Support response progress bar indicator required

[archprime]

It would be great if once a support ticket was lodged, that there be some sort of ongoing feedback to users to indicate how many more days waiting time to expect before a response is likely - perhaps generated by keeping a running count of average response times.

As a paid subscriber, I lodged a ticket 5 days ago, heard back the next day that issue would be escalated and should be 'sorted shortly', but then not a peep since ... subsequent queries all seemingly ignored.

Some sort of feedback to put such delays in context might help align user expectations with what you can actually do.

One becomes accustomed to nearly instant messaging response times in most other contexts, so a delay of days here can seem like some kind of snub and raise tempers unnecessarily - As a user, one feels that the one's issue is being treated as of little or no concern by the support people. If instead of sending messages into an apparent void and getting no response, some sort of wait time indicator was fed back to the user, at least the user can have some confidence he is not being been forgotten or deliberately ignored (though perhaps should not be holding his breath!)

 

[Skizzerz]

Free Hosting support is run entirely by volunteers, meaning that we answer tickets in our free time. Additionally, certain tickets (especially those related to prime/illuminated upgrades) can only be handled by a couple of people, who are not always online. As such, it would be impossible to give an accurate measure of how long a response will take, as it varies by ticket content. Most of our volunteers work from the front of the queue (meaning they work on the oldest tickets first), so if one replies to a ticket or keeps "bumping" it, they are in effect sending themselves to the back of the line each time, which will further increase response time.

We do not deliberately ignore any tickets, and we have systems in place that ensure that tickets that may have slipped through the cracks get looked at. In general, expect a couple of days for a reply on a ticket, but it may be more or less depending on the content as stated above.