Additional support on O2 Community

[Chris_K]

Hello everybody,

As you may have seen from us over the past few days, we have been keeping our customers updated on what we’re doing during the COVID-19 crisis. With the temporary closure of our O2 stores, we anticipate an increase in queries here on the O2 Community and through our O2 Social Media profiles. That said, as of today we have introduced a temporary new support resource on the O2 Community to compliment the amazing help, support and advice our regular members already provide – and hope they will continue doing.

New to the O2 Community?
This is a unique support platform that consists of other O2 customers. We have a lot of fantastic content created by these other members and customers, such as this fantastic My O2 guide, a guide on avoiding unexpected call charges, or this guide on spend caps. Until now, we have not had an O2 support resource like this and the majority of support so far has been from O2 customers helping other O2 customers. For those members, we thank you for all your amazing support so far, and we hope you continue doing what you do best.

The new team
All of these new members have the title of ‘O2 Support’. They are O2 employees who have come from our O2 stores or other areas, and have intimate knowledge of our processes, systems, and the help & support we can offer. For the time being, it’s best not to tag these new support members into specific support requests. Instead, they will get to grips with this new but temporary way of working and start dipping in and out of threads where they can offer their support or advice. Here are the new team members, with others being added soon.

• @O2Lauren 
• @O2Hannah 
• @O2Dan 
• @O2Stacey 

What can they help with?
There’s no hard and fast rule here, but in general, all our new members above can help with anything and everything that doesn’t require access to your O2 account. This may include general advice, personalisation or setup of a phone or tablet, support with parental settings.

To be clear, the team cannot help with anything requiring access to your account. We also want to emphasise that this new support resource is temporary during our store closures, and we envision this team working alongside and to compliment the support our regulars already provide.

To our regulars 
This shouldn’t change anything you already or currently do – this additional and temporary resource is purely to help with any potential increase in questions or issues customers may share here in the coming days or weeks.

[Mi-Amigo]

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@MI5 wrote:
IMHO Gurus are not needed.
What IS needed is someone who can provide a CS role, access accounts and fix the issues that need CS but that no one can get through to.

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I totally 100% agree @MI5 

You have, in my opinion, identified the most frequent and worrying questions asked by customers.

[Cleoriff]

I'll agree with that. I can't count the number of times we all have told worried customers to get in touch with CS, knowing damn well there is not a cat in hells chance of them getting through.

We are simply papering over the cracks of what is fast becoming a very deep ravine.

On that note, I'm offline for a while so I'll see you later.

[Martin-O2]

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to add a few comments on top of what Chris has already said.

Firstly, you have all been doing an amazing job during this difficult time. With the reduced level of staff due to the lockdown the community is extremely busy and will likely remain so until things return to normal. Your continued effort and support is greatly appreciated by everyone on the community team and at O2. 

With the increased volumes we fully understand that it will take longer to answer questions and respond to queries. We don’t expect you to get to everything right away and the last thing we want is for you to feel stressed out about this! Just do what you feel comfortable with and don't worry if something goes unanswered. Also make sure you have regular breaks from all the help stuff, whether that’s hopping into off topic or just taking a break from the community and spending time with family. 

We’ll be getting some fun conversations going in off topic this week to keep things interesting! 

For the support staff this is something brand new so we’ll be working closely with them to get them into a good groove with how the community works, when to jump in and when not to etc. 

Duplicate replies will happen if people are both responding to a thread at the same time but we'll try to keep this to a minimum. 

Some customer queries (problems using your phone, paying your bill, lost or stolen, or reporting fraudulent activity) will still need to be dealt with by customer services. If this changes we’ll let you all know but for everything else we’re directing people to the many awesome community guides and My O2. 

We understand that the call wait times are higher then usual so calling should only be for serious issues as mentioned above. 

Once again a massive thank you for your support during this unprecedented situation and if you have any issues, questions or concerns please get in touch with myself, @Marjo  or @Chris_K.

[Mi-Amigo]

@Martin-O2 wrote:

With the increased volumes we fully understand that it will take longer to answer questions and respond to queries. We don’t expect you to get to everything right away and the last thing we want is for you to feel stressed out about this! Just do what you feel comfortable with and don't worry if something goes unanswered. Also make sure you have regular breaks from all the help stuff, whether that’s hopping into off topic or just taking a break from the community and spending time with family. 

@Martin-O2 

The key point which you seem to avoid is not a question of increased volumes, taking longer to answer, or regular breaks - but the very fact that long-term members of the Community had to, and have continued to, deal with questions from O2 customers who cannot get through to customer services. It is worth noting that you failed to reply to @MI5 `s post (supported myself and @Cleoriff ) which made the salient point:

"IMHO Gurus are not needed.
What IS needed is someone who can provide a CS role, access accounts and fix the issues that need CS but that no one can get through to."

@Martin-O2 wrote:

We’ll be getting some fun conversations going in off topic this week to keep things interesting! 

@Martin-O2 

With the greatest respect, I would much rather see the staff concentrate on dealing with the issues of customer questions rather than spend time developing and posting "fun convrsations going into Off Topic". Many of us are more than capable of this and lightening the dark and doomy days we are, and will continue to encounter, without staff having to step away from their main function to entertain "the troops".

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@Martin-O2 wrote:

For the support staff this is something brand new so we’ll be working closely with them to get them into a good groove with how the community works, when to jump in and when not to etc. 

Duplicate replies will happen if people are both responding to a thread at the same time but we'll try to keep this to a minimum. 

@Martin-O2 

While the addition of support staff might at first sight go someway to relieving the situation, as pointed out in my post to @Chris_K this was not the case over the weekend in respect of support staff giving incorrect information and openly criticising a very knowledgable and long-term member of the Community who gave the right answer to a customer`s question. In addition, dupication by support staff has not only been in posting at the same time, but after a correct answer has been given. I am sure you can imagine the impression this gives to the customers.  

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@Martin-O2 wrote:

Some customer queries (problems using your phone, paying your bill, lost or stolen, or reporting fraudulent activity) will still need to be dealt with by customer services. If this changes we’ll let you all know but for everything else we’re directing people to the many awesome community guides and My O2. 

We understand that the call wait times are higher then usual so calling should only be for serious issues as mentioned above. 

@Martin-O2 

As pointed out above, this was raised by @MI5 and sadly has not been replied to. The large number of queries in respect of these queries indicates there is a necessary need to impliment a strategy which addresses this. Merely relying on the knowledge, skill, ability, commitment of unpaid, supportive and helpful members of this Community is unacceptable. In fact, to be blunt, it is interesting to note that not even a "Thank you" was issued by staff, admin, supporters, or Social Media team until after my post. [Coincidence? I think not - but there are more important issues here than that]

I sincerely hope that ALL of the matters - the volume of customers` questions, the waiting times for customer services, the times and support of O2 staff - inc admin, O2 supporters, and O2 gurus - will be dealt with promptly. It is an undeniable fact that things are going to get worse before they get better and the sooner that everyone co-operates and relieves the pressure and stress of the O2 Commmunity members and the O2 customers the better.

Thank you for your time in reading this long post.

I look forward to your response to each of the points raised

@Mi-Amigo    

[Mi-Amigo]

@Martin-O2 

Further to my post [above], I would like to add that, since posting it, I have noticed that the O2 Gurus, and in particular @O2Adnan , have been answering customers`s questions not only on the Guru board but also on other boards on the Community, which, I am sure has been most welcomed.

This should not, however, in my opinion, detract from the comment I made with regards to the comment made by @MI5 [supported by myself and @Cleoriff ] with regards to the need for support from customer services as this is the largest number of enquiries, concerns and questions require answers from them.   

[Martin-O2]

Thanks for your detailed reply @Mi-Amigo! I've tried to address all your points below but if I've missed anything please let me know. 

With the lockdown measures that have been put in place customer services are operating at a reduced capacity. This has driven a lot more traffic to the community and we’re all feeling the impact of this. Due to reduced staff numbers along with the impracticalities of providing account query help on the community platform, this is not something that we will be introducing.

Support on the community will continue to be limited to non-account queries as before. For those with an account query, they will have to contact customer services. We fully appreciate that the lines are much busier than usual but this is an unprecedented situation and we’re adapting as best we can. 

We’ve introduced the support staff to help with the increased volumes of queries on the community. They have largely come from a retail background and it will take a little time for them to settle into providing support on the community.

We’re asking for some patience while they get the hang of how things work around here. If you see anything that’s not right or you don’t think is working then please raise it with myself or Marjo and we can work with the new support staff to get things on the right track. 

As they have come from a retail background working day shifts, most having families and with this being turned around so quickly they will be covering usual working hours so extra cover during the evenings and weekends is something we’ll explore further but won’t be happening right away. 

The help and support that our regulars provide is amazing and greatly appreciated and we know that you all dedicate a lot of your spare time to help out other customers on the community. This is why we don’t want you to feel stressed by the increased volumes and as mentioned in my previous post we don’t expect anything more from you than what you’ve always done.

Your health and wellbeing is far more important than forum questions. If things are left unanswered for longer periods or if there are things that you just can’t help with, that's fine, and we're not expecting you to cover everything. And remember you can also direct customers to the new Guru board if needed. 

[Bambino]

I'm sure no one has noticed because of the recent craziness with the increase of posts, and in the bigger picture it's relatively insignificant, but today marks my tenth year as a member of this community. I think @jonsie is the only regularly active member who has been here longer.

Things were very different when I joined ten years ago. We had many more regular contributors, and people became part of the community because they wanted to help, not because they were getting rewarded monetarily for it. I think that's one of the worst things to have ever happened here. 

Sadly, these days it's become a competition, as to who can post the answer the fastest. I noticed the other day that a query was answered the same minute it was posted. Obviously a record that can never be beaten. Something to be extremely proud of. Not.

We aren't here to to see who has the fastest finger, or to contradict or criticise if someone makes a mistake answering a query. We're not here to see that our name is the only one appearing down the entire page of replies. I joined this community out of a sense of wanting to help if I could, without any other motive in mind. I've seen that erode over the years. Some of what I see at times is very petty, and that makes me sad.

Okay. Ten year rant over. Back to reality.

[jonsie]

Happy anniversary @Bambino 

Some great points and that has been my same opinion over the years.

There is absolutely nothing in your post that I don't fully agree with.

[gmarkj]

Happy anniversary @Bambino.
Hope you are keeping well in this rather different March madness...

[Anonymous]

oooOOOoooo get you @Bambino .. how the hell have you lasted that long without a rant?