Support ticket updates not notified by email

[#1]

I have had a support ticket open for over 5 months (Billing problem, need I say more) and I find it infuriating that when a progress update (or lack thereof) is given by Plusnet support, most of the time they do not bother to send me an email about it.  The only way I find out is if I login to my account on their dodgy website and look at the support ticket to see if anything has been added.  This is not something I want to do on a daily basis, on the off chance that they might have done something.

I have repeatedly asked that the updates are copied to me by email, as they always used to be.  If I am lucky, this happens for a couple of updates and then lapses.  However, this demonstrates that it can still be done – it's just that the customer service staff do not bother to let their customers know what is (or isn't) going on.

I have just found a new support ticket which was raised a couple of days ago, advising that Plusnet have been overcharging me.  I received no notification that this ticket existed, I only found it by accident.  If I had not been checking on my longstanding support ticket, I might never have found it.

I know of no other company that does not inform their customers that they have updated a support ticket (or created a new one), even if it is only to tell you that you should login to see what has been posted.

Is anybody else experiencing this failure in customer service?

[#2]

Hi @petel,

I'm sorry to hear that's the case. It's quite strange that this would start occurring, seemingly out of the blue, when the email notifications have previously worked as intended. Have you recently changed to another email provider, or changed any settings on a mail client you may be using? Additionally, are you making sure to check your spam folder? 

[#3]

The problem is at the Plusnet end, not mine.

The customer service responses which I have received by email have a note at the end of the message as shown on the support ticket on the Plusnet website which says "[Email notification sent to: xxx@xxx.plus.com]".  The responses which I have not received by email, do not have this note.  I presume this means that no email has been sent.

This is a problem either with the Plusnet system, or with the procedures by which the customer service staff work.  I presume that a flag which causes an email notification to be sent is not being set.  Either the software has a bug, or the staff are not setting the flag correctly.

Regarding the recent support ticket which I discovered by accident, this appears to have been closed immediately it was opened, so I can only see it when I look at the closed questions - which is not the easiest thing to do now Plusnet have abandoned the Help Assistant.  Given that this is advising me that I am being overcharged and, as far as I can tell, this has not been resolved, I do not see the justification for closing it.  But since it has been closed, I cannot query it ...

It seems to me that Plusnet are deliberately making it difficult to communicate with customer service staff to seek the resolution of problems.  This is particularly disappointing when Plusnet originally based their reputation on the quality of their customer service.  Is this the BT influence?

[#4]

Hi @petel,

I'm sorry to see this is the case. I've taken a look into the account and from what I can see the service notifications we've sent out recently have been marked as having been sent to the contact address listed on the account. It's possible that this is down to human error and if that's the case then please allow me to apologise in advance, however there's a couple of things I'd like to check before we come to that conclusion. So I can just double check everything is correctly recorded on the account, please could you send me a private message containing the email address you're expecting the emails to arrive at?

[#5]

How do I send a private message?

[#6]

@petel 

If you click on the name of the person you wish to privately message, a new page opens.

On the right hand side of that page there is an option to send a private message.

Good luck.

[#7]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for checking and confirming that the account details are correctly recorded and that the problem seems to be due to human error.

I appreciate you putting a note on my account asking customer services to ensure that email notifications are sent to me in future. 

Unfortunately, as I have reported the same problem at least 6 times in the past 5 months, and have received similar reassurances that it won't happen again, only to find that it does (again and again), I am a little sceptical that this will make any difference.

This does seem to be a systemic problem, not a one-off human error.  Maybe customer service staff need better training?  Or better oversight?  Or maybe the support software needs improving?  Whatever it is, Plusnet ought to take action to fix it.

[#8]

Hi Pete, I'm sorry to see you haven't been getting email notifications for some of our ticket updates. 

I've had a look into this for you and from what I can see the advisers look to have been basically hitting two birds with one stone by putting the ticket on hold at the same time of writing their message on the ticket. 

Historically, the hold notification used to send an email to the contact email address on the account, but it doesn't anymore due to how our systems are designed. For the most part we do send email notifications separately to putting a ticket on hold, so it's disappointing to see we haven't been doing so for a lot of the responses on your ticket 211263210.

I've made sure that feedback's passed onto the relevant advisers, so we can try to ensure this happens in future. 

I've also looked into the ongoing billing problem and I'm really sorry to see how long this has been an issue. It's a complex system issue that's part of an incident we're working on getting to the bottom of, but the issue seems to continually elude us due to how long it's taking to resolve. 

As an alternative and speedier resolution, we could close your existing account and create a new account for you, retaining any extras you have with us, such as an email address and moving any referrals across as well.

Let me know by replying to your ticket if you'd like to go ahead as I'm taking personal ownership moving forward.

[#9]

Thank you Gandalf.  It is nice to finally have someone look into what is actually going on and confirm that it is a genuine system problem.  It sounds as though someone needs to revise the system design so that it works properly for Plusnet customers?  I wonder how many other customers are unaware of support ticket updates for the same reason?

Regarding the billing problem, I remain at a loss to understand how it can take more than 5 months to resolve what is a pretty basic failure in billing.  I accept that problems happen, but would expect that a professional organisation would resolve and correct such a problem quickly.  I've certainly never experienced anything like this with any other supplier.

Regarding creation of a new account, I will contact you via the support ticket regarding this.

Thanks again for actually taking this issue seriously and actually investigating it.

[#10]

@petel wrote:

Thank you Gandalf.  It is nice to finally have someone look into what is actually going on and confirm that it is a genuine system problem.  It sounds as though someone needs to revise the system design so that it works properly for Plusnet customers?  I wonder how many other customers are unaware of support ticket updates for the same reason?

No problem Pete, I've messaged a colleague in our systems support team to see if there's anything we can do to change, but I can't guarantee it's possible. I'd again though say that advisers do and should send email notifications for ticket updates, if they don't then we'd feedback to educate. 

Regarding the billing problem, I remain at a loss to understand how it can take more than 5 months to resolve what is a pretty basic failure in billing.  I accept that problems happen, but would expect that a professional organisation would resolve and correct such a problem quickly.  I've certainly never experienced anything like this with any other supplier.

I completely understand this and I agree that it shouldn't take as long as it is currently to fix.

The lingering issues we have left with billing is still one of our top priorities.

Regarding creation of a new account, I will contact you via the support ticket regarding this.

Thanks again for actually taking this issue seriously and actually investigating it.

No problem at all, and thanks for replying to the support ticket. I'll head on over there soon.