Concern: Customer Service Forum Threads have universal visibility

[Themetricsystem]

I was advised elsewhere, and probably rightly so, that I was off-topic bringing up the subject on another thread so I'm making a new one here.

I do not for the life of me see any solid logic in having Customer Service support threads and content being universally accessible to anybody who visits the website. I wonder if this is just an artifact of bygone days when various norms of that kind of communication and requests for help were not really something that was consistently handled in similar/same ways across the net. That said, at this point when someone needs to reach out to customer service about problems with card payment, subscriptions, deletion or modification of Account details, and a variety of other things that are handled there I cannot think of any reason whatsoever why those communications should be had in a public forum, surely the website can be modified so that if it MUST stay as a forum that posts there should only be visible to the person who opened the specific thread or if that's not feasible then I feel the method one goes about handling that should be scrapped and replaced with private chat messages, email, or even a new "Open ticket" system that is completely confidential.

Sure, not much can really be gleaned from a user requesting X or Y be addressed but having specific Order #'s, and even requests for freelancers to shut down a consignment account out in the public is not what I would really call ideal.

I'm having a hard time getting to grok the benefit of having them out in the open other than to potentially be a kind of showcase where people can go to review other people's problems to see them politely responded to by CS staff. Even the header of the forum indicates that one should email if things that could be considered private should be discussed (which IMO should include any reference to refunds or issues with orders) on the topic. Is it just like... another place that can be checked in case someone is waiting on a reply from their email to be sure things don't fall through the cracks?

I'm not even particularly sensitive about what is/should be said in a public forum myself but it gives me pause to think that the company is handling part of their CS tasks out in the open where anybody with an internet connection can find their appeal for help.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Thank you for your reply (and moving it out of an unrelated thread). Last spring, CS started using Freshdesk to process order issues as tickets. Your post touches on something we've already been thinking about as we discuss improvements to the forums. We appreciate your input!

[Dancing Wind]

I have found the Customer Service Forum invaluable for several reasons.

First, the monthly Product Shipping threads allowed me to go back to the early days of Paizo and reconstruct some publication/availability dates on certain materials. I would hate to lose that ability. And recently, being able to keep abreast of the shipping uncertainties and actual delivery dates has been invaluable.

No matter what happens to the individual problem threads, I hope the communication channel between Paizo and the customer does not get eliminated.

Second, it is immensely reassuring to go to the Customer Service Forum and see that I'm not the only person having a problem. If I want to, I can add my data to the thread to perhaps help all of us self-diagnose the problem. And often, the information is more quickly available through shared knowledge than it would be if everyone had to wait for staff to explain what is going on.

Third, being able to see the problems other people are having helps eliminate me needing to pile on with my own emails to find out what is happening. If the only way to get information is one-on-one emails between a customer and staff, then the number of one-on-one emails that staff have to respond to will skyrocket.

It is, of course, hard to estimate how much work is NOT being created for staff to deal with when the community is able to explain procedures and processes and provide historic perspective.

Finally, it has only been a few months since the Customer Service Forum was the ONLY communication channel between Paizo and its customers. No phones, email backed up with a (literal) months'-long wait for staff to process it, and only the CS forum as a way to reach Paizo. Whatever the possible privacy problems, the forum provides a necessary redundancy when the new system fails to work correctly. If the email system is not working for you to get your account deleted, and the phones are not being answered, then it's very helpful to be able to actually communicate your problem and have it resolved.

[Leon Aquilla]

Dancing Wind wrote:

If the email system is not working for you to get your account deleted, and the phones are not being answered, then it's very helpful to be able to actually communicate your problem...

I would rather that the phones and emails be answered.

I have also brought up the issue of these sorts of things being handled in a public forum.

Quote:

Third, being able to see the problems other people are having helps eliminate me needing to pile on with my own emails to find out what is happening. If the only way to get information is one-on-one emails between a customer and staff, then the number of one-on-one emails that staff have to respond to will skyrocket.

Quite frankly, I don't care what anybody else is going through. They're not paying Paizo for my books, I am. If someone wants to post a PSA as a courtesy that's great. But something being a collective issue is not going to change whether I decide to move forward with a purchase or not.

I have had my orders not getting shipped until street date in the past -- calling Paizo directly seems to have been the deciding factor. Now, maybe that's cargo cult mentality on my part and it wouldn't have made any difference whether I called them or not, but it got me what I wanted. And if the difference of me being a squeaky wheel or not means I get my stuff on time, I'm gonna call, whether I'm caller #1 or caller #501.

[Aaron Shanks]

If I understand correctly, customer service requests don't have to be made on the forums. The prefers email. They worked very hard to catch up from last year's backlog and the new ticketing system means that requests get processed in order. One should not use the forums to bypass email.

[Themetricsystem]

I'm glad to hear that the backlog is cleared out, I know very well how much of a nightmare that can be when things are behind.

The idea that one shouldn't use the forums to bypass email makes TONS of sense, I agree 100% especially when the forum area even has to go out of the way to say not to put personal information in the posts and when it IS needed by the CS rep the resolution on thread always ends up being "send us an email and we'll sort it out" so... how is keeping the forum around at all anything but a risk to customer data/privacy (when someone does make the mistake of revealing too much and it would have to be edited/moderated by staff to protect the user) and a waste of CS rep time doing the work of monitoring, moderating, and safeguarding the info that is posted here if it all should be handled privately in the first place?

Just some thoughts, and thank you Tonya and Aaron for your replies, you have both been working crazy hard this year and this wasn't meant to make your jobs harder but only to maybe bring something up that might potentially help even take a load off CS staff while also protecting customers even if it's at the expense of wider transparency on how CS replies to and handles order/product/customer issues.

[Wolf Munroe]

I really preferred the visible Customer Service forum.

If I was having a problem I could just look and see if there were a bunch of related posts about the same issue. If it was a generalized issue I didn't need to make a customer service request at all because I could see they were already addressing the general issue.

Under the new system, sending an email, there's not even an automated response that the email was received. There's no response until a customer service rep responds. There's also no way to tell if my experience is unique or if multiple other customers are having the same problem.

I appreciate that the ticketing system is easier on the back-end, but my experience so far is that I don't like the change as it leads to more feelings of uncertainty.

[Brian Bauman]

Wolf Munroe wrote:

Under the new system, sending an email, there's not even an automated response that the email was received. There's no response until a customer service rep responds.

We added an automated email response with a ticket ID earlier this week, so this concern should no longer be an issue for anyone contacting Customer Service going forward.

[Wolf Munroe]

Brian Bauman wrote:

Wolf Munroe wrote:

Under the new system, sending an email, there's not even an automated response that the email was received. There's no response until a customer service rep responds.

We added an automated email response with a ticket ID earlier this week, so this concern should no longer be an issue for anyone contacting Customer Service going forward.

I sent an email to [e-mail] at 9:56 AM EST this morning, a little over 90 minutes ago. (Just before you posted, from the timestamp.)

It was a reply to a previous exchange with customer service about an issue with a pending order. I did not receive an automated response.

So I'm not sure what's going on there. Does the automated response ignore message with a RE: subject line?

[Wolf Munroe]

To be clear, a person from Customer Service did get back with me after I sent the email (a few minutes after I posted this time), so I'm just bringing forth that I didn't receive the automated email response today when mailing the [e-mail] address.

[TriOmegaZero]

I'd assume the system only sends an automated response to the first email. I know our system has a text code added to the first response that has it enter replies into the ticket directly rather than create a new ticket when it detects that code.

[Brian Bauman]

Correct - we now automatically send an email whenever a new ticket is created. Customer responses to emails concerning a existing ticket are appended to the ticket, but we don't send back automatic confirmation emails for every last reply (and we don't expect them from our customers, either).