What does it take to get a timely response from OR?

For having such a great platform, OR really fails in their customer support.  No chat feature and multi-day response time.  I sent a request a few days ago with an issue i was having and still haven't gotten a response.

Anyone else having these issues?  Any ideas on how to get a quicker response from OR?  It's hard to understand why so many companies have a chat feature but OR doesn't see that as a priority.

OwnerRez has limited support on the weekends, so, it is normal for tickets sent on Friday or late Thursday to be in queue until sometime Monday or Tuesday.

While we are looking into adding chat support, the real issue is a shortage of support representatives - which is why we are in the process of hiring more, though it will naturally take a bit to get them fully trained and up to speed.

Our immediate goal is to reliably respond to all ticket requests within 1 business day.  At the moment, we're hovering around that - it's achieved more often than not, but not consistently.  Once that goal is accomplished, we will work to further reduce response time.  But even more important is to maintain the quality of support - it's not acceptable to us to "just respond" without having a substantive, useful answer, which in turn requires experienced trained staff.

Also having the same issue. I think I've sent in a couple tickets and it's been a few weeks with no reply. Getting a response that it's being worked on would be great or even a place to log in and see your open tickets would be beneficial.

Any plans for that Ken?

There is no normal situation where you should go weeks with no reply at all to a ticket.

But, looking at your account, I do see that happened to you... your message was identified as spam, which is why nobody ever saw it.  :-/  I've fished it out of that bucket and sent it to the right place.  Sorry for the delay!

As far as a portal to see your ticket history, that is a possibility for the future, but we don't have any timeframe in particular.

Weird but thanks for digging that up. 

I wrote a similar complaint recently.  It's far from ideal, but I was encouraged to see that OwnerRez was hiring help-desk personnel.  

Personally I think they might be missing a trick because in an area as fast-moving, complex, and stuffed with cash as this industry is, the company that can be trusted to guide people through it all is going to become a dominant player. Companies generally need to stop looking at customer service as a cost, and more as ongoing customer retention marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing for future customers.

But I digress.  As OwnerRez deals with their scaling problems, I've found that the best way to get assistance with a pressing issue is to use these forums, and follow up with the help desk if it's an issue specific to my account.

If you do send a message into the help desk by email, you will get a response saying that they got it. If you *don't* get that response, maybe that's a clue that your message went to spam. I always look for the confirmation before settling in to wait for a few days.

As a side note, I also read the forums and contribute when I can help.  If everyone did this it would alleviate some pressure on the help desk staff.

Thanks for the response. These are good tips!

Thanks for your response.  It sounds like from other responses that timely communication is an issue. This may need to be prioritized over further development until it's running smoothly or you may begin to lose competitive advantage.

the company that can be trusted to guide people through it all is going to become a dominant player.

Well, that's the trick for sure.  If you examine our ratings and evaluations as I do, there's a clear pattern - OwnerRez is known as having the best quality support in the industry, but certainly not the fastest.  What we are working to do is to increase the speed without compromising the quality, which is why we can't "just hire" people - we need to carefully select the very best, and then train thoroughly.

Those who have been with OwnerRez for any length of time can testify that the support team has grown enormously over the past few years, and this will continue as we seek to provide the very best possible service.  I can assure you that OwnerRez leadership does not view support as an expense in the sense you mean - we know full well that improving the areas where it's needed while not compromising what we do well, is absolutely essential to our continued success.

Good to hear, good to know. So far I'm happy I just get frustrated and stuck from time to time.

We do as well, Ken is it possible to book a walkthrough meeting with you? You are always so good at answering our questions, and explaining them in a way we understand. Thank you!

We do as well, Ken is it possible to book a walkthrough meeting with you? You are always so good at answering our questions, and explaining them in a way we understand. Thank you!

I have contacted you via your recent support ticket.

Hi, I just sent in a support request and I did not get an autoresponse saying that the request had been received.  Should I assume that the request was not received and that I should send it again (I sent it by email to help@ownerrez.com). 

Thanks.

Hi, I just sent in a support request and I did not get an autoresponse saying that the request had been received.  Should I assume that the request was not received and that I should send it again (I sent it by email to help@ownerrez.com). 

Thanks.

I see no tickets from you within the last week, so, as happens sometimes with email, it may have gotten delayed or lost.  It might still show up after a bit, but if not, yeah, you should resubmit.

Will do, thanks.

FYI I just got the autoresponse.  I sent the query in at 7:40am yesterday, and got the autoresponse at 13:10pm today.  That's a very long time for an autoresponse! More details if you're interested.

We did have some problems with the email server yesterday, so that may have delayed some emails.