Free advice to Openweb from a concerned customer

[SPY]

Firstly, let me say that I love Openweb, their products and the fact that they are trying to give the majority of customers a value added service through their competitive pricing and OpenBrowse proxy. There is no one else that even get close to offering this and that makes it even more special.

Now for the negative, I have never heard of anyone or company that loses so many emails as Openweb, I normally send around 50 emails a day through work and private use and I have to say that I have a success rate of 99.99%. It just seems that this is an easy copout to Openweb if they don’t have an answer or it seems when they not bothered. Secondly, try phoning them, this is almost impossible, and the excuses for Openweb not picking up the phone is always a Telkom issue or that they have ordered 10 more lines and Telkom still haven’t delivered. This story I started hearing in Jan 09 and it’s now the end of Apr 09 and still it’s an issue, have you escalated this into Telkom yet?

Look, I know that you guys are a small firm finding its feet, but poor Customer Service is no excuse and to put the blame back on your customers is not working either. Rather acknowledge that your resources are thin on the ground and stop making excuses! I know that Keoma Wright is doing his bit after hours and on weekends, and this is appreciated, but it’s just not good enough. Either you need more or better qualified people around you or need to alter your customers expectations about your level of service delivery.

My advice, and again just my 2 cents, soon we will have more bandwidth capabilities in the country and more choice in terms of products on offer. This will mean that Customer Service will be even more important and let’s be honest, your OpenBrowse product might become obsolete. If you don’t have that special product anymore and your customers service and service delivery is nonexistent then people will vote with their wallets and go elsewhere!

Please guys, make an effort and do not belittle your customers with lies, ignorance and empty promises!

 

[Nokkie]

The first paragraph sounded so nice until the negativity parts .

 

[cyberarmy]

The first paragraph sounded so nice until the negativity parts .

But we know it's true that a lot of email never got through. Which is strange indeed. As sometimes this is the only way of communication for some customers (during weekend and non-MyBB member).

 

[StevenC]

When I was with Openweb I pretty much had to phone Keoma at least twice a week if not more due to VPN problems or IS problems or Verizon problems or whatever.

He is an awesome guy but I will say the quality of the service is somewhat lacking. With broadband changes coming soon, I see a lot of people jumping ship to ISP's with better service standards as that will have more of an impact than cheapest deal.

 

[MrBEEP]

Hey SPY

I appreciate your forum post.

We are always striving to improve on all service levels. Each time we upgrade the call center capacity, our volume of calls increase, thus we are considering alternative options eg Skype calling etc.

However, as for email delivery, this is a difficult one. We have very reliable email servers in a professional datacentre, with backup mechanisms in place. The only problem is, mail still do not reach us all the time.

We have consulted with the folks at the datacentre, and all mail is delivered from our test hosts, eg Yahoo, Webmail, Gmail, QQL etc.

Thus, we have allowed MyADSL forum members to PM us, which is guaranteed delivery.

I have however forwarded this link to the other guys, and matters will be discussed.

Have super long weekend,
MrBEEP

 

[Browser]

Openweb, why not have a live chat room to help with support staff logged in, or even one of the existing messenger systems (less preferable). As long as it isn't often down or the support staff "hiding" in it, it would probably become the fist stop for help provided the customer still has internet access of some kind.

 

[fishfly]

If you ask me I think you need a new mail host

 

[SPY]

I think that if you can get customers to help themselves before starting to contact the support side, it will really free up your time to look into more serious issues.

What about beefing up your FAQ section and adding a Lessons Learned forum, where the customers might try and solve each other's issues and problems or suggestions.

 

[MrBEEP]

Thank you for the advice.

With our new control panel system, all aspects of the clients account will become self help, thus OpenWeb would only need to deal with issues that come up every now and then.

I like the idea of a FAQ. We have been working on one for a while now and will launch it as soon as I feel its complete.

I appreciate all the valuable feedback received here.

I think that if you can get customers to help themselves before starting to contact the support side, it will really free up your time to look into more serious issues.

What about beefing up your FAQ section and adding a Lessons Learned forum, where the customers might try and solve each other's issues and problems or suggestions.