Please take a ticket!

Cobra

Cobra

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OK so you see these all over the place, from deli counters to Drs surgeries,
It also seems its also reached the digital age...

I had a query about something I ordered of T'internet, so I duly filled out the contact us form, on the web site,
this is the reply I got via email ...

We would like to acknowledge that we have received your request and a ticket has been created.
A support representative will be reviewing your request and will send you a personal response, usually within 24 working hours.
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(and the latter was an epic fail too)

I mean, really?
 
In work we get that when contacting IT by web or email, then they do their magic, usually switch it off and on:), and then we are invited to complete a survey to give feed back.
 
The equivalent of "all our operators are busy, you are number 6 in the queue" Except they don't tell you where you are with the ticket by the sound of it!
 
Out of interest, does anybody know what "24 working hours" is actually supposed to mean? I suspect they mean 1 working day but with an average working day of 8 hours they could mean 3......
 
fabs said:
A 'Ticket' is common terminology these days when it comes to logging IT requests.
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Out of office notices are also becoming more and more common, and I guess that's fair enough if its genuine, of course.
But how long does it take to read and respond to an email,if you are an on line bussiness?
I've had better response from eBay sellers, ( this isn't an ebay purchase) and that's saying something!

I just want to know where my stuff is or do I need to start a PP dispute.
Surely its not difficult to answer an email.

JonathanRyan said:
I think that most consumers would expect it to mean 1 day ;)
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Well that's what it was when I was at school!
 
JonathanRyan said:
I thought it might :). I think that most consumers would expect it to mean 1 day ;)
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Maybe it's like 24/7, except that you have to divide the 24 by the 7 hour working day to find out it actually means 3.4 days! :banghead:
 
Peter B said:
Maybe it's like 24/7, except that you have to divide the 24 by the 7 hour working day to find out it actually means 3.4 days! :banghead:
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That's it continue to cheer me up :p

(But It wouldn't surprise me TBH :( )
 
If you've got 24/7 support infrastructure, a P1 is urgent with a 4 hour sla (at any time of day/night), P2 has an 8 hour sla and P3 has 3 days (3x8 working days). Every support organisation will be slightly different but the company I work IT for (Unilever) has had the same SLAs for the last 12 years.
 
Many years ago, late at night, I rang a garage/breakdown that were advertising 24 hr recovery service. Yep, we'll be with sometime tomorrow morning. :rolleyes: (ended up ringing a mates dad who towed us 35 miles home)
 
OldCarlos said:
Many years ago, late at night, I rang a garage/breakdown that were advertising 24 hr recovery service. Yep, we'll be with sometime tomorrow morning. :rolleyes:
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Well that's within 24 hours isn't it?
:D
 
Well still no reply to the ticket, that was a waste of time "taking it" :rolleyes:

On the plus side, the order turned up today :thumbs:
 
Cobra said:
But how long does it take to read and respond to an email,if you are an on line bussiness?
...
Surely its not difficult to answer an email.
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So what you're saying is that you expect somebody to drop whatever they're doing and reply to you, even though they may have a number of similar queries awaiting replies.

You could try that in Tesco on a Saturday morning too. Sure, there will be queues at the checkouts, but surely if you have one item and the right money you can just go to the front of the queue?
 
StewartR said:
So what you're saying is that you expect somebody to drop whatever they're doing and reply to you, even though they may have a number of similar queries awaiting replies.
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I was taking the p*** out of the "ticket terminology"

But I would have expected a reply within 24 hours, I would hope that you would reply to enquiries within 24 hours, or do you keep your customers waiting for longer also? ,
this is the norm these days?

Over 2 working days have past and still no response, nor the promised email confirming the order "within a few minutes" that was 7 days ago
However I guess that confirmation email would have been automated.
 
StewartR said:
So what you're saying is that you expect somebody to drop whatever they're doing and reply to you, even though they may have a number of similar queries awaiting replies.

You could try that in Tesco on a Saturday morning too. Sure, there will be queues at the checkouts, but surely if you have one item and the right money you can just go to the front of the queue?
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If someone comes into the queue behind me with one item and is "holding folding", I invite them to go before me.
 
Nod said:
If someone comes into the queue behind me with one item and is "holding folding", I invite them to go before me.
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Sure. I would too. But my point was that Cobra seemed to expect he had a right to such treatment.
 
StewartR said:
Sure. I would too. But my point was that Cobra seemed to expect he had a right to such treatment.
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No, I expect that that an on line business would have the decency to reply, within 48 hours, ie 2 week days.

As you seem to be defending them I ask again, would you treat your customers like this? is the the norm, for on line suppliers?
Even the dreaded ebay suppliers respond much faster than this.

Its certainly the second worse response that I have ever had from an on line company.
The first totally ignored me, on more than one occasion, "they" didn't even had the decency to say kiss my arse!
 
Cobra said:
No, I expect that that an on line business would have the decency to reply, within 48 hours, ie 2 week days.

As you seem to be defending them I ask again, would you treat your customers like this? is the the norm, for on line suppliers?
Even the dreaded ebay suppliers respond much faster than this.

Its certainly the second worse response that I have ever had from an on line company.
The first totally ignored me, on more than one occasion, "they" didn't even had the decency to say kiss my arse!
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There are two separate issues here.

One is the fact that they didn't reply within 24/48 hours, and of course I agree that's shockingly poor.

But the other issue is the reason WHY they didn't reply quickly, and that's where we might (or might not) disagree. I think it's perfectly reasonable for companies to answer queries in rotation, and the 'ticket' approach is a simple way of implementing that. Your enquiry comes in, you are assigned a case number, and they process cases in numerical order. Personally I think that's hard to argue with, and the reason I can't tell whether or not we're agreeing on this is that I'm not sure whether you were seriously suggesting you should be allowed to "jump the queue" because your enquiry was a simple one. That's how it came across to me when you said:
Cobra said:
Out of office notices are also becoming more and more common, and I guess that's fair enough if its genuine, of course.
But how long does it take to read and respond to an email,if you are an on line bussiness?
...
Surely its not difficult to answer an email.
Click to expand...
but if I've misunderstood then I apologise.

TL;DR: I'm not defending the lengthy time for a response but I am defending the use of a 'queue'
 
StewartR said:
One is the fact that they didn't reply within 24/48 hours, and of course I agree that's shockingly poor.
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It does seems we agree on that point :thumbs:


StewartR said:
and the reason I can't tell whether or not we're agreeing on this is that I'm not sure whether you were seriously suggesting you should be allowed to "jump the queue"
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I'm certainly not suggesting that I jump the queue, I was musing the fact that surely it doesn't take that long to respond to an on line query.
Maybe they are incredibly busy and the first thing on their mind is dispatching orders, and last ling on their mind is responding to queries?
But I still maintain that is bad company practice / customer service.

FYI, The order was placed Monday 2nd, I then received a paypal notice to say that I had paid XXXX, within a few minutes.
The on line notice, on the site said that I would receive a confirmation of order email in a few minutes,
I assume that would be automated, That never arrived.

I know that Friday the 6th was "pushing it" for the order to arrive, even though the on line receipt also said that the order would arrive within 2-5 working days.
But as I had received no confirmation of order, I wanted to check that they had actually received it and the goods were in stock as per their site.

8 clear working days (Excluding Saturdays) later, I have received no response whatsoever.
However the order did turn up 5 working days later ( assuming you excluded the mid Saturday, but it was posted via royal mail and they work Saturdays)

StewartR said:
I am defending the use of a 'queue'
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I have no problem with that whatsoever, and I wouldn't have even bothered to contact them, for awhile longer,
if they had done what they said in the first place "confirmation of order will be sent to the email address supplied in a few minutes"
 
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