Orcon helpdesk

[Ian Batterbee]

Well, telecom managed to sort out their end this month - the jsu page
now correctly states I'm on the surf plan.

Unfortunately, I'm still limited to 128kbps. I reset dsl (and then ppp
for the hell of it) and that made no difference.

Rang the jetstream helpdesk, who informed me that they were the XTRA
jetstream helpdesk and couldn't help me because I wasn't an xtra
customer (first time I've heard that from them). He did confirm that
everything said 256kbps surf at his end.

So rang orcon... been on hold to them for the last 40 minutes... every
20 seconds it tells me that they will be with me in <pause> ONE <pause>
minute... someone really needs to fix their IVR.

Orcon's service is really quite bad... they never reply to emails, they
have a (so far) 40 minute plus wait time on their helpdesk, and their
IVR always says the wait time is one minute.

Has anyone here had any GOOD experience from Orcon's helpdesk ?

[John Morch]

Transferred Surf to them in September and upgarded to UBS 29th October.
So far everything including the help desk has been excellent.
Sometimes the help desk queue is a little long (15 minutes) but i have
always rung back at a different time and got in with in 5 minutes.

John

_________________________________________________________________
Listen to music online with the Xtra Broadband Channel
http://xtra.co.nz/broadband

[Ian Batterbee]

Well, in the end, I was on hold for 1 hour 26 minutes, spoke to the
person there for about 3 minutes and he called telecom on my behalf
(because he's allowed to) and I now have a telecom fault (sorry 'service
request') number.

So despite the almost 1.5 hours of being on hold, things are possibly
progressing now.

Post by John Morch
Transferred Surf to them in September and upgarded to UBS 29th October.
So far everything including the help desk has been excellent.
Sometimes the help desk queue is a little long (15 minutes) but i have
always rung back at a different time and got in with in 5 minutes.
John
_________________________________________________________________
Listen to music online with the Xtra Broadband Channel
http://xtra.co.nz/broadband

[GB]

When I have got through to Orcon, they have been very helpful. I joined
them recently from ParadiseNet who overcharge.

The estimated wait time is not very useful. It's a gimmick that all call
centres should avoid like the plague.

Post by Ian Batterbee
Well, in the end, I was on hold for 1 hour 26 minutes, spoke to the
person there for about 3 minutes and he called telecom on my behalf
(because he's allowed to) and I now have a telecom fault (sorry
'service request') number.
So despite the almost 1.5 hours of being on hold, things are possibly
progressing now.

Post by John Morch
Transferred Surf to them in September and upgarded to UBS 29th October.
So far everything including the help desk has been excellent.
Sometimes the help desk queue is a little long (15 minutes) but i
have always rung back at a different time and got in with in 5 minutes.
John
_________________________________________________________________
Listen to music online with the Xtra Broadband Channel
http://xtra.co.nz/broadband

[Matt Riddell]

Post by GB
When I have got through to Orcon, they have been very helpful. I joined
them recently from ParadiseNet who overcharge.
The estimated wait time is not very useful. It's a gimmick that all call
centres should avoid like the plague.

I beg to differ. Using Asterisk (www.asterisk.org - an open source
Linux based PABX), the estimated wait time can be calculated in multiple
ways. It is also updated in real-time according to the number of people
in the queue and the average time it is currently taking for a call to
complete.

Unfortunately the E1 interfaces are not yet telepermitted in New
Zealand, but Telstra will allow you to connect via them.

When set up correctly, estimated wait time should be accurate to less
than a minute (assuming you have a few call centre staff). The cool
thing about Asterisk is that you can have people working from home and
logging in over IP to receive help desk calls. This allows a whole new
sector of people to join the workforce. It also means that you can get
people to log in when you have extreme demand to lower the queue times
(which it looks like Orcon could do with at the moment!).

Unfortunately most of the ISPs in New Zealand use crappy proprietary
closed source call management systems, so you're unlikely to see these
features as of yet.

We have a few small call centres set up with Asterisk and they blow your
standard ISPs system out of the water!

So, yes Orcon's system is broken, yes most "estimated wait times" on NZ
ISPs are crap, but that's not the way it has to be.
--
Cheers,

Matt Riddell
_______________________________________________

http://www.sineapps.com/news.php (Daily Asterisk News - html)
http://www.sineapps.com/rssfeed.php (Daily Asterisk News - rss)

[Mark Thompson]

Post by Matt Riddell
I beg to differ. Using Asterisk (www.asterisk.org - an open source
Linux based PABX), the estimated wait time can be calculated in multiple
ways. It is also updated in real-time according to the number of people
in the queue and the average time it is currently taking for a call to
complete.
Unfortunately the E1 interfaces are not yet telepermitted in New
Zealand, but Telstra will allow you to connect via them.
When set up correctly, estimated wait time should be accurate to less
than a minute (assuming you have a few call centre staff). The cool
thing about Asterisk is that you can have people working from home and
logging in over IP to receive help desk calls. This allows a whole new
sector of people to join the workforce. It also means that you can get
people to log in when you have extreme demand to lower the queue times
(which it looks like Orcon could do with at the moment!).
Unfortunately most of the ISPs in New Zealand use crappy proprietary
closed source call management systems, so you're unlikely to see these
features as of yet.
We have a few small call centres set up with Asterisk and they blow your
standard ISPs system out of the water!
So, yes Orcon's system is broken, yes most "estimated wait times" on NZ
ISPs are crap, but that's not the way it has to be.

I hate to diverse even further off topic, but you will find alot of
contact centers that have a proper solution [1] don't actually give
estimated wait times, because in the case where there are problems
(unknown factors) it causes the customer to get upset, and can also
increase the number of abandoned calls.

[1] Where the solution is a proper skill based routing system.

[Mark Foster]

Post by Mark Thompson
I hate to diverse even further off topic, but you will find alot of
contact centers that have a proper solution [1] don't actually give
estimated wait times, because in the case where there are problems
(unknown factors) it causes the customer to get upset, and can also
increase the number of abandoned calls.
[1] Where the solution is a proper skill based routing system.

The 'Proper Solution' could be as simple as adequately estimating expected
call volume and providing staff to suit.

1hr26mins is rediculous. Most callcentres I know of use some variation of
the 80/20 or 90/10 or 70/20 rule - thats % of calls answered within given
number of seconds.

Hell even answering the phone with 'I'll get an agent to call you back as
soon as possible' is better than expecting people to wait on hold more
than 4 or 5 minutes...

IMHO only of course.
Mark.

[LEE Tet Yoon]

Well, telecom managed to sort out their end this month - the jsu page now correctly states I'm on the surf plan.
Unfortunately, I'm still limited to 128kbps. I reset dsl (and then ppp for the hell of it) and that made no difference.
Rang the jetstream helpdesk, who informed me that they were the XTRA jetstream helpdesk and couldn't help me because I wasn't an xtra customer (first time I've heard that from them). He did confirm that everything said 256kbps surf at his end.
So rang orcon... been on hold to them for the last 40 minutes... every 20 seconds it tells me that they will be with me in <pause> ONE <pause> minute... someone really needs to fix their IVR.
Orcon's service is really quite bad... they never reply to emails, they have a (so far) 40 minute plus wait time on their helpdesk, and their IVR always says the wait time is one minute.
Has anyone here had any GOOD experience from Orcon's helpdesk ?

This is a reply to this and most of the other replies

I'm currently on Orcon and I've used the helpdesk once (well twice but they were quite close to each other). It was in the late evening and my wait time was about 3 minutes if I recall. They were helpful and able to deal with my problem satisfactorily. It def seemed better then the Telecom one at the time (At least I knew I was on hold).

While I would agree the current wait times are unacceptable, if your only experience with their helpdesk is post UBS, you might want to give them a chance. Remember that at the current time, a large number of people are being moved from Jetstream to Bitstream and that there appears to be many teething problem, most of them seem to be Telecom's fault. You might argue Orcon should have predicted this and prepared for it but I'm personally not quite sure how they could have done do so. Is it really possible to increase the number of call centre staff three fold or however many more people is needed to cope with the added volume for only a month or two when it is needed? Bearing in mind these staff would need to be able (and therefore trained) to deal with these problems and other problems as well, when I assume even the new staff are still learning how to deal with new Bitstream problems.

I have no idea how call centres are managed but it would sound to me there isn't any real easy solution to these problems. If there were not so many teething problems, things might not be so bad, but let's not go there...

Telecom's consumer helpdesk may also be getting an increased volume from Orcon and other UBS customers trying to get help but I would suspect it's not as large as the increase for Orcon and most calls are probably also a lot shorter then Orcons since they are quickly unloaded to the ISPs. Also, I would assume, Telecom has a lot more slack given the large number of customers they have (not just Jetstream either).