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Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

SeanD — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 15:32:42 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We would like your help! As the community manager, I am part of the Get help team in our Digital department. We want to share our plans for the upcoming months - and get your questions and feedback to help us keep the focus on the right things.

We’ve included a quick summary of what each team do, as well as the teams, focus areas for the time up until the end of March.

LiamD

Our team is headed up by @LiamD and is split into three areas, all tackling different parts of our plan. I’ve explained these below, and also tagged the people who co-ordinate these areas, please mention them if you have questions about the activities or why we’ve decided these are important things to focus on.

@LiamD has a strong interest in your thoughts and feedback about our plans. Feel free to ask him questions too.

Community username @Andy-B

Products

The Help team look after the core information, online experience and functionality that you use on our help website to get set up, to manage your products or services, or to fix things when something goes wrong. They also look after how live chat works and how we’re starting to use bots. Here’s what they are focussed on at the moment:

Plans

Chat authentication – Changing the way it works so that when you use chat and are already logged into your account, we don’t ask you to identify yourself again when you get through to a chat advisor, saving time and frustration
Simplifying Contact us – We want you to simply be able to see the different ways you can talk to us and let you do it, not try and make it complicated to talk to us
Content into Journeys – we have lots of pages of help information and frequently asked questions, so it can be hard to find what you’re looking for. We’re moving our most needed content into step-by-step guides which will walk you through the help you need in a structured way, and help us see where more or different help is required
Rebuild the BT Service status checker- to make it easier to find information on any outages in your area
Chat & contact strategy – creating a clear plan for how we use live chat on our website, or when it might be better to recommend other options instead – eg to call us or visit a store
Bots - making more use of bot ‘helpers’ around the site to help with simple tasks

Community username @Anonymous

Product

This team help manage both the EE & BT communities and look after updating our general help content when information changes. Our focus at the moment is:

Plans

Community & Content strategy - defining what information and content are best kept in the communities or our help websites, to avoid duplication and confusion. Having a clear purpose and plan for the future of the communities to help them be as effective as possible

Community username @AndyS_

Products

This team look after how you get to what you’re looking for on the website including the overall menu (navigation) and search tools, as well as tools like the coverage and network status checkers and store finder. These are the things they are focussing on at the moment.

Plan

Navigation strategy – defining the future of navigation in order to get people to where they need to be as efficient as possible

Please give us your honest opinion about our plans and feel free to offer feedback in terms of what other areas you think we need to concentrate on?

Thank you in advance for your time and participation

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Stephen5000 — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 14:21:48 GMT

As a user of 'talk21' for over a quarter of a century, I read this update with interest. Everything you mentioned that are in your plans I'm sure many will look forward to. But I still have 2 x main issues that I have lost since the recent migration from Yahoo to BT.

1) I desperately miss the ability to see when a subfolder has received a new email - this has actually cost me money as I have missed a couple of 'ebay' alerts from both sellers and buyers. (I have a 'rule' that immediately puts an 'ebay' email into my ebay folder) I know you have said this is due to be fixed in v2.20 next year, but it is so annoying.

2) In one of my 'talk21' addresses I have lost the ability to see the 'attachment' view in my inbox. (Subfolders work just fine) I'm guessing it's because there are decades of photos and the database would be quite large! I have already started a separate post of this issue early in the week.

For me, if you sort these 2 x issues, I'm quite happy for you to develop BT email in any way you wish... 😃

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 15:59:45 GMT

@SeanD @LiamD

I'm not sure whose area this fits into but since you asked.

A couple of minor things that, despite the menial nature of them, I found unbelievably frustrating just two days ago.

I came home to find an orange light on my Smarthub2, I logged in to the hub manager and followed the troubleshooter at the end of which I was advised to ring 0800 000 151 which I did, what happened next? you may ask "The number you have dialled has not been recognised" I answer.

So I tried ringing the FTTP team and was met with a pre-recorded message advising me that I could text the word Fault followed by my phone number to 61998, only 61998 does not accept incoming messages.

I also received several text messages advising me to go online but I had no broadband and the 4G connection was so bad that I never actually landed on any of the pages I was directed to.

OK so like I said earlier it's all a bit petty but when put together with no broadband (or TV), it all becomes very frustrating.

Hopefully you'll be able to prevent other customers from the same frustrations by taking or instigating the necessary corrective actions

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

SeanD — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 09:40:35 GMT

Good morning,

Thank you both for the posts 😀

@Stephen5000, I understand your frustration and I am sorry that there are still a few issues affecting you. As you have said the first issue is something that we will fix in release 2.20, coming in January. I will update you as soon as I know when this release will be deployed.

EDIT: I can see that the issue around attachment was resolved in release 2.19. Happy days, I am glad this has been sorted for you, so just the one issue left 😁. Thanks, Stephen for your continued patience while we work on improving our email service

@Anonymous I am sorry to read of your experience, this sounds incredibly frustrating. I will leave this for @Andy-B to comment on as I believe the SMS process sits within his world. Thank you for commenting on this thread.

Cheers

Sean

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Tony1515 — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 10:54:39 GMT

Overall sounds promising. So some general observations that may apply across your Get Help Team:

Although a long term customer I've only recently subscribed to BT Community rather than just dip in for advice. I suggest you email all BT users to direct them to the new guidance once it's begun to be established. Thereafter users need to have easy subscription to get automatic notification of changes. In particular, it would be useful if long threads of duplicated issues and fixes could be avoided by using this new "Get Help" regime. Currently this wastes time for Users and BT.

Taking BT Email as an example it would be very helpful to have a central access point for it from which it is easy to navigate to e.g. #Guidance on use; #Known issues including callouts to: *Workarounds; *Planned enhancements with expected release dates; *Central reference point for new issues etc. My suggestion is to avoid long BT Community threads with duplicated material. If a user has an issue they could easily find out if it is already documented and if so establish how to address it in the short term but also identify the medium o long-term expected solution and planned delivery release/date. Additionally, subscribers need to know when there has been a fix.

Recent BT Email issues brought this to the fore but another area in dire need of guidance and enhancement is BT Cloud storage. It is useful and comforting to know that nothing will be lost in the event of a catastrophic failure of personal computing equipment. However, I would describe the system as being akin to having everything backed up into a massive bucket with minimal tools for retrieval. Taking pictures as an example my storage ends up with multiple copies of each individual photo as it I import it, edit it, rename it then move to re-organise my own folders. I've tried to rationalise the BT Cloud copies but there are no easy efficient tools for doing so. This isn't just to highlight BT Cloud storage shortfalls, rather to give another example of another area screaming out for Get Help assistance. I'm sure there are others e.g. hardware, broadband etc.

I look forward to seeing the improved help.

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

shaz_j — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 15:50:49 GMT

Hey @Anonymous, sorry to hear about your frustrating experience when trying to resolve the issue with your connection.

I've checked with the team and the 0800 number you've mentioned is not a recognised BT number - it is one digit out of the correct version so we are reviewing all our troubleshooter journeys to ensure there hasn't been any typos.

With respect to the SMS option, I'll need a little more time to investigate as the 61998 number is correct and currently accepting incoming messages.

Would you be happy to message me privately with the network details and mobile device you were using?

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 16:07:32 GMT

Hi @shaz_j

No problem at all. Could you send a link please as your username returned no results when I typed it into the 'Send To' field in Private messages / New message

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

NeilO — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 20:00:00 GMT

Hi @Anonymous sorry about that, if you private message me the details I can get them over to @shaz_j

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

ColinD1 — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 20:11:46 GMT

Very new to BT. I have a pre-existing problem that BT are in process of fixing. My problem has been trying to find Private Message.

Might work better on my main computer or laptop, but operating on a fire tablet I find I am stumbling around.

Private Message is under the BT forum, but if all I wanted to do was read and reply.

Trying to keep several things going at the same time with different companies on multiple computer platforms and just getting more confused.

The problem for the developer is to deal with an occasional user who wants a specific thing quickly.

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Stephen5000 — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 20:26:19 GMT

@ColinD1wrote:
Very new to BT. I have a pre-existing problem that BT are in process of fixing. My problem has been trying to find Private Message.

So, can you simply not see the envelope icon for private messages then?

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

ColinD1 — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 20:46:55 GMT

I followed a link requesting help from the development team, not seeking help for myself.

Problem is not recognising an envelope with a red dot on the page, but navigating to the page and the multiple entry points with different credentials.

I was presenting the problem of a naive user. An expert user has built up their map and can navigate easily.

I have bookmarked the page so I can back to it.

Each time I enter the BT world I seem to find a different maze.

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Radiant — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 12:29:04 GMT

There are 2 crucial issues which the Get Help team need to address;

1) Clarity about the pathways to obtain help and support when customers have issues, which at present seems to be deliberately obscure and obstructive, preferring instead to direct people to FAQs and forums or whatever it takes to avoid customers being easily able to access skilled, helpful support and resolution of unsolved issues.

2) I strongly suggest a team of Get Help personnel that comprise, and represent, the diverse ethnic and gender identities of customers. Such a team might then be capable of tracking the customer support journey in a meaningful way.

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Les-Gibson — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 13:32:01 GMT

@SeanD

My Family SIM plan expires soon so I went inline with the intention of renewing it and after navigating the site decided to take the safe option and ring in instead. I think the wording is unclear and needs looking at in order that customers know exactly what they will end up with.

For example, I couldn't tell from the website if I was just renewing my existing plan with no other changes (which is what I wanted) or whether I would end up with new SIMS and new numbers to replace the ones I already have or maybe even receive additional SIMS on top of the those I already have (neither of which I want).

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

SeanD — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 15:39:35 GMT

Hi @Les-Gibson,

Thanks for taking the time to let us know about your experience when trying to renew your mobile plan online. I am sorry that the online journey was not clear and that you had to ring up.

I will feed this back to the relevant teams 😁

Did you manage to get sorted via our call centre? Anything else we can help with, please let me know?

Cheers

Sean

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

shaz_j — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 16:19:38 GMT

Hey @Radiant , thank you for taking the time to share your feedback.

On your first point, this is not by design and there is ongoing work to improve our contact methods which is due to launch in early March.

On your second point, I hear you. The very reason we go out to our users is so that we build products that represent our diverse customer base, however we appreciate there's progress to be made with respect to diversity. This is a process that many businesses are currently going through and we are fully committed internally to make quicker and meaningful progress.

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

Les-Gibson — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 19:41:46 GMT

@SeanD

Somethings just occurred to me and I can't tell from your message who is best placed to deal with it.

When purchasing a product or renewing a contract online, you get a cooling off period, however if you go back into your account for that purpose at a later date, you receive a message to say that BT can't make you any offers until your open offer is complete and you can't go any further.

How then can a customer exercise their right to cancel online in preference to phoning in?

Re: Meet our Get Help team and hear about our plans for the rest of the year

SeanD — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 12:41:18 GMT

Hi @Les-Gibson,

Thanks for the feedback.

If a customer changes their mind within the cooling-off period and wants to go back to the package they had previous then this must be done over the phone. This is true for the cancelling of any service, a customer will need to speak with our retentions team on 0800 800 030, we don't offer cancellation online.

By calling retentions you will be able to speak with someone who can discuss all your options 😀

Cheers

Sean