Complaints procedure

Why is the complaints procedure part of the "question" system?

Help Assistant > Customer Services > Making a complaint
"You currently have 4 open questions
You can only have a maximum of 4 open questions at any one time. "

Why should you be excluded from making a complaint if you ask "too many" questions?

Edited by hk11 (Fri 21-Jun-13 02:28:33)

Why should you be excluded from making a complaint if you ask "too many" questions?

Overload?

You are not excluded from making a complaint - you are just forced to do it by snail mail. See http://www.plus.net/support/service/policies/complai...

I've just addressed this in your other thread here: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/plusnet/t/4246944-r...

Hope that helps.

I have to agree with the OP. The ability to lodge a complaint should be entirely independent of any existing disputes/ queries/ questions/ tickets that he already has with the firm. He should not be prevented from making a complaint in the same manner as anybody else. Perhaps you should accept complaints via email if your online system can become constipated in this way, rather than insisting on delaying tactics via snail mail.

Understood, though the ticket limit applies only to customer raised tickets - it's very rare indeed we have four customer raised tickets open on the account at any given time (internally raised tickets don't count towards this limit).

As I've said in the post linked to above, the OP can close one of his existing tickets in order to raise a new complaint as the issue these tickets address has now been resolved.

Thanks Matt; will take a look.

In reply to a post by jelv:

You are not excluded from making a complaint

Yes, thanks.

A bad choice of words by me there, I think.

I wonder how many complaints are received via snail mail these days? Perhaps a FOI request is in order?

LOL.

FoI only applies to government organisations and not to private business. A commonly held misconception - private companies don't have to tell you much (you can use DPA to get personal data or companies house for financial data but I don't think there is a lot else you can force a company to do).

Thanks for the "heads-up".

Perhaps Plusnet will volunteer some info?

Publish business sensitive information relating to how many postal complaints we get? I'm afraid not, sorry about that.

How about what percentage of complaints come via post as against electronic then?

Just went to check about that one, I'm afraid we'll not be publishing that either, sorry.

Also bear in mind that FOI requests cost money.

Expensedom of Information?

They certainly can cost a lot of money to process, although if more than a specified amount of staff time is needed to respond then the organisation can refuse or offer for the requestor to pay the costs.

A large public sector organisation can get a lot of FoI requests and processing them is painful (especially when people ask for a number of different sets of stats that aren't necessarily normally used by the organisation).

A lot of requests also tend to be from companies that just want to get stats to allow them to build their own business models (ie how many of product x do you buy in a year and how much have you spent on it).

In reply to a post by orbrey:

Understood, though the ticket limit applies only to customer raised tickets - it's very rare indeed we have four customer raised tickets open on the account at any given time (internally raised tickets don't count towards this limit).

Have you changed your system since I had my problems (just over a year ago)?

I was continually bumping that limit when PN arbitrarily closed down tickets & I tried to raise them again - the problem was always the TOTAL number of tickets open, not the ones that I raised (which, on their own, NEVER exceeded 4)!

In reply to a post by ian72:

A lot of requests also tend to be from companies that just want to get stats to allow them to build their own business models (ie how many of product x do you buy in a year and how much have you spent on it).

I'm not too inclined to believe that any private sector business models itself on a public sector one. A charity perhaps (third sector?).

I think that issue may well have been looked into - I know our support teams can raise another ticket internally when 4 are open, at least, so suspect (and hope) that's due to this issue being addressed and resolved.

In reply to a post by orbrey:

I think that issue may well have been looked into - I know our support teams can raise another ticket internally when 4 are open, at least, so suspect (and hope) that's due to this issue being addressed and resolved.

If you don't mind me suggesting, that does sound like there is no limit on your own guys but still a limit on the customer.

Hypothetically, if there are 4 tickets open (3 initiated by CS & 1 by Customer), your guys can still raise further tickets - but that does not indicate that the Customer can still raise tickets (which was my experience).

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

If you don't mind me suggesting, that does sound like there is no limit on your own guys but still a limit on the customer.

That's correct, and as designed - our support team still need to be able to raise tickets to address and track internal issues, but by the same token we don't want to be spammed with requests - for example, an irritated customer who might raise multiple tickets about the same fault or problem in the hope that it'll get picked up faster.

As long as there's less than 4 tickets raised then another one can be through the portal, otherwise one of the existing tickets will need to be closed (by the customer, via the portal). I'd be very surprised if any customer had more than 4 separate issues all needing to be addressed at the same time.

I meant that they use the info to understand the size of a market to decide on services to offer to public sector rather than that they model their business after public sector.

In reply to a post by orbrey:

I'd be very surprised if any customer had more than 4 separate issues all needing to be addressed at the same time.

No, citing my hypothetical example, a customer might have more than 1 issue but is, effectively, being blocked by a lot of CS tickets!

Got you - and just tested this to find it is in fact the case. Unfortunately not something we can raise a problem on, but I'll make sure it's looked into.

In reply to a post by orbrey:

Unfortunately not something we can raise a problem on,

Because you already have four open questions?

The limit was previously 3 tickets, I had this increased to 4.

We have had scenarios in the past where some customers who, and likely rightly, had a grievance with a service, decided to raise an exceptional number of tickets hence the limit being in place.

We are unable to close customer initiated tickets, but only the ones that we raise.

I would also point out the the OP cannot raise any more tickets as he has raised 4 tickets over exactly the same thing.

I think the 4 ticket rule is reasonable.

In reply to a post by Metronet_James:

The limit was previously 3 tickets, I had this increased to 4.

We have had scenarios in the past where some customers who, and likely rightly, had a grievance with a service, decided to raise an exceptional number of tickets hence the limit being in place.

We are unable to close customer initiated tickets, but only the ones that we raise.

I would also point out the the OP cannot raise any more tickets as he has raised 4 tickets over exactly the same thing.

I think the 4 ticket rule is reasonable.

I don't have an issue with a 4 ticket limit on Customer raised tickets - but I think it unreasonable to prevent a Customer raising an additional ticket where he has only raised 1 (with 3 others raised by CS)!

Sure, I get that.

However there should be no valid reason for us to have 3 tickets opened by us in the first place!

In reply to a post by Metronet_James:

Sure, I get that.

However there should be no valid reason for us to have 3 tickets opened by us in the first place!

LOL!!

In reply to a post by Metronet_James:

I think the 4 ticket rule is reasonable.

Why not just have one as you repeatedly say they are duplicates anyway?

My point was in regards to the complaints procedure requiring a question to be raised. Why would a customer want to raise a question, if he had a complaint?

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

a lot of CS tickets!

The system itself is confusing as they are referred to as "questions"!

In reply to a post by orbrey:

Unfortunately not something we can raise a problem on,

You've probably got too many questions opened! LOL

Like minds .....

Fair enough, but that does leave customers to guess for themselves.

I would imagine postal complaints are a fairly low percentage these days, which might be why Plusnet has such a system rather than a sensible electronic one.

The OP has four open/active threads in this forum as well . Plus one accidentally hijacked.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 21-Jun-13 23:20:01)

I get answers on this system, but only returned to customer messages on Plusnet's.

In reply to a post by hk11:

The system itself is confusing as they are referred to as "questions"!

Most technical support people (and systems) refer to them as tickets, but that is a meaningless word to the man in the street.

Probably some plain-english guy got hold of them, and decided that calling them a "question" was a better word.

Unfortunately, it only really works when the customer is actually asking a question. But when he is doing other things, some other word is better placed.

Personally, I mentally morph the word "question" into "ticket", and then silently get on with things. Nit-picking on yet another thread isn't a way to win friends.

In reply to a post by hk11:

I get answers on this system,

Answers, perhaps, but its a shame they're not acted upon much...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Most technical support people (and systems) refer to them as tickets, but that is a meaningless word to the man in the street.

Tickets is certainly a better phrase, but I thought the idea was to fit in with Plusnet's system(s) rather than do things the "right" or sensible way?

Ouch!

We'll probably get the wording changed as part of our overall wording rework (will probably take around 12 months because there are an awful lot of things in this project!).

Sounds like a good start.

Maybe they are restricted by policies or something?