call volumes should be dealt with as a priority, that would allow quicker responses to tickets in general whilst other updates to your systems are instigated in due course.

[#12]

Chris the ticket system should be easy, it is mind boggling its in the state its in.
If you fix it then the call queues will go down as well, as I guess some people only ring because the ticket system is so bad.

[#13]

121 hours later and I finally get a reply.....

[#14]

Quote from: Bud

121 hours later and I finally get a reply.....

Helpful!
Submit a standard question and you currently get told "At the moment we're averaging a response time of 37 hours 7 minutes 14 seconds for new queries." which in itself it plenty high enough!

[#15]

Everyone is working hard at putting out the fires - firefighting.
No one appears to be doing anything about preventing the fires - fire prevention.
Whilst there is no prevention taking place, there is always going to be unproductive fighting.
New systems - fire proofing - is a great ideal, but whilst you wait for that, the existing setup is at risk of burning down / burning out those involved.
Some simple fire prevention steps (tactical activity) is required TODAY.  The top priority should be to fixing those in house issues which you ought to be able to manage now - be honest, just how difficult is it to change the ticket queue sequencing so that user updated tickets do not get shoved to the back of the queue?  This one simple change could make a massive difference to the phone call, forum, twitter , Facebook (etc) chase-up volumes.
This has been a bug bear which "is being looked at" for years.  Given that there are no outstanding top priorities (see http://www.plus.net/support/service/problems/index.php) then this could be set as THE top priority right now?
Kevin