Zen support Shocking

So i emailed Zen's support with a question that would have been easy to answer and this is the response i got...

Thank you for your enquiry.

Due to high demand it will not be possible to respond to your enquiry via e-mail.

Please call our sales line on 01706902001. The opening times for our UK based sales team are 0900-1700 Monday-Friday.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

as a exsiting customer and a simple question for an ISP that is more exspensive than others there support is terrible & why are they telling me to talk to the sales team,

looks like i will have to find an isp who wants to help and not sending out lame ass responses so they can close the ticket.....

the mind boggles,

Well I mean if it was a basic question then there is no excuse

I was thinking of joining but after reading some of the recent customer service complaints maybe i'll stay where I am for now.

I have been eyeing up TTB.

Edited by epyon (Sat 28-Feb-15 05:44:33)

In reply to a post by epyon:

Well I mean if it was a basic question then there is no excuse

I was thinking of joining but after reading some of the recent customer service complaints maybe i'll stay where I am for now.

I have been eyeing up TTB.

And the question posed by the OP was?

Yes the Zen administration side of the business could do with quite an overhaul and it would be nice for them to have some bark with BT when it is plainly obvious that BTs database contains an error. But then while you are a customer you are unlikely to make contact with the company that often and when you do ,everything gets sorted in one short call.

The TTB product is very good and gives more for your bucks than is on offer from Zen, but I have personally found that their support and admin side is no better than what you get from Zen plus an almost arrogant approach to their customers. The customer portal site provides a lot less information on your line than that seen on the Zen site.

I like the fact that Zen's contact number is a regular land line number against TTs 0800 number. Calling an 0800 number from a mobile when your service is down can cost several pounds which is rather like rubbing salt into the injury.

It's a tough call to say which is the better of the two companies on their business bundled products but by the slimmest of margins my vote goes with Zen.

In reply to a post by copex:

So i emailed Zen's support.

By starting your post by saying "so" it indicates there is a back story that you haven't explained. Interesting to know what the issue is/was.

In reply to a post by faircot:

In reply to a post by copex:

So i emailed Zen's support.

By starting your post by saying "so" it indicates there is a back story that you haven't explained. Interesting to know what the issue is/was.

No back story, this is my first contact with Zen's support, if you dont wish your customer to email support requests then dont supply a support email address, if there is a reason for telephone support explain this in the email, putting "Due to high demand it will not be possible to respond to your enquiry via e-mail." is just a cop out and the person responding to the email has more than likely labelled the ticket as resloved, without actually resolving the issue!

I have to say when ever I have emailed them they have always come back with a reply and an answer , I have recently had some very helpful responses form there accounts department .

Your experience is very different from mine. I only emailed them once which was about them provisioning FTTP where it is available (come on Openreach) and I got a reply in a few hours to what was a general none urgent question.
When I really needed their support when my broadband was very unstable they were superb making about a dozen engineer appointments as necessary until the problem was finally solved. They were proactive and they updated me every day by email or phone. If they said they would ring back they did. Even after the problem was solved and the line stable they rang me several times to make sure I was happy before finally signing the problem off. As soon as the first engineers visit did not help I was moved up to a manager without needing to ask who owned the problem by name.
More expensive but well worth it as far as I am concerned. Imagine the hassle of persuading a certain other ISP that all these engineer visits were needed via their Indian call centre manned by script monkeys! It was refreshing to have a real conversation with the support team and being treated with respect.

Edited by Jax2 (Sat 28-Feb-15 20:56:22)

Hi,

Id like to apologise for the issues that you have experienced.

Can you please PM me your details and ill look into this for you.

yeah thats pretty bad.

especially as email replies are quicker than answering calls.

Looks like an "Out of office" reply had been turned on.

I don't get what's so shocking? it's just an auto responder!
Picking up the phone would of been quicker than having a pop on here!!!

As someone who works in a support environment (I don't work for Zen or any ISP for that matter) there can be times when demand on the phones is such that we can't get near e-mails as in any good support department phones take priority and we usually adjust our autoresponder to apologise for a possible extended delay and to suggest people call if the query is urgent.

Is it not better they respond with something than simply not to bother at all?

As has been said by others, if you become a customer the services work well and you'll rarely have a need to talk to them but if you do you'll quickly learn why the premium you pay is worth every single penny.

In reply to a post by techguy:

As someone who works in a support environment (I don't work for Zen or any ISP for that matter) there can be times when demand on the phones is such that we can't get near e-mails as in any good support department phones take priority and we usually adjust our autoresponder to apologise for a possible extended delay and to suggest people call if the query is urgent.

So folks with a phone phobia can do what? Just because someone emails, it doesn't mean their fault is any less urgent than someone who phones.

That post doesn't really hold together techguy.

At the end you say "... if you do [need to talk to them] you'll quickly learn why the premium you pay is worth every single penny".

Earlier in the same sentence you say "you'll rarely have a need to talk to them".

Earlier in the post you validly point out that phone demand can overwhelm the email handling. A minor point I would make about that is that an auto-responder telling people to ring simply makes that "overwhelm-period" longer. The major point is that given the stated infrequency of the need to contact Zen support the call handling should not be overwhelmed.

If we accept your argument, to my mind it follows that the proportion of that premium price devoted to support is insufficient. It may even be that overconfidence has set in and support numbers reduced too much.

I think the phone number is just the main switchboard. It's the only one I see anywhere on their website.

I did spot an online live support chat popup on this page. If needing help Mon-Fri 10-4 is the situation in future that may be the quickest way of all. Plus you can print out the chat or save it to file.

The major point is that given the stated infrequency of the need to contact Zen support the call handling should not be overwhelmed.

Only up to a point. Support is a contended service (like the broadband they supply) so it is reasonable for an unexpected peak in demand to outstrip the supply of available agents.

If we accept your argument, to my mind it follows that the proportion of that premium price devoted to support is insufficient. It may even be that overconfidence has set in and support numbers reduced too much.

That is certainly possible but in order to reach that conclusion you would need to look at the trend rather than a single incident. I did try looking for phone statistics but it appears that they are no longer published.

Yes, I noticed that the stats were not available for now, and raised an eyebrow.

I wasn't commenting directly on Zen's support, I was commenting on the lack of logic in the post.

Regarding their support, I have over the last two or three years seen a few complaints along the lines of Zen not being particularly interested in those specific (domestic) users' problems. I don't monitor their forum here, the ones I have seen arose in General/Fibre/Unhappiness type places. Nor have I bookmarked these complaints.

Ok, Rob, fair point.

The service usually just works so you do rarely have to talk to them but if something goes wrong and you have to talk to them they get things sorted sharpish in my experience whereas in other cases with other ISPs I have used I've been given the run around which is why I believe they are worth the premium.

Regarding telephone phobias and e-mail.

A query received via e-mail is no less important than one received by telephone but one can fire off an e-mail and await a response whereas if you are waiting on hold you can't do much else can you?

They are obviously pretty good on support generally, that's unarguable . Just there are a few really bad anomalous cases crop up in the forums I listed, that would probably put me off if I was looking at a premium supplier. There does seem to be a reluctance to go after OP/BTW for "home" level customers.

Unless the OP doesn't want to call, why not just re-send the email again, and see what happens?

. There are Reply buttons on all posts, as there are Threaded read options on these forums. Some of us have also set to receive emails when replied to, rather than from any posts in the thread. You could have replied direct to either of the OP's posts:).

I believe they changed the phone system and lost access to the stats.

in my mind a good organised tech support department has people employed who's job is to deal with online support only, so emails/tickets get answered in a timely manner regardless of the phone situation.

Due to my employment i have limited access to a phone in working hours, email is my only option until i take a day off.

Zen is not the cheepest ISP and the FTTC i have from them has been flawless, i did message the ISP rep who posted and they did try to call the following day but just the once but credit where credit is due

Im not ZEN bashing but if i wanted poor support i could have stayed with BT and payed less,

It is interesting the responses posted and i have read all of them

I also prefer email as a contact option. It's convenient and there's something to refer back to

Did Mick Bolton's (Zen) PM offer not sort things out for you?
I would have hoped this would have either let you talk to them via TBB or resolved the email issue...

Slightly late response to this thread, but I thought I'd share...

I've been with Zen for about 7 years. I've only needed to contact their support a couple of times, but on both occasions I've found them to be great -- very helpful, very knowledgeable, and a cut above most other CS/TS services.

Now, to be fair, the last time I spoke to them was several years ago, so maybe the service has deteriorated since. And I've never tried to contact them by email, so I have no experience of the quality of their service there. But I'd still maintain that Zen's service level has been considerably better than that of many other ISPs (the reason I moved to Zen in the first place was because of a *genuinely* 'shocking' experience at the hands of Pipex support).

Labelling the entire support service as 'shocking' just because of an email auto-response seems a bit excessive to me.

That said, I've just ordered a regrade (from ADSL Max to ADSL2+), so it's entirely possible that I'll need to contact Zen support again in the next few days. If the service turns out to be 'shocking', I'll let you know!