10 September 2013

IVR Experts Anveo Deep Six Inbound Telephone Support

With smaller firms, sometimes the inbound call routing is clearly due to programming errors in the phone system. Perhaps the phone directory has not been updated when employees arrive or depart. That is understandable. But when an IP telephony provider that advertises that one can "Mashup your phones, voicemail, instant messages and the web using Voice 2.0 Visual Call Flow technology," an expectation is created for a smooth customer experience.

After waiting for five days for Anveo to respond to a request to upgrade the service on one of my VOIP lines, I tried their "click to call" feature. Two things happened -- one minor, one less so. First, it would not connect to my own Anveo number, so I had to resort to a Verizon number for the call back. Second, and this is the reason for this post, the IVR simply tells you to submit a ticket online, and "Goodbye."

Open for selling. Closed for support. 

Truly, the online-only model for support would be fine if the desired service upgrade could be accomplished online. Most users of Anveo's service are  moderately tech-savvy and would prefer self-service. But here email does not appear to be monitored; there is not even an acknowledgement of receipt -- e.g., "We received your request for help and will try to get back to you in a month or two." In addition, the Live Chat on the site is rarely manned -- see screenshot. I did reach a live person once on 30 August.

When a user's task cannot be accomplished online, email is unanswered, live chat is a tease, and the clues to resolving a problem if present at all are inadvertently buried on the web site -- then someone must be there to help out.

2013-09-18 Update: At least part of the issue is that the chat feature is not integrated with the rest of the support infrastructure. If the Support | Ticket subsystem is used instead, at the tickets are seen by an agent in a reasonable amount of time.


2 comments:

  1. You ever get a resolution to your issue? I'm having the same problem now. They're just ignoring me.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, but I decided to upgrade to a business account, which helped. One you get in their ticketing system with an identifiable ticket #, it reaches a person.

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