Why I have left Plusnet

[#1]

@mssystems - there is a thread on jelv's issue here https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/Strange-routing-issue-unable-to-access-main-Plusnet-se... seems there was some odd activity that lead to a block and is under investigation.

nothing to do with this thread

[#2]

Sad to hear that jelv. I'm not on the forums often but have seen your contributions over many years.

PN would do well to read and reflect on what you've said, but also consider the feedback they're getting is constructive criticism from people who want PN to be as good as it used to be.

I came over from Metronet back in the day when you could ping its techies on MSN and I've worked in IT support roles at all levels for several decades. With every situation ranging from 1 hour "first response" SLAs on web tickets to 4 hour onsite. With point solutions for small local customers, and very complex solutions for global multinational customers.

You can make the customer service great in ANY IT services company if you have: good people with all-round knowledge, a fully traceable SLA-aware ticketing (with efficient team triage, escalation and reporting/metrics available to customers as well as to staff), CALLBACKS - customer doesn't have to chase you for updates, you should be contacting them (ideally in a personal response by phone / instant messaging but ticket updates are fine), and community engagement (with staff, customers and partners encouraged to interact e.g. through community forums).

Anyone who works in IT services and has a basic understanding of such things as ITIL should see a ticketing system and the processes around it as central to the success of it all.

The thing waving a massive red flag for me for PN's future ability to get back to being good at customer service, is the utterly bonkers claim that (any) ticketing system makes their lives difficult - if that argument is being derived from their management position, they've got the wrong management.

[#3]

Nicely summed up @tstaddon   <applause>

[#4]

Anyone who works in IT services and has a basic understanding of such things as ITIL should see a ticketing system and the processes around it as central to the success of it all.

Indeed, anyone who has spent any time on a help desk will see how Plus Net's recent changes are doomed.  By lumping ALL calls into the same bucket and going via the same channel, they are just adding more work for themselves.  

They need to distinguish clearly between INCIDENTS - things that are stopping their customers accessing their service.  PROBLEMS - which are those things, like poor speed, email niggles, stuff that isn't broken.  And REQUESTS - Such as changes to service, domain changes.

Only Incidents should be directed to the live 1 on 1 call channel.  Everything else should be online.

At my work we've spent shed loads of time and money channel shifted our customers this way, and they've done the same for their customers - for the end customers I think the figures are up to 50% online communication, freeing the agents to deal with the urgent cases.

A link for Plus Net to read  - once you have grasped the concept of Failure Demand things get better, you do everything you can to stop people calling you.  A classic example was earlier this year - there was a massive outage in the early hours, that went past the time allocated for some scheduled work.  But nothing was posted to the service status to very late morning, several hours when people who checked the service status page, saw nothing, then tried to call Plus Net.  Result - loads of extra calls when they were preventable by a simple message.  Real calls for other issues got lost.

Not difficult - just best practice.

[#5]

@PlusnetLiam - the above has strong  echoes of the sentiments I've sought to raise recently on the other thread you responded to.  The different contact channels have their own value and should be run in parrellel to live contact.  The primary drive for improvement should be via negating the need to make live contact.

[#6]

I echo the sentiments in the last two posts. Based on experience over many years it's just common sense

The root cause appears to be the accounting practice of reducing the COST of doing something whilst ignoring the hidden costs of doing nothing.

In many decision making processes COST and VALUE become confused leading to bad decisions!

M

[#7]

i would say the present PN problems are all down to higher management poor decisions !

they have just concentrated on increase the customers numbers , at the expense of support OR lack of it

i believe that they have gone down so far it will take miracle to get PN back where they used to be

The next 12 month will be sink or swim time  

[#8]

@jelv

How has your internet been doing with your new provider ?

[#9]

As it should - just use it and it works. I've tried speed tests at various times and it's never anything other than full speed:

Click the image for the graph.

Note that's using IPv6!

[#10]

you'll be paying quite a bit more per month though if you're on AAISP?

[#11]

@chenks76 you get what you pay for !!

[#12]

As I've posted before I regard the extra cost as being akin to an insurance premium. I know that if I have an issue with my connection I'll first be talking to people who are experts and if it's something that needs fixing by an ISP network expert it will be done straight away. If it has to be reported to BTw or OpenReach I'll probably have the appointment arranged during the initial phone call.

I have had need to call their accounts department a couple of times because of the non-standard way I migrated across. On one occasion the person answering apologised because the phone rang three of four times before he answered as he wasn't actually sat at his desk. It's that kind of service that you pay the extra for!

Compare that with the ongoing issue I have with Plusnet:

Before Christmas I reported an issue accessing Plusnet sites located in Sheffield which turned out to be due to a block being put on my IP. Chris said he'd get the block lifted - I'm still waiting.

[#13]

just wondered how much more you are paying just to get the better service.
as i looked at their prices and they are, quite frankly, astronomical.

[#14]

I’m going to be blunt here and say that I for one would not pay extra just to have the phone answered with an apology! However, I would pay extra to have a priority resolution service, when BTOR are involved and since no one can offer this well is the extra money really worth it. I’ve no doubt @jelv your happy with the service as provided, but the true test will be when (or if) you need services outside of their control.

When you moved I contacted A&A myself as I too gave thought to moving but as I’ve got dual lines they weren’t willing to allow me to use my own hardware, and they insisted on having two new lines installed!

I also notice at the time of writing their web site is unavailable, assuming this is the correct URL, well for me at least.

 Edit:- To add this image

[#15]

https://aastatus.net/2338

At least they are on it!