Zen Support - Update?

Greetings,

Phil (and/or other) Zen staffers who would know...

Do you have an update on the state of play with support, in terms of the new staff you're training - are any coming on board yet to serve customers, and/or do you have any timescales.

I'm increasingly concerned that support wait times are growing, and, while the only reason to call Zen is when something totally breaks (which almost certainly involves Zen raising a request to BT), the issue is becoming more noticeable.

Does Zen Enhanced care get around this issue, and if so, is there any relation to the introduction of this, and the increasing support times. I note the press release says:

"The introduction of Zen Enhanced Care does not mark any deterioration in regular service standards, it simply recognises that many organisations today require a guaranteed fault resolution time and advanced service level for all business critical operations over their Broadband connections."

..but from where I'm sitting, there is a direct correlation to the time when Support times rose and this service came on-board.

Co-Incidence? If the 2 teams are different, where did the team to staff "Enhanced Care" support suddenly come from?

[NOTE: I am asking generally/publicly at this stage, and I'm still not sufficiently concerned that it warrants interaction from my Account Manager, but it's becoming close at times]

An update of sorts is here.

Probably not fully what your looking for, but hey, tis a start

hth

It was mentioned (somewhere I can't remember) that a new 'batch' were coming on line next week after completing training.

Edited by deleted (Sat 21-Oct-06 18:55:25)

If you think about it, there has to be some strong reason for anyone to part a considerable extra sum of money in order to recieve a decent level of support. If Zen offered the same standard of CS they did when I first joined, surely no one would bother forking out the extra. This so-called premium support is just about the worst idea I've ever seen from Zen.

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This so-called premium support is just about the worst idea I've ever seen from Zen

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But it's not Zen's idea, they are just re-selling a BT service.

The idea is fast resolution of BT faults, not Zen faults, if I've understood correctly.

Correct.
The enhanced care option is purely reselling the BT enhanced care (which has some assurance on fault resolution times) + providing an SLA.

You still speak to the same support staff - it does not mean that standard support will be any different.

More staff are being hired to address the current situation. I'm sure Skyfire will be along to reiterate this.

Hi there,

We are continuing to recruit in order to restore normal levels of service. The latest batch of new starters should begin taking calls towards the end of next week and more still will be starting the induction training the week following - we'll also be taking out new adverts to increase the rate of applicants, and have a whole new assessment process to speed up the selection between receiving a CV and offering a position. We're also delaying internal promotions to other teams to prevent any further reduction in service. We know, as well as our customers do, that the current situation is not acceptable. It is our main priority to get back to normal and stay there.

As has been mentioned several times - Enhanced Care is a BT service we're reselling, providing access to a dedicated team at BT. The support at Zen is still handled by the same teams so it has no impact at all on Standard Care service levels.

kind regards,
Phil D.Long

Hi Phil,

Thanks for taking the time for the update (especially at the weekend).

Also thanks for the clarification on the Enhanced Care - I recognised part of it was effectively TotalCare (?) but wasn't sure if it made a difference within Zen.

I look forward to normal service in due course.

It looks like you will also be having an influx of customers judging by this post in the Nildram forum...

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=nildram&Number=2715192

Be prepared for the usual questions of why 1 Gig of webspace + 1 Gig of webspace does not equal 2 Gig of webspace.

If you think about it, there has to be some strong reason for anyone to part a considerable extra sum of money in order to recieve a decent level of support. If Zen offered the same standard of CS they did when I first joined, surely no one would bother forking out the extra. This so-called premium support is just about the worst idea I've ever seen from Zen.

If the above is in reference to Enhanced Care; as posted elsewhere on this forum and on our website, the Enhanced Care package is a BT service we resell to deliver guaranteed response times from BT where a fault is raised to them. There is no 'two-tier' system or 'premium support' within Zen; all queries are dealt with by the same department of technical staff.

You really are a prime example of Classical conditioning.

You'll forgive me if I remain sceptical about the whole thing.

So you can pay extra and still sit there waiting up to half an hour to speak to someone? Where do I sign up!

Erm well yes, until Zen get the additional support people up to speed.

But if it needs passing to BT you will get a quicker reply from them. I don't see what's wrong with that to be honest?

Er yeah, but as they've clarified (and I know from experience), the main issue is normally within BT - e.g. Zen then pass it to BT, and it sits there for *ages*.

So to be honest, waiting 30 minutes for Zen, while not ideal (but seemingly temporary), it's still nothing compared to *days* waiting for BT to do anything...

You don't see anything wrong with BT needing to be bunged extra money to do their job? Just proves what a scam they operate. When I was with BTYahoo, I always got extremely rapid responses to problems. So obviously they do give preferential treatment to their own customers (and don't give me any of that old bilge about the ISP and engineering section being two separate companies).

Not when it's what you've signed up to no, rightly or wrongly as you know standard ADSL doesn't come with any sort of SLA, this simply offers customers the chance to pay for one (or at least a guaranteed response or whatever it is).

The reason a lot of business still go down the leased line route is because with a leased line you're paying for a guaranteed service level too.

Best analogy I can think of, at work I buy HP servers. I already pay a premium over, say, Dell. If it breaks they'll come and fix it the next day as standard. If it's important to me I pay them for a support pack and 4 hours later the engineer turns up, I have the choice, it all depends how critical I consider that server to be to the business.

Could I ask, would you prefer that everybody's ADSL cost

Edited by hutchingsp (Sun 22-Oct-06 10:07:52)

I have to agree with you. I left BT Yahoo in January because of the appalling standard of offshore support. However, between April 2002 and December 2005, four faults were raised with Wholesale and dealt with swiftly. I also had calls from Wholesale to discuss the issues in question and follow-ups when things were sorted. Zen

what i don't understand is if zen raise a fault with BT its normally resolved within 1 day anyway!

Er no I don't. They're offering a "priority" service. This undoubtedly costs them more.

For example, if your line fails at 10pm, and I want to get it fixed, changes are the only engineers available are on-call, and thus cost more, and overtime etc. It would be unfeasible to do this for everyone as standard, so I don't see tha a premium charge is "unreasonable" at all.

In the same way, our customers can pay extra to contact an engineer 24/7, but it costs them more (double and then some) which those who really want and/or need such a service will willingly pay for.

No no, I don't see any problem with it.

Depends which day the fault is raised on - you normally won't get Saturday appointments to fix ADSL problems. If you are a BT business phone customer you get preferential treatment over residential customers, and this is what BT are now offering for broadband customers, irrespective of their ISP.

Care to elaborate (or at least be specific)? Are you sceptical about the idea of "enhanced care" from BT or that Zen do not operate any sort of two-tier support service, or something else?

Bit of both really. Why should BT have to be given extra money in order to offer reasonable support? And I feel sure Zen would tend to give favourable support to those paying extra.

I once had my line card fail at after 11pm one night when I was with BT (although I didn't know that was the problem at the time). They had an engineer out and the problem fixed in under two hours and it cost me nothing. Maybe I was just lucky.

If Zen is taking a cut from the

All faults - BT-related or not - that are reported to Zen support are treated in exactly the same professional manner; root-cause analysis based on the results of relevant, verifiable diagnostics.

As I said previously, the only difference between Enhanced Care and Standard Care is that where a fault is raised to BT, Enhanced Care provides guaranteed response times from BT. Whether you have Standard Care or Enhanced Care the attention to detail and troubleshooting process your reported fault goes through at Zen is of the same high standard; offering Enhanced Care allows us to shorten the overall resolution time for BT faults.

There is no 'two-tier' system, no 'favourable support' given - just a means of getting faults that lie on BT's network resolved in shorter timeframes.

I hope that's cleared things up.

"at work I buy HP servers. I already pay a premium over, say, Dell. If it breaks they'll come and fix it the next day as standard. If it's important to me I pay them for a support pack and 4 hours later the engineer turns up,"

And I get that service from Dell for my servers.

Paul

There's obviously a problem if they (BT) simply reallocate existing resources to meet the SLA calls because it means that the rest - ie those who choose not to pay - must get a worse service than they were getting before.

Different story if they are recruiting a new crack SWAT squad to handle all the new SLA calls...

It reminds me of the conundrum facing newly promoted Premiership teams. The manager tells the chairman that they need to spend big on new players in order to stay up. But if the other teams are doing the same thing, and spending the same money, nobody gains an advantage from their investment.

Simon

Yes, and some of us are already here. So far great service from zen -thanks guys.

Lee

You are given favourable support from the engineers if you're a BTY customer. I was told as much by one of their CS people when I was still a customer. The longest it ever took them to sort a problem was about 8 hours (and that was a pretty major one).

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You are given favourable support from the engineers if you're a BTY customer. I was told as much by one of their CS people when I was still a customer. The longest it ever took them to sort a problem was about 8 hours (and that was a pretty major one).

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As usual, that CS person was talking dog poo. I have several BT business lines with business DSL accounts and from what I experience, you have been misinformed.

BT have no influence at all over Wholesale, I know because I have been in the middle of them both many times to the extent that a BT engineer who knew EXACTLY what the problem was couldn't fix it without a work order from Wholesale.

I went with BT hoping that there would be some sort of informal chinese wall between them, no chance, you might as well go with any ISP. I have waited several days for BT to sort out DSL issues with BT Wholesale.

It's so pointless that the latest DSL account I opened is with Zen not BT.

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And I get that service from Dell for my servers.

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Good luck getting parts for your Dell in a few years

IME Dell have been OK with parts for servers up to 5 years old (the limit of their support). Then we replace them, and use the old ones for something less critical.

Paul

BT have a 'ring fenced' team for Enhanced Care. They've been operating the service for several years - it isn't a new thing from BT.

regards,
Phil.

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IME Dell have been OK with parts for servers up to 5 years old (the limit of their support)

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Indeed. However I have found that the parts they replace have not been the same spec as the originals and it caused me no end of problems. I don't have that problem with IBM and HP, but each to their own I guess...

Yeah I didn't really mean it as a dig at Dell, we used to use their kit, I just like the HP build quality and management tools a bit better.

Really I meant that if you're paying a premium price you don't necessarily get any better service when it breaks i.e. paying Zen more doesn't count when the problem goes to BT unless you have the Enhanced Care.