http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/ E-Junkie Forum RSS en-us Copyright 2013, 19.5 Degrees. All rights reserved. webmaster@e-junkie.com webmaster@e-junkie.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:44:50 GMT Sat, 25 May 2013 20:51:00 GMT 681 E-JUNKIE 5 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/ http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/logo.gif 290 104 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:44:50 GMT
Just my 2 cents worth ;-)]]> E-junkie Discussions; Lohinc http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:13:20 GMT
My two cents on the topic is: If you want advanced support, pay for it. It is as simple as this. Nobody can offer outstanding customer service without a way to refinance it.

E-Junkie.com has a very efficient support staff. I have never been left alone with a problem here, they always replied within a short time frame and came up with some kind of workable solution. That is what counts. Regardless of the ways to contact the service. By maintaining this regime, they probably have more time for in depth analysis of customer problems, because more people are able to concentrate on a topic without being interrupted by phone calls.

Of course there are problems that can be explained easier in a phone call. But those are usually very complex scenarios, in contrast to the typical e-junkie customer. If I was running such a complex web shop, then e-junkie would be the wrong system. I would switch to an integrated e-commerce solution like Magento or Intershop. Those who really want such a service should pay for a service level agreement or hire an external high-tech consultancy.

Also, the support has always been very clear where the technical limits of the system are. They do not give false promises to please customers. I have often seen replies like, "that is not possible" or "we suggest to the idea to the developers" or "but we may have a workaround".... At least it is very honest.

PS: I switched from payloadz.com to e-junkie.com because they did not reply in time to my problems and they did not come up with a workable solution for a number of problems. Also the prices of this service are really fair and the solution is really self explaining.]]> E-junkie Discussions; Catgirl http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:10:02 GMT
I see this line of reason more and more with business's and honestly it simply does not add up. If I'm having a misunderstanding of something, I can general resolve it on the phone far faster than typing back and forth with someone and waiting for hours in between. If a company can't answer a question of the phone as well as they can with email, they need to get more efficient on the phone.

I think part of the reason email support is less expensive is because often people ignore a problem because it's a hassle to get help. email is so much less personal and clear to understand that many just avoid it.

I HATE having to email your guys for support because while I might find a solution to the problem, it will be cold and impersonal, plus if I don't understand it will require the more of the same. It's slow, annoying and inefficient waiting hours for a response to a simple question. When phone was available I may have called once every few months for simple question that took two to five minutes. That can't be much more expensive than someone typing emails.

The bottom line is that in this world if poor service, the companies that really want to stand out offer phone support. It's one of the biggest ways of showing your customers you care and even if they don't use it, it makes them feel good about you.

email tech support can be useful for VERY simple things, but in many ways it's the worst thing to happen to service I've ever seen. It's generally a pathetic excuse for customer service.

Finally, YES I would pay more to get proper service. Perhaps even double, not I don't think that would be necessary. Nobody can't truly make up for poor service with price because a dissatisfied customer is always a fail.

I've spoke my peace though. Maybe I'm alone in this old fashioned thinking. Perhaps others will chime in on it.

Thanks for the response... Gav]]> E-junkie Discussions; gavseim http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:25:12 GMT
Put it this way: Would you be willing to pay twice as much for your E-junkie service, if that meant being able to talk to someone at E-junkie on the phone? How about three times as much? Ten times? How about our other 7000+ merchants; do you suppose all of them would be willing to pay that much, even those who would never want or need to call?

It appears you would have joined way back when E-junkie was still largely a "one man band", so the "tech support guy" you may have spoken with then probably would have been E-junkie's Founder and now Lead Developer. One might say that support provided directly by the same guy who actually programmed the service is about as good as one can get, but that level of support simply can't be sustained if E-junkie is to grow to a self-sufficient scale. Eventually, E-junkie started growing so fast that he wound up spending his every waking hour on support, leaving no time to improve the actual service itself, so he hired me and then other support staff to help him meet those demands.

We briefly tried offering live phone support about a year and a half ago and very quickly found that, not only could most problems not be solved effectively over the phone due to the highly technical nature of our service (e.g., because of the need to provide text-based information such as HTML code examples, links to help pages, step-by-step instructions, etc.), but also the amount of time required to communicate by phone took at least double or triple the time to handle the very same issue via email (e.g., it took a 30+ minute phone call to impart the same information as 10-15 minutes writing an email). We were already each spending 8 hours a day, every day, continuously writing support emails as things stood already, so it's not as if we were sitting around with spare time and nothing to do but take phone calls; indeed, quite the contrary. From this experiment, we realized there's a tradeoff involved between pricing and support.

In order to provide live phone support well and routinely for everyone, we would need to at least double or triple our current staff, so we'd need to raise all of our prices considerably to cover the additional salaries (not to mention additional equipment, office furniture, phone bills, leasing a larger office, etc.). Such a drastic price increase would drive away many-to-most of our existing clientele (most of whom are subscribed within our lowest half-dozen or so plan tiers), meaning the remaining clients would need to pay even more to make up that lost revenue, so you can see how this path becomes a downward spiral. Charging separately for phone support on an "a la carte" basis is not an option, either, as the recent bad PR and mass-exodus from a competitor who started that policy amply demonstrates.

It's not possible to be everything to everybody, so there are some dilemmas where we have to decide who and what we really are, pick a side accordingly and stick with it, despite what we may have to give up from the path not taken. We can either be an affordable service primarily for do-it-yourselfers with adequate text-based email/forum support (like we have now), or we could try to reorient ourselves as an exorbitant "boutique service" for cost-no-object clients which would allow us to offer phone-based live support that cannot really solve actual problems any more effectively, making that an expensive but ultimately empty courtesy.

Since we have already thus far specialized in providing services to independent and small businesses with modest budgets, rather than big corporations and other clients with deep pockets, we have opted to remain affordable first and foremost, to help "empower the little guys" going into business for themselves. For the few clients who actually require more live, personal assistance than we can provide within our target price points, we can refer them to a third-party service like EasyE-junkie.com where the cost to provide that service is borne directly by the clients who actually require and use it.]]> E-junkie Discussions; E-junkieGuru http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/3869/pg/0#post12322 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:20:11 GMT
When I started however they had a phone support line and would help you if things came up. Now that seems to have been done away with it and all thats left is email support (which is not bad, but is lacking).

Any company who refuses to talk to their customers on the phone has lost track in their service. email is often OK, but people need a phone line they can call when they need it. Money is usually the excuse, but "money" is never an excuse for giving poor service.

I'm not leaving at this point because overall EJ is great, but if service continues to decline I just didn't know. Heck charge more if you need to, but don't save a buck at the expense of your customers.

Not trying to be nasty, just wanted to voice my honest thoughts. Anyone else feeling this? So tired of copouts from companies who won't take the time to sit down and help customers. What ever happened to good old fashioned service.

Gav]]> E-junkie Discussions; gavseim