Upcoming Free Support Changes

[Corey]

Hi everyone!

I'm going to give a quick overview on the changes that will be made to free hosting support in the near future.

All free hosting support requests will be routed to the community support forums, after a set period of time the user that opened the request will be able to escalate it to a private support ticket with staff. This will help us become more efficient at responding to free hosting support requests. A lot of our tickets could be answered by a quick search around the forums or website, by forcing these requests into the community before it gets to us we hope to cut down on the amount of tickets we get thus reducing the time it takes to respond. We will also be creating a new usergroup for people that consistently help out other members, this group will earn a set amount of credits per thread they reply to in the community help forum.

Please let me know your thoughts on this new system

 

[Twinkie]

It is a good system, aggravating for the users who know when to ask for help and will now have to wait, but definitely the best way for X10 to operate.

What about requests that only staff can handle like unsuspension requests, upgrades, internal server errors? I believe that these 'helpers' should be able to instantly escalate other people's support requests to cut down on unessesary wait time. This can be done either as you suggested, or by introducing a new group of moderators called Community Support.

 

[Livewire]

Oddly enough Twinkie just hit on the same things I thought about when I read the newsletter in my email; there's some things that community support won't be able to handle PERIOD, and it's not always right to make the user wait for it.

That being said the change itself is warranted in any case, even if those cases will still have to wait for the time to expire, purely because the staff are answering things presumably along the lines of "what are the x10 nameservers?" which have indeed been answered dozens of times in the past.


If it makes the staffs lives easier by even half, by all means. But in an ideal world there should be a way to either have a community support member bump or force the thread into support ticket, or something similar.

Course that'd have to be limited to only certain users, otherwise everyone'd be forcing their threads into support tickets

 

[Twinkie]

Also users cannot bump their own threads, to make sure all topics are reviewed.

 

[eN0ch]

Sounds pretty sensible. (Also endorse Twinkie & Livewire's comments.)

 

[zen-r]

It sounds like an unfortunate but necessary change, & I agree with the comments of previous members here.

I would need to await further info on this new user-group (how is it formed/chosen? what powers does it have? how do you avoid its members just spamming for credits? etc) before being able to form an opinion or give any suggestions for improvements - though it sounds workable in principle. Life will also be made a lot easier for everyone as & when the new Knowledge Base gets completed, & out of date FAQs & Tutorials get updated, removed or at least labelled as being out of date (see post ; http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/99199-knowledge-base-items-3.html#post558267)

...A lot of our tickets could be answered by a quick search around the forums or website, .....

Yes, tell me about it! This happens all the time.

Only yesterday I replied to someone asking about their account creation time, only to find that someone posted a nearly identical question again 10 minutes later. And members get most indignant if, rather than answer the question for the umpteenth time, you instead ask them to check the forums or use Search!

I don't know what method you plan to use to re-route all free-hosting support requests to the community support forums, but please make sure that it involves the member getting a very clear message (maybe even a pop-up) to tell them that they must look in the Knowledge Base, forums or use Search before posting. Otherwise, your new user-group is likely to become as frustrated with the time-wasters as your team of Support staff may have already become!

 

[garrettroyce]

Sounds good!

If I could suggest one thing, I think it would be helpful if anyone can upgrade the status of the thread. For example, a new member has an issue that definitely needs admin status help, an experienced member can upgrade the status of the ticket instead of saying every single time this happens "sorry, can't help you. upgrade your status" Or maybe this could serve as another form of "ticket spam" protection if only another member can bump up the status. Then, you can't create a ticket and upgrade the status right away, even if it's a basic question.

 

[freenetter]

Agree with livewire, twinkie and garretroyce's idea. Great idea though Corey - about time too, I feel for you guys going nuts answering repeat questions

 

[zen-r]

Sounds good!

If I could suggest one thing, I think it would be helpful if anyone can upgrade the status of the thread. For example, a new member has an issue that definitely needs admin status help, an experienced member can upgrade the status of the ticket instead of saying every single time this happens "sorry, can't help you. upgrade your status" Or maybe this could serve as another form of "ticket spam" protection if only another member can bump up the status. Then, you can't create a ticket and upgrade the status right away, even if it's a basic question.

Agreed, as it builds on the ideas suggested by people earlier in this thread.

I think it depends on the size of this new user-group which was proposed by Corey. If it is a large group & they are likely to quickly read all new posts, & if they have the power to "escalate" support requests, then that is probably all that is needed.

If, however, they are slow to find new posts, then perhaps a better method would be needed. I think garrettroyce's idea is good, to allow another member, who has to be a different member to the person with the problem, to escalate the request.

I would also add to that the condition that (if possible) the more experienced members could automatically have those powers, & not the inexperienced.

Thus, when someone requests help, they first get notified that they must look in the KB & search the forums. Then if they still need help, they must first post in Community Support. Hopefully their question gets answered. If it can't be, any other member with a join-date & post-count greater than a pre-determined level will be able to escalate the problem to full Support Ticket status.

If within a set period of time, no-one replies or the original poster isn't satisfied with the answers, they can then open their own Support ticket. If they are then determined to have opened the ticket "frivolously" they could get a warning, infraction, ban.

I can also see certain situations where people may not want to post their problem publicly. So will they still have to wait for the set time to elapse, or can they be given another fast-route to Support? Perhaps they can PM one of these new user-groups or staff, with them getting a similar warning, infraction or ban if they do this frivolously?

 

[zapzack]

I can guess some of the support tickets the X10 Staff get and I'm sure a lot of them could be solved by the community. For the new ticket system, I think the new user group is a good idea.

 

[farscapeone]

Sounds reasonable to me. I mean x10 now have more then 270,000 accounts (based on forum members) and that's too much for support to deal with, I think.

I think that giving more credits to people who reply to community support is a great way to make it work.

 

[aleks555]

And as will search for answers to the questions users not speaking in English, you present as to use search on a forum by means of the compiler. Such users will receive only preventions{warnings} and any help. Can in that case it is necessary to think of the organization of a branch of a forum for not speaking on English?

 

[mwigen]

I am using free hosting and I have not had to ask for support too often once I finally got everything working well, but I was very needy at first. I am not terribly tecchie, so I really relied on support in the beginning, but even then I wouldn't have minded the proposed structure of getting support. You guys do a GREAT job for a free hosting site... well, actually it is great for any hosting site!

Thanks for your product and your support!!

 

[garrettroyce]

Maybe the ability to elevate ticket status to official admin support would be granted after a certain rep? This way, experienced members would have proved their ability to be helpful and their knowledge of X10. This is doubly protective because only well reputed members can give reputation. Of course, the admins will be keeping a watchful eye over this special section to monitor abusers as well as our most excellent team of helpful members.

 

[eN0ch]

Maybe the ability to elevate ticket status to official admin support would be granted after a certain rep?

Yes - that taps a line I've been thinking on. I was wondering along the lines of allowing users who've passed a certain threshold in number of posts to the forum and/or have a certain minimum reputation, to open official tickets straight up.

Or something such ...

 

[Corey]

Great ideas guys... we were thinking to make an application for the group that is allowed to earn credits. As suggested I'll be sure to add in the ability for members of this group to bypass the timer and escalate a user's ticket to staff.

If you look at the support tickets about 90% of them think their issue is "critical" so something is definitely needed to filter which issues are actually considered critical .

-Corey

 

[kkenny]

Great ideas guys... we were thinking to make an application for the group that is allowed to earn credits. As suggested I'll be sure to add in the ability for members of this group to bypass the timer and escalate a user's ticket to staff.

If you look at the support tickets about 90% of them think their issue is "critical" so something is definitely needed to filter which issues are actually considered critical .

-Corey

Would the group have to be sorta the process to get hired into x10? Like fill out an app and the staff manager approves it, or will it be open to everyone.
I prefer the application method, and if it is an application method to get into a Helper group that helps out low level community problems, I'd be very interested in rejoining and helping out X10.

 

[Twinkie]

I think that everyone should be able to help, and you have to be an elder/sophmore to escalate someones issues to ticket support. I don't think it is worth the stress of maintaining a new user group, which would have to be monitored for spammy posts. You can simply make the free hosting section and extra points forum like crossfire.

 

[zapzack]

Does Bob Barker have something to do with this project by any chance?

 

[lostcommander]

members get most indignant if, rather than answer the question for the umpteenth time, you instead ask them to check the forums or use Search!

Yeah, the Internet allows you to use it even if you failed to even look for the etiquette rules. Also, some people seem to just really fail at searching.

Overall, this sounds like a good change and the user-group and ticket/problem escalation sound like good ideas. Internet confusion triage!