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Isn't it interesting that there has been a rather insistent push to remove personal names, PFS#s, email addresses, virtually anything that could even remotely be viewed as personal or that could lead back to a users real information yet Paizo customer service's preferred method of communication is posting in an open public forum details about any issues involving customer orders or account problems.
Yes, you could email them instead, but seeing as how three of the last four emails I sent are still pending after three+ months I wouldn't hold my breath. The one that was answered took more than six weeks, is still unresolved, and my response to their response has gone without response since July.
We can use Covid as an excuse for many things, but not one online company that I know of takes more than a few days maximum to respond to customer issues. That extends from the big boys like Amazon and Walmart to "little" ones like Dr Squatch, Tee Turtle, Betabrand, etc. These company's employees pools are roughly equivalent to Paiso yet with customer service interactions that far exceed them. Many have mandatory maximums in customer handling times that result in automatic discounts and free offers if their issue is not addressed and/or resolved in a timely manner. And many of these companies are far younger than Paizo thus having less time to perfect their customer service systems.
Look, we love Paizo's products. We wouldn't be so passionate if we didn't, but enough is enough. And this is not a knock on the customer service agents who are left apologizing to virtually every customer because of the untenable and frankly, terrible, system that has been built for them to use. It is time for Paizo management to cut the excuses and fix your system. Period.
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The way I look at it is that in eight months of pandemic posture, Paizo has not migrated to VoIP or even provided CSRs company cell phones for business hour support. They have not hired the one, two, or five CSRs they need to catch up on the backlog, or even have the backlog stop growing.
The conclusion I came to a while back is that Paizo isn't rolling in money.
Complaining or "bringing as much focus and attention" won't change that. Paizo knows perfectly well what's happening in customer-service-land. Given their past, it seems evident they can't fix it.
Director of Brand Strategy
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They have not hired the one, two, or five CSRs they need to catch up on the backlog, or even have the backlog stop growing.
We haven't? I guess that'll come as a surprise to the new customer service reps we've hired in the last few months. Yet another one of 2020's strange occurrences, I guess.
Customer Service & Community Manager
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Paizo CS has been a team of eight since early October (seven CSRs plus me). Our email numbers are finally trending down, we are consistently caught up on processing returns, and as the newest folks get attuned to the work we're seeing even more progress.
Currently our phone system uses voice to text to email us the text of voicemails. One of the things that instantly made all of my team members less stressed as our backlog continued to get bigger in March as WFH started, was not having to drop complex issues they were in the middle of to answer the phone (we would get way more calls than just customers, including spam, cold calls, etc). The reduction in stress and interruption, coupled with the ability to catch most phone inquiries with the voicemails-to-text-emails has pushed seeking a solution for phones down on the priority list.
Over the summer my priority has been the hiring and training of 3 new CSRs via zoom (huge props to Diego for his role helping with this, I could not have done it all without him), getting a ticketing system picked out (working on implementation now), on top of all the other regular concerns and new things as the company pivots with all of the various pandemic related problems.
Additionally, each person has their own struggles and challenges to face, both within the company and our customers. We're doing our best to help everyone as best we can, even if it's taking significantly longer than anyone would like to see.
We are deeply aware of how long our backlog is, and we absolutely understand that there are folks who find this wait completely unacceptable. We know that people have a multitude of different ways to shop for our products, so if our issues with customer service are unacceptable for you, I would invite you to shop with Amazon, etc, while we continue to do our best to weather this storm.