Last January 16th, Funio took over the domain management systems, hosting infrastructures and customer service. Today, this transition which is not always very easy, is ongoing. We have faced many challenges in the last month, but our team has dedicated itself to the task and has been able to catch up with the accumulated lateness that was due to a high volume of requests. We see today that our efforts have borne fruit.
Here is the 3rd article out of 3 that includes a Post-mortem of the last month’s activities, as well as a descriptive of certain projects on which we will continue to work on in the next few weeks. Your comments are appreciated and will help us take the right decisions.
Customer Service
1. Post-mortem on the level of support
If you have tried to contact us in the last few weeks, it is possible that you have met abnormal delays and communication difficulties. With a launch this important, we knew that the number of requests would be higher. New systems are always cause for request augmentation. In that direction, the number of customer service staff has doubled between December and today. Regardless of the higher volume of personnel and the countless overtime (and some sleepless nights), the week where we initiated the launch of our new systems resulted in an increase of thousands of requests within 24 hours, and these thousand requests continued incoming in the following 2 weeks.
This situation translated itself into an accumulation of the requests and an important backlog (of several days) in the treatment of certain types of email requests, as well as tremendous waiting periods over the phone and LiveChat. This lead to a point where sometimes the modes of communication were inaccessible. A common effort contributed to control the impressive volume of requests and we are conscious that in certain cases quantity was priviledged over quality in certain responses.
At the moment we are writing these lines, we are confident that the accumulated backlog in the last weeks will be cleared in the next 2 weeks and that we will be able to offer an adequate level of support. In the meantime it is posible that, at certain moments of the day, the delays in reaching us for “live” support (telephone and chat) might be more elevated than our usual standards, but multiple measures have been put into place to attenuate impacts.
2. Projects in increasing the level of support
The above mentioned situations have demonstrated certain gaps and made us realize the improvements to undertake in order to correct the situation.
First, our customers have always been requesting more control. The vast majority of our customers want to be able to resolve their issues on their own. In that direction, we will continue to develop our Knowledge Base that allows our customers an immediate response to their questions without waiting for anyone. It consists of an essential tool that we will continue to evolve.
Then, it is essential that we remain present 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we will not cease to be. However, we realize that the vast majority of demands transmitted to us by phone or chat that require an immediate intervention reach us during normal business hours, between 8am and 7pm, Monday to Friday. It is then during those hours that we need to be present and quickly so. We have therefore modified our teams’ schedules to concentrate our efforts during this time frame. Consequently, it will always be possible to reach our team 24/7 by email, but live support services (phone and chat) will be restricted to 8am to 7pm, Monday to Friday. In this manner we will be able to concentrate the efforts of our support team at the time where our customers need it the most. We evaluate that this new way of operating will allow us to greatly reduce delays in response.
Furthermore, as aforementioned, our customers want more control over their requests. As we mentioned and explained in our previous articles, many projects are underway to improve our management infrastructures and automate many processes frequently used that do not require human intervention. These will greatly reduce, once again, response times.
In a nutshell, everyday we notice a constant improvement at every level: our management systems, infrastructures and customer service. The measures put into place as well as the projects to come are for us the key that will allow the re-establishment of an efficient service, in the same way that we have in the last few weeks and those to come.
We have the firm intention to pursue our improvements that has allowed us to be a leader in our field for the past 15 years. Once more, we invite you to submit your comments that are all read and considered in the establishment of our future projects.
We hope that these explanations will be useful to you, and that they will allow a continuous reinforcement of the trust we have built for many years.
Thank you.
The Funio Team
