Oh? Where about are you?Lots of things have been pushed around (the cards in particular), however that had started back in December/January, so it’s hard to untangle what’s COVID related and what’s been caught up in the rush to get PF2 out the door (the new edition rush was part of the problem with the Absalom books).The new GM screens were as well but thise were also befirw Covid and it could have made sense to release it at GEN CON.Yeah, I’m not sure beyond a feeling that there have been some delays.
(I’m not really paying attention to product slippages, since it’s taking packages 90+ days to get to me from the states at the moment, so it doesn’t really affect me much if something is pushed a month late).
Australia. It’s usually about a month from shipping email until it arrives, but since COVID it’s stretched out a lot recently (not just Paizo packages). I have one case of minis sent in March that still isn’t here and my May and June subscriptions are still who knows where... :(
Do things get lost alot? When I lived in Europe that would happen much of the time.
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Remember, the point of this thread is not shipping delays or production delays. Those things are easily explainable both before and after covid. However, the response time to acknowledging communication with the customer is unacceptable. No other company, anywhere I know of has a 4-6 week window to simply respond to an inquiry. We’re not even talking about resolving it. Just to acknowledge it.
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My guess it comes down to not having the proper tools do able do do their full duties from home.
I am assuming it is more then just reading emails and posts and replying. there is something that being at home makes it difficult for them to complete their jobs in a timely manner.
And over the many weeks they have been home those tools have not been able to be provided. Either those tools are still in development or they just can't be provided.
I know phones calls are no longer an option, I am surprised they did not have those forwarded, many companies I have been dealing with during this period have had CS phone calls forwarded to the location of the CS personal.
I know phones calls are no longer an option, I am surprised they did not have those forwarded, many companies I have been dealing with during this period have had CS phone calls forwarded to the location of the CS personal.
Me too. I ordered clothes from a company that forwarded their CS calls to people at home. I coukd hear little kids laughing in the back. The man apologized and I said no need.
I have also done interactions with people who work from home for a diocese in bankruptcy.
Just sayin.
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Been following this thread, not sure why shipping times are the current topic.
I agree that the powers that be at Paizo need to better support their fantastic customer service team. It's hard being the face of a company during times of crisis. Phone support needs to open back up if it hasn't yet, this is too long. It's one thing to have an issue that can wait. But I've had issues that take 30 seconds to resolve on a phone call that would take over a month right now.
Sorry, as much as I love the CS team and the support they give us. A month is way too long of a lead time for customer service tickets. Not sure what the powers that be can do to alleviate the situation, Washington is starting to see an up tick and I really do appreciate letting people work from home who can work from home do so. But by now phones should have been resolved and lead times reduced not extended.
Been following this thread, not sure why shipping times are the current topic.
Because it possibly explains some of it. (Which might be of interest to some, even if not of interest to those who think it should have been fixed by now).
Paizo is a publisher, a distributor and a retailer. It’s a weird setup when you drill down into the details - staffing to run those three businesses is one thing, as the world has shifted they need to judge how fast it’s changing and for how long this will be normal.
Remember, the point of this thread is not shipping delays or production delays. Those things are easily explainable both before and after covid. However, the response time to acknowledging communication with the customer is unacceptable. No other company, anywhere I know of has a 4-6 week window to simply respond to an inquiry. We’re not even talking about resolving it. Just to acknowledge it.
One of my clients has abandoned CS responses except for their truly massive customers. They’re basically shutting down until “it’s all over”.
Glad Paizo aren’t doing that, personally.Shipping delays dont affect CS workload of all companies the same. My theory is that the various factors of Paizo;s subscription model, sudden lack of distributors and unique IT system have exacerbated the problem here.
That doesn’t excuse the speed with which extra resources are being shifted into the CS team, but it’s worth remembering that Paizo aren’t just a retailer (I’d argue that’s a secondary business to them, in fact).
My guess it comes down to not having the proper tools do able do do their full duties from home.
I am assuming it is more then just reading emails and posts and replying. there is something that being at home makes it difficult for them to complete their jobs in a timely manner.
And over the many weeks they have been home those tools have not been able to be provided. Either those tools are still in development or they just can't be provided.
I know phones calls are no longer an option, I am surprised they did not have those forwarded, many companies I have been dealing with during this period have had CS phone calls forwarded to the location of the CS personal.
I do prefer phone contact. However, If you’re right about the first half, phone service may well make it worse, not better.
I know each interaction is logged (so other CS staff can see who helped you or is still helping you with an ongoing issue). Messageboards and emails probably get logged more automatically than a phonecall. Irrespective, doesn’t really help to spread two overloaded to-do piles into three.
Finally - it may well increase the level of abuse the CS team have to deal with. If that’s the motivation for not having phone support currently, I’m 100% behind it.
Do things get lost alot? When I lived in Europe that would happen much of the time.
Hardly ever. (I want to say never, but I think I remember getting a replacement once...can’t remember the exact details).
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But waiting weeks or months for a CS response in any field is not CS at all. People want to buy things from them. They want to support. Paizo upper management needs to honor that and fix it.
They certainly do. Fingers crossed they are. I know things move slower than one expects they ‘should’ in nearly every business.
The only reason I’m posting to this thread really is to hopefully make it stand out to executive. CS are responsible for this forum so it’s unlikely exec will see much of what we say here, unfortunately. (As a matter of course. These are unusual times, obviously).
Me too.
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I would believe part of the problem is people also double reporting issues to both the forum and email. This causes CS to check if something has already been resolved, slowing them even further in their efforts.
Hes weird.
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Paizo has phones, a massive email box, and this forum. I'll be the first to tell you this is such an antiquated model for assisting customers that it's honestly jaw-dropping that this is *actually* a thing in 2020. That mailbox must be completely full to bursting and opening it must crash computers. (Outlook will start to crash and burn at around 1000-2000 emails on the kinds of computers used in a work environment.)
As an ex-customer, I'm mostly only lurking here, but I can't let this factual inaccuracy stand. Credibility of an overall post is based on it's parts, and this is incorrect by several orders of magnitude.
Per Microsoft's documentation, Outlook isn't expected to have performance issues until it has 100,000 items per folder. Heck, back with Outlook 2000 and Exchange 2000 the general rule of thumb was to keep under 20,000 items per-folder.
While I won't dispute that Paizo could benefit from modernization, it doesn't look good when an IT person basically makes up random numbers. These aren't correct and haven't been even almost correct... ever.
Now, if you'd said something like "the CS phone problem could probably be solved with a few $100-or-less VoIP phones in stock on Amazon plus a Voip.ms account in the ballpark of $0.0052 /min plus in the ballpark of $5/month for a phone number, and then forward the CS phone number to that", well, that'd've been accurate.
But the problem doesn't appear to be CS' access to phones, or computers. Phones would just be another way for their precious time to be consumed. And remote-access to Windows/Macs are a solved problem, which they've certainly got in place. So the problem is other. Likely non-technical.
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How about the IT department look into a way to digitally cancel part or all of an order or subscription, like almost every other online ordering platform has? I bet that would save CS a boatload of time.
If the answer is "that would take restructuring our whole system", maybe it's time to do that.
Maybe in time for the next warehouse inventory so the on hands get converted to the new system at launch?
Having to contact an overrun or shut down CS department in order to perform the most basic of functions is part of what leads to this whole mess.
How about the IT department look into a way to digitally cancel part or all of an order or subscription, like almost every other online ordering platform has? I bet that would save CS a boatload of time.
If the answer is "that would take restructuring our whole system", maybe it's time to do that.
Maybe in time for the next warehouse inventory so the on hands get converted to the new system at launch?
Having to contact an overrun or shut down CS department in order to perform the most basic of functions is part of what leads to this whole mess.
I believe this is on the list of website improvements “in the works” - at least at some level.
I believe this is on the list of website improvements “in the works” - at least at some level.How about the IT department look into a way to digitally cancel part or all of an order or subscription, like almost every other online ordering platform has? I bet that would save CS a boatload of time.
If the answer is "that would take restructuring our whole system", maybe it's time to do that.
Maybe in time for the next warehouse inventory so the on hands get converted to the new system at launch?
Having to contact an overrun or shut down CS department in order to perform the most basic of functions is part of what leads to this whole mess.
I do remember that as well: being said to be "on the list".
Patience is a virtue but virtue is its own reward.
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I've got experience in Outlook. It can, and does tend to slow and crash when over 2000 emails are in the folder. I don't care what the MS documentation says -- it's wrong.
I'm not going to get into an IT guy e-peen war with you. All I can say is... don't put your PST file on a network drive over 1Mbps DSL. As in, you're doing something very wrong and any competent IT person should be able to resolve your issue. I have a few thousand desktop users of Outlook with and without Exchange, and what you're experience is... isn't even remotely normal.
Paizo has phones, a massive email box, and this forum. I'll be the first to tell you this is such an antiquated model for assisting customers that it's honestly jaw-dropping that this is *actually* a thing in 2020. That mailbox must be completely full to bursting and opening it must crash computers. (Outlook will start to crash and burn at around 1000-2000 emails on the kinds of computers used in a work environment.)As an ex-customer, I'm mostly only lurking here, but I can't let this factual inaccuracy stand. Credibility of an overall post is based on it's parts, and this is incorrect by several orders of magnitude.
Per Microsoft's documentation, Outlook isn't expected to have performance issues until it has 100,000 items per folder. Heck, back with Outlook 2000 and Exchange 2000 the general rule of thumb was to keep under 20,000 items per-folder.
While I won't dispute that Paizo could benefit from modernization, it doesn't look good when an IT person basically makes up random numbers. These aren't correct and haven't been even almost correct... ever.
Now, if you'd said something like "the CS phone problem could probably be solved with a few $100-or-less VoIP phones in stock on Amazon plus a Voip.ms account in the ballpark of $0.0052 /min plus in the ballpark of $5/month for a phone number, and then forward the CS phone number to that", well, that'd've been accurate.
But the problem doesn't appear to be CS' access to phones, or computers. Phones would just be another way for their precious time to be consumed. And remote-access to Windows/Macs are a solved problem, which they've certainly got in place. So the problem is other. Likely non-technical.
As an IT professional I couldn't begin to take apart the inaccuracies of the original post so I just sorta had an eye twitch and moved on.
You are correct on everything you say here other than the assumption, even though you use the word likely, is non-technical.
There are archaic phone systems that are still in use today that makes a shared support line troublesome if you don't have an expert in house to redirect numbers. Alot of smaller companies have phone systems set up and then never touch them and would have to make a costly service call just to forward a shared line....
Not that I don't think it shouldn't be done. It should. But then when things go back to 'normal' they would likely have to make another costly service call to revert it. Shared lines can't always be 'forwarded' like normal lines.
I've got experience in Outlook. It can, and does tend to slow and crash when over 2000 emails are in the folder. I don't care what the MS documentation says -- it's wrong.I'm not going to get into an IT guy e-peen war with you. All I can say is... don't put your PST file on a network drive over 1Mbps DSL. As in, you're doing something very wrong and any competent IT person should be able to resolve your issue. I have a few thousand desktop users of Outlook with and without Exchange, and what you're experience is... isn't even remotely normal.
Again, everything you say here is correct.
Redirected/Network folders/Roaming desktop is the bane of Outlook.
Something needs to be done, though.
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Do away with the public forum concept. Just a horrible idea on so many levels. Implement a simple form that has an issue field. Once user submits it is assigned a number that both Paizo and the customer see, This is then sent to am email solely dedicated for resolving issues. Have multiple folders for each issue. As they are completed/resolved archive them. This will help make things so much easier to manage.
Look to investing into VOIP or similar technology. This fixes the I am working at home issue. Should have already had this in placed. Or invest into company phones like iPhones, these are used for work related only. Adopting this concept is how things are going. Especially for things like this. Allows people to work from home if they are sick or unable to get to work.
Everyone should be aiding in helping CS. Stop all projects till things are more manageable. Not getting these things fix is going to cost money. Shipments getting returned etc. Unless you choose to charge for shipping again because that isn’t fair to the customer. If I have to pay for shipping again on either of my shipments, then I will be done dealing with Paizo all together. I shouldn’t have to pay extra because they failed to handle their business.
This isn’t a hard job nor should it be this difficult to manage. This is truly unacceptable and needs to be fixed now. Not tomorrow, but today. There is no excuse for being so far behind. IO fail to see how they are SO FAR behind. If an issue needs to update their order this should take no more than 2-3 minutes. Pull up the order then update it. Simple.
The warehouse should, for now, check all orders against the site. Search the forums for the order number and the email. Then fix the issue. Yes this will cause delays in shipping but will cut down on issues and help out. Not sure how the forums are handled on the back end to tell where they left off or anything.
Invest in to a better system just in general. IT will help out so much.
This was posted in the General Discussion forum, but, just in case senior management read this thread first,
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There are a lot of good ideas presented here on how to improve their customer support technical infrastructure. As someone who has helped grow a small business from aboit 25 to over 140 people...none of them are free. Every project competes for resources, and getting from "kinda works, but not well" to "ideal setup" is a big range of ambition and cost. Taking on big IT projects when you're not built to support remote workers introduces new downtime and friction as you transition.
If Paizo is like almost every other small to mid-size company that's not funded by venture capital, the folks who set up half the systems probably don't work there anymore, I'm guessing that not everyone was issued laptops in the first place, and maybe they had an on-call phone or laptop that got passed around.
And it's reasonable to suppose the pandemic has made budgets tighter as their sales are impacted (if by nothing else, then from distributor impact, but consumers are spending less right now generally) and costs increase to solve the new problems of switching to remote work. A lot of the fixed costs of maintaining an office space are only slightly reduced (power, water) when you're not actually using it.
Implementing new systems during a budget crunch is another recipe for disaster.
And I'm speculating there, but that's also my point. We don't see any of that. It's usually inappropriate to make recommendations to solve a problem you don't see the full scope of. It's almost always pointless for complex situations like business operations during a business continuity/disaster recovery scenario (like operating during a pandemic).
Doing little to nothing to address their 1000+ email back log, maybe, from their own reports answering around 10 a day, is not acceptable. Good will in a capatalistic economy will only go on for so long.
Do away with the public forum concept. Just a horrible idea on so many levels. Implement a simple form that has an issue field. Once user submits it is assigned a number that both Paizo and the customer see, This is then sent to am email solely dedicated for resolving issues. Have multiple folders for each issue. As they are completed/resolved archive them. This will help make things so much easier to manage.
Look to investing into VOIP or similar technology. This fixes the I am working at home issue. Should have already had this in placed. Or invest into company phones like iPhones, these are used for work related only. Adopting this concept is how things are going. Especially for things like this. Allows people to work from home if they are sick or unable to get to work.
Everyone should be aiding in helping CS. Stop all projects till things are more manageable. Not getting these things fix is going to cost money. Shipments getting returned etc. Unless you choose to charge for shipping again because that isn’t fair to the customer. If I have to pay for shipping again on either of my shipments, then I will be done dealing with Paizo all together. I shouldn’t have to pay extra because they failed to handle their
Like a Google form?
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My guess it comes down to not having the proper tools do able do do their full duties from home.
Meh. What tools do they need that they don't already have? Its not like they don't have experience sending their point-of-sale systems out of the building. They do that a minimum of twice a year (PaizoCon, Gen Con) maybe more. They routinely send employees out of the building traveling to conventions or working from home. Clearly they have experience with and the infrastructure to deal with remote workers.
Top world-wide Fortune-500 companies with much greater security needs than Paizo manage to send their agents any/everywhere without a problem. We're only talking about what, half-a-dozen people doing customer service from home. What exactly are the "proper tools" they don't have? I don't claim to be an IT professional, but I've been around customer service as an agent and manager long enough to know the types of systems and requirements we are talking about are neither especially expensive, nor functionally oppressive. The bottom line is either you are serious about good customer service or you aren't. Paizo says they are, but their actions do not support it.
I know phones calls are no longer an option, I am surprised they did not have those forwarded, many companies I have been dealing with during this period have had CS phone calls forwarded to the location of the CS personal.
Some companies are going out of their way to minimize the effect social distancing is having on their customer service. I recently opened a new bank account and apparently the customer service agents were busy so the district vice-president called my personal cell to help me set up the account. I'm nothing special, just someone wanting to open a standard checking account, and the VICE PRESIDENT in an effort to help her agents, called me directly and left me with her cell phone number should I incur any problems using the new account. And whoever send me the documents package in the mail (dunno if it was her or a standard agent) included her business card with a note that calling her desk phone number would auto-forward to her cell phone. IMO, that is above and beyond customer service.
Now, I am not suggesting the Erik Mona, or Jeff Alvarez jump in and work the customer service queue, but somebody needs to do something. Paizo claims that customer service is important to them, but actions speak louder than words. The status quo is simply not good enough.
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I believe, back in the day Lisa Stevens used to jump in on the phones and help with customer service when it was needed, whether she still does I don't know.
At any rate, I very much appreciate everything they've been able to accomplish the last few months.
It's not easy waiting and it can certainly be stressful not knowing what's going on when you have money tied up but the less we inundate them with complaints and unverified conjecture the more time they have to help those who need it the most.
Do people who cancelled their subscriptions have a dog in this fight?
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Do people who cancelled their subscriptions have a dog in this fight?
There are a lot of customers of paizo without subscriptions. I think they would benefit from paizo pushing more into CS resources as well.
Perhaps. But isn't the number of subscribers for a given line a gauge of profit for the business. Casual buyers may be gravy but the subscriber is the meat and potato.
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Given the way they respond to postings there is little to no chance they could focus on any specific category of customer, subscriber or otherwise.
Top world-wide Fortune-500 companies have a lot more resources than Paizo.
That may be true, but they also have A LOT more employees to provide for and A LOT more security concerns. Business scaling matters. A much smaller company has much smaller needs and costs. Its not a legitimate counter-argument. I deal with dozens of small LLC and essentially sole-proprietorships on a monthly basis and the worst of their responsiveness is 3-4 days (not including weekends/holidays). You can cut this discussion anyway you want, but at the end of the day the response time is atrocious at best and an exponential factor slower.
I have had several dealings with an archdiocese in bankruptcy and their employees since March either through Zoom or calling and the call going forward to the office number at their home.
I don't think that Paizo is in that bad of shape as a religious organization undergoing bankruptcy.
Hey, I'm a subscriber!!
I'm not sure why we've moved onto subscriber Pokemon style battles, but I'm game!
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Perhaps. But isn't the number of subscribers for a given line a gauge of profit for the business. Casual buyers may be gravy but the subscriber is the meat and potato.
Sure, but I still think they “have a dog in this fight”. At a basic level, I think CS shouldn’t really depend on how significant a customer you are.
For me and what I know about Paizo’s business, a week to get resolution of difficult questions seems reasonable. It seems clear to me that there just aren’t enough CS representatives to deal with the volume of work at the moment. That doesn’t mean they’re “doing nothing” nor that this should necessarily be their number one priority.
I know historically, Paizo have not liked to put people on short term contracts and I suspect that has had an impact on the decision here. However, I’m also of the view that the retail arm is a second tier facet of their business. If things are tight and their choice was between “let the online store struggle but keep the core publishing business going strong” and “keep the online, direct-sale customers happy but have a medium/long term contraction in the publishing side of things” then I could understand not putting extra resources into CS over the last few months.
I’ve never had a publisher as a client, let alone a publisher/distributor/retailer. What I do know is that nearly every business faces unique challenges which aren’t always obvious from outside. I’m going to continue to call for more CS resources, because I think they need them - I’m not going to make the mistake of thinking I know what’s really going on though.
For the record, I bought Paizo books for years at my local game store before subscribing to Paizo.
So just because they don't have a nifty subscriber tag attached to their name doesn't mean they haven't heavily invested in Paizo.
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There is no point in trying to compare one business to another because there will always be people that will point to any differences and then claim apples v oranges. So let's try this, before corona became an issue for Paizo and Washington enacted stay-at-home, they were 17±days behind on email responses. So by that they were already well behind any other company I know of by at least 300%. On April 10th, they managed to get the backlog down to less than 300 emails, though still 12 days, but have been consistently climbing ever since. At what point do they reallocate resources to get back under control? When do they stop expecting customer service agents to moderate the message boards and focus on their #1 job?