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Recently it was announced that there was going to be a Restructuring of the site to get rid of the Customer Service and Website Feedback forums.
Both of these have been the front-facing bulwark of Paizo relations. Both have been the strength of the site in terms of support for necessary items and part of why I have maintained a subscription to Starfinder despite recent issues.
This raises the concern that the company is attempting to shift from being front-facing and engaging with customers in a proactive fashion to resorting to unseen email. Email responses are hidden, unseen, and therefore 'silent' in terms of 'fixing things'. It becomes a lot harder to get Quality Customer service via email.
This also feels in no small way like a level of vengeance against the most loyal customers who are willing to say something important rather than just let a thing lie.
An 'Announcement' forum doesn't help if we can't use the forums to communicate valid concerns over subscriptions, shipments and the like.
Is my take on this in error?
EDIT: Concern deepening, because I CANNOT find a phone number to contact Paizo on the site -- and that has been my secondary method of contact after putting forth a post on the Customer Service forums!
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This is concerning, as most of my Customer Service issues have been dealt with through the forums. There may be legitimate reasons for this change, but on the heels of the negative activity lately it doesn't feel right.
I haven't seen the announcement, is there a link?
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This is concerning, as most of my Customer Service issues have been dealt with through the forums. There may be legitimate reasons for this change, but on the heels of the negative activity lately it doesn't feel right.
I have to agree. Even if it is a coincidence, it doesn't look good and adds opacity in an area where transparency is required to re-earn customer trust.
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In a world where people freak out at their first name being revealed, I am astounded that Paizo has continued to conduct private account business through the public forums. I am glad they are going to move away from that practice and use email as their primary mode of contact, like the vast majority of the rest of the business world did years ago. Now, if they could just figure out how to manage a telephone number so people who require that level of attention can get it.
The phone number has been removed from various things because the CS team isn't in-office to answer it.
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Recently it was announced that there was going to be a Restructuring of the site to get rid of the Customer Service and Website Feedback forums.
Both of these have been the front-facing bulwark of Paizo relations. Both have been the strength of the site in terms of support for necessary items and part of why I have maintained a subscription to Starfinder despite recent issues.
This raises the concern that the company is attempting to shift from being front-facing and engaging with customers in a proactive fashion to resorting to unseen email. Email responses are hidden, unseen, and therefore 'silent' in terms of 'fixing things'. It becomes a lot harder to get Quality Customer service via email.
This also feels in no small way like a level of vengeance against the most loyal customers who are willing to say something important rather than just let a thing lie.
An 'Announcement' forum doesn't help if we can't use the forums to communicate valid concerns over subscriptions, shipments and the like.
Is my take on this in error?
EDIT: Concern deepening, because I CANNOT find a phone number to contact Paizo on the site -- and that has been my secondary method of contact after putting forth a post on the Customer Service forums!
I share your concerns and like Feros I also heavily rely on the customer service forums to straighten out issues as they arise.
That said, I'm going to wait and see how the new system works before I decide on my best course of action.
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In the past I have used both email and the forums for issues relating to products, shipping, subscriptions,etc. and the customer service team has done a fantastic job of resolving issues via both formats.
On a personal note, with customer service being an aspect of my job, email is by far the preferred method of communication in my workplace. For me, this doesn't seem like an unreasonable step, but I understand the concern.
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IMO e-mail is the better approach for dealing with customer service issues. I would imagine it would be easier for the CS reps to have a singular mail queue to deal with than having to monitor forums and email separately.
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Email and forums are complementary, not opposed. The best system combines both to benefit from their respective strengths.
Email for single user issues.
Forums for wider topics.
Paizo's customers community is one of their greatest strength. It would be best to leverage it rather than ignore it, or worse try to depower it.
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Ah, begun the process of winding forums down has.
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Ah, begun the process of winding forums down has.
Certainly feels that way. Paizo seems so disinterested in actually maintaining the community they've courted for years.
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They still seem unwilling to hire more members of the CS team, too. When is that going to change? Or is Heather going to be the main moderator, doing the work of ten people so no executive has to admit how stupid it was to fire Sara?
I'll say again that these forums are Paizo to me. I don't have any interest in a Paizo that abandons them. I find the whole "these forums are too toxic now, shut them down" attitude to be banal, harmful, and downright offensive. It grosses me out beyond words. If the executives are a part of that, they'll soon find themselves down a customer.
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The failure to staff up the CS team has been a problem for a long time. When CS response times got so far behind, early-to-mid pandemic, and certain product delays became extremely noticeable, I mentioned to my husband that these seemed like the symptoms of a company that was failing.
The revelations made by employees and ex-employees over the last few months have greatly magnified that impression. With the formation of the union being a sign of hope.
The glacial response to rampant transphobia, followed by (finally!) announcing zero-tolerance and perma-bans, yet showing continued hesitance to perma-ban specific people, is greatly worrying. The enforcement of "zero-tolerance" appears inconsistent and arbitrary, with no real (visible) concern given to addressing the real harm being done to those who are repeatedly targeted.
Eliminating transparency by removing the currently-most-reliable method of contacting CS feels like another huge step in the wrong direction. I've seen too many people post "got no response to email" messages on the CS boards to be comfortable with this. Sneaking it in with a few days notice during the holidays is a very corporate move. (Tonya, can you commit to an SLA on how quickly CS emails should/will receive a response? Any further information on how this is supposed to make things better for the customer?)
I've maintained my subscriptions thus far, but it's becoming harder to justify.
And KC's statement is mine, too - "these forums are Paizo to me."
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I for one am happy to see it go, shoot I even started a thread there in order to hopefully spur an internal discussion on the matter in case it wasn't already a known issue, it served no useful purpose whatsoever in terms of actually helping consumers, it exposed private transaction info to the public, and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.
It is their responsibility to find ways to reduce the risk for customers, the workload for the staff, and bring their services in line with the industry standard. Having public-facing customer service here is akin to troubleshooting a customer's issue through tweets, on a Facebook page, or otherwise broadcast in a permanent way instead of handling it through DMs or email/phone conversations. This is a wise, cost-saving, protective measure to help customers and staff alike.
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I for one am happy to see it go, shoot I even started a thread there in order to hopefully spur an internal discussion on the matter in case it wasn't already a known issue, it served no useful purpose whatsoever in terms of actually helping consumers, it exposed private transaction info to the public, and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.
It is their responsibility to find ways to reduce the risk for customers, the workload for the staff, and bring their services in line with the industry standard. Having public-facing customer service here is akin to troubleshooting a customer's issue through tweets, on a Facebook page, or otherwise broadcast in a permanent way instead of handling it through DMs or email/phone conversations. This is a wise, cost-saving, protective measure to help customers and staff alike.
Shutting down the relevant forums is not needed to get the benefits you describe though.
And, once again, the way it is done undermines the trust between Paizo and a significant part of its most enthusiastic customer base.
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I think Website Feedback needs to stay, even if Customer Service goes. To be honest, I think keeping a Customer Service subforum has major pros and cons, but I lean on moving "please cancel my subscription"-type emails to email. I think bugs and glitches could stay, and might even fit better in Website Feedback, so others can see and say, "Oh, I've had that problem, too," or even help fix the problem so CS doesn't have to!
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and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.
If you would really care for that, you'd be calling for axing permanently the phone lines and ensuring that nobody is getting screamed at by some entitled sad nerd who is waiting already three days for his Dragon #245 vodka shot glass. Because that's the biggest abuse vector, any time.
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and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.If you would really care for that, you'd be calling for axing permanently the phone lines and ensuring that nobody is getting screamed at by some entitled sad nerd who is waiting already three days for his Dragon #245 vodka shot glass. Because that's the biggest abuse vector, any time.
Nah, phone lines are fantastic resources for customer service and technical help and they have the benefit of being, generally speaking, a way to have a private discussion and to troubleshoot issues in real-time, not to mention they're invaluable for those with visual or physical impairments that make use of email challenging for some.
They're also helpful in this kind of extremely rare situation where an "entitled sad nerd" does call because they'll be connected with someone who can either reassure them, look into their complaint, give them the attention that they're actually looking for to make them feel better, or if really needed off-load them as a customer if the individual isn't satisfied but again, getting that kind of call is actually exceedingly rare as most people who are known to winge on like that mostly only do so in public for the sake of getting personal attention and via a 1-1 phonecall they don't get that kind of gratification. This kind of whinny customer would much rather spend dozens of hours spread across many days complaining publicly and trying to make waves where they can be seen than spend five or fewer minutes on a call which is far closer to being a face to face interaction than mere words on a public forum. Eliminating spaces on the website that encourage people who act in that entitled manner is simply a win-win, nobody has to hear them go on about their delayed shipping/whatever, they can still reach out any time they might really need to, and well-trained staff can often swiftly turn a conversation that starts out as being as evidently negative as the example would suggest into an engagement where that nerd is demanding the supervisor's number/email so they can thank the person who sat through their whole spiel and was there to help them.
The phone line being restored as a way to contact them (since the offices are still actually empty and I doubt that they'd make any CS staff install a business line in their own home or otherwise handle that work from a mobile phone that's in their possession) is something I hope they can get done in some fashion sooner rather than later even if the company never actually ends up sending anyone back to work at any centralized office at all.
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to make them feel better
Who hurt you?
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and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.If you would really care for that, you'd be calling for axing permanently the phone lines and ensuring that nobody is getting screamed at by some entitled sad nerd who is waiting already three days for his Dragon #245 vodka shot glass. Because that's the biggest abuse vector, any time.
Is it though?
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Is it though?and gave yet another vector for people to attack and demoralize the staff.If you would really care for that, you'd be calling for axing permanently the phone lines and ensuring that nobody is getting screamed at by some entitled sad nerd who is waiting already three days for his Dragon #245 vodka shot glass. Because that's the biggest abuse vector, any time.
Mean emails are bad, but not as bad as somebody shouting at you.
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I don’t think there is anything that requires real time resolution with Paizo’s CS. It was nice that my mother in law was able to call and get a gift card handled when she couldn’t figure out the website, but not essential. Maybe there’s a few corner cases, but I can’t think of anything.
So glad I’m internal support and generally know everyone that calls in. Public support is a mythical nightmare I never want to test.
Yeah, as someone who has worked in two different call centers, this is very true. I'd prefer to work email every day over phone duty.
Touche! You both make excellent points, thank you!
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At least it's not *only* phone. It's a nightmare to deal with services only accessible via phone when you're someone with both speaking and hearing difficulties.
The nice thing about working with customers and not having a public facing phone number is it allows staff to determine when customer issues require a phone call. I definitely support putting that decision in the hands of the staff resolving the issues.
I have worked with absolutely lovely customers over the phone but I have also worked with customers who were rude, if not outright abusive.
As long as the rest of the forums are generally supported, I personally don't mind more of the customer service aspects of the forums being migrated to email for resolution.
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Sometimes a problem is particularly complex and difficult to describe through email so having a customer service phone number to call is essential is you truly want to have excellent customer service. OTOH, I think most would agree that having the phone be the primary method of communication would be a bad idea. Since customer account issues should be resolved in private, doing it by email is the best solution.
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Provided, of course, that emails resolve in a timely fashion.
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Hi everyone! When it comes to the CS forums we have a great new ticketing system that Sara Marie implemented that has been significantly helping with our response times. I have mostly been the one working in the CS forums for the last few months and a large majority of the forum messages have also been sent in as an email. This creates a lot of extra work for us and takes away our time and attention from other issues and customers. We have only 4 CSRs right now and this will hopefully be a way to help us manage our workload :)
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In that case, I fully support closing the CS forums, but would still really like to keep the Website Feedback subforum up--even if it's only for community use. :)
Thank you for taking the time to reach out and clarify, Logan! We really appreciate it.
Software Architect
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I appreciate this thread. As the techie who migrated CS over to ticketing from email, I can corroborate with Logan that the improvements to issue tracking and management software greatly augment CS's ability to coordinate tasks with each other, handle multiple tickets with the same issue quickly and consistently, and ensure that issues don't fall through the cracks and are followed up on promptly.
I'd also like to clarify that the lion's share of the effort working through the large backlog in 2020 was done directly by Sara Marie and the rest of the CS team using their older methods, while Sara Marie was working with me to get the new system online and customized to CS's needs. The new ticketing came online when the backlog was already down into the hundreds, and helped to finish out the rest of the tickets. Primarily, the new ticketing system will help prevent such backlogs in the future, and help lighten the CS workload on a day-to-day basis so they can focus their efforts elsewhere. I want to be clear that CS deserves the accolades for working through the massive number of tickets with sheer tenacity.
All that said, the CS sub-forum is largely for individual, personalized issues, so moving those issues into the new ticketing system going forward makes sense, both for better handling and to reduce the opportunity for a customer to accidentally post sensitive information. For large-scale issues that affect many users, CS should still be able to interact with the community at large via the newly-announced Announcements sub-forum.
The Website Feedback sub-forum is a bit of a different beast, as it serves as a rudimentary ticketing system with built-in triage, a community support forum, and historical repository of known issues and workarounds. These features are not trivially replaceable, and to my understanding the Tech team is heavily invested in retaining said features.
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I support Paizo switching over to a ticket-based system and doing whatever they need to do to make that happen. My general experience (not as a tech person but as someone who in my line of work often had to frequently interact with institutional support services) is that anything using a ticket-based system will result in waaay better triage and responsiveness (yes even if multiple tickets address the same issue) and especially makes things easier when a small number of staff are handling a large number of requests. I've gotten the sense that over the course of the last several months is that most folks here want the staff's lives to be easier here, and maybe I'm crazy, but if the staff here are saying this is what it will take for their lives to be made a bit easier, then my inclination is to take that on good faith.
(Also I'm glad to be rid of the CS forums. Those things do not need to be public. It seriously creeped me out once when I submitted an order issue--simply because at the time I misunderstood the CS forums to be the best way to handle an order problem--and suddenly people were favoriting my posts. I felt like people were stalking me. Who should care what shipping problem I'm having with an order? It was so weird.).
As for Website Feedback, as I understand it the main reason people want to keep it is so users can help each other with common problems and questions--which should indeed help lower, not raise, staff workload (provided folks keep things civil). Maybe it could therefore be re-cast as a User Troubleshooting forum or something? With known workarounds/solution posts kept.
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Logan, Brian, thank you both for providing additional context. I'd still like to know what you expect the SLA for responses will be - or at least, will there be some way that we know if delays are expected? Sending an email and having no clue whether to expect a response in a day, three days, or two weeks, would be a real problem. (Maybe this could be an "estimated response time is currently..." in a bounce-back email when we submit a ticket?)
With that said, I really appreciate your responses, and I am now guardedly optimistic.
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Logan, Brian, thank you both for providing additional context. I'd still like to know what you expect the SLA for responses will be - or at least, will there be some way that we know if delays are expected? Sending an email and having no clue whether to expect a response in a day, three days, or two weeks, would be a real problem. (Maybe this could be an "estimated response time is currently..." in a bounce-back email when we submit a ticket?)
With that said, I really appreciate your responses, and I am now guardedly optimistic.
To my knowledge, Paizo hasn't committed to a public SLA for queries to Customer Service (by any method). I can say, however, that over the past months the average response time for customer service tickets has been well within 24 hours (on business days), and I don't know of any reason why that should change.
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I don’t think there is anything that requires real time resolution with Paizo’s CS. It was nice that my mother in law was able to call and get a gift card handled when she couldn’t figure out the website, but not essential. Maybe there’s a few corner cases, but I can’t think of anything.
So glad I’m internal support and generally know everyone that calls in. Public support is a mythical nightmare I never want to test.
Backed kingmaker day 1 on crowdfunding. Could not get through to them via email in a way to explain how the crowdfunding platform blanked out my day 1 benefits. Head of marketing, think it was Jim Butler and he was fantastic, had to get on the phone with me real time to adjust my order back to the way it should have been because the system did not allow for my early birds benefits.
Lack of vision as to a need for something does not mean it does not exist. I've needed to use phone support multiple times for urgent subscription issues.
There is a need. Email works 95% of the time but my kingmaker issue would have never been fixed with out real time support.
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Let's not confuse Real-time (synchronous) support and real-time exchange (Phone call) with the support team.
The first one is a nightmare for support teams and only really needed for exceptional situations such as when lives are literally at stake (tech support for health systems used in surgery, for example).
The second one is greatly efficient when the support team needs to contact the user / client to get better info to solve the issue. Sadly, since it is time-consuming, many support teams avoid using it, even when it would be best.
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Letting people cancel subscriptions through the storefront, the same way they can start them, seems like it would help reduce the volume of minor issues CS needs to deal with.
Agreed 100%
From my understanding is there is a hang up in timing between order generation, payment taken and shipment occurring that makes this not possible in the current system. I could be wrong about that, but it has to do with the free pdf's and account discounts applied and having a way to game the system.
Personally I feel if they manage to lock in the payment and supply the PDF then if you cancel it should still be applied for the next month. If you cancel before payment is taken and PDF is given then it is cancelled at that point. I don't have any real understanding of how the back end of the sales system works but from a user/customer perspective that would be the acceptable terms.
Can't refund once a PDF is applied, regardless of a Sub or purchase.
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Don't want to make 2 posts. I feel shutting down the CS forums is a miss step. Not in regards to allowing ticket generation, I've never believed that it makes sense to have your private account information public in any way shape or form. But having an open communication with subscribers about the state of the products in one place is ideal for the customer.
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In addition, it helps prevent Announcement threads from being derailed by concerns about a given product.
What category, for example, would 'damaged bindings falling apart after purchase' fall into, and how would *other* people know to look for this issue if it's not on the forum short of word-of-mouth that may or may not get deleted if someone feels it's not helping the company?
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I'm glad to see the concern seems to be turning around. Ticketing systems are big time savers and makes work easier (I'm spoiled using Salesforce).