Some New Customer and Angry Customer Ideas

[cuddlebug]

O.K...first, let me say I have been, and from time to time still are, one of you who are either new, or angry about an issue you are having.  No, I am not a Hughes employee...just another customer like you who hopes I can actually make some difference for people like us, and those who volunteer their time to help.

That said, please allow me to say, o.k..you don't understand what is going on, you are upset or you would not post here (except those who give praises).  If you read through some of my posts you will see I too have been there.  Occasionally still am, as I said.  Just a few ideas for those unaccustomed to this board and some things I have realized along the way. 

Hughes Customer support is not a tech support.  If you use Home tech support, they will charge you for the service (The support, not Hughes).  The tech support is a totally separate company.  (Hughes, please correct your wording to tell us the tech support is available for a fee, and is not at all part of your team, but a separate entity). 

I know it is very difficult to think of these things when you are already frustrated beyond belief, so another thing I wanted to share with you is, The Champions are not Hughes employees.  They are volunteers who give of themselves by their donated time to help us who have no clue what is going on.

The official reps will have that title put next to their name.  They are the ones who will address your issues.  The Champions are the ones who try to help you through your situation.  Often, we blow up at them because they support the company, but just to let you know, they are sympathetic and very willing to help you in any way they can, or direct you to the rep who will do all they can to help. 

In no way do I blame you for being angry and feeling cheated.  Customer service does eliminate a lot of what they should reveal to people when selling the service.  They speak very fast so you cannot possibly remember everything that is said.  But this is not something the Champions or reps have caused.  This is a higher up issue that is not correcting its Customer Care service reps appropriately, or the problem would not be on a more or less daily basis.

O.K..I hope I have helped in some small way and not made you even angrier.  I do understand your frustration.

[Liz]

Hi cuddlebug,

Thank you for taking the time to share your ideas and encouraging words for other subscribers like yourself. I also hope they see this and keep what you have said in mind.

Home Tech Support is our partner and we treat them as part of our company. They are just as involved with our support offerings.  I'm sorry if in the past you were transferred to them without any heads up that there would be a fee for their services. Normally, before you are transferred to HTS, you are informed that there will be a fee, if applicable.

Please rest assured that we are constantly working to improve our customer service and training our reps at all our call centers to provide the best assistance. If any customer has any complaints about our support, be it chat, e-mail, or phone, just start a new thread, post your case number and tell us. We're more than happy to have your call reviewed.

Thanks,
Liz

[cuddlebug]

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Some Customer Care Ideas.

It appears to me anyway, that the "customer support" issue has appeared over and over again as a major thorn in Hughes side.  If Hughes wishes to regain lost ground with people, they need to consider revamping the support team and at the risk of sounding prejudice (which I am not) get a U.S., English speaking team to take care of the customers.  I realize this is hard for those of us who do not understand this system and why it works the way it does, but most people who have posted make reference to "English speaking support" because even though the support team does speak English, it is so broken, that you cannot understand a word they are saying.  Two things happen here, either the customer gets frustrated, and if new, hangs up, calls back, and hopes to get someone else who speaks clear English, or the customer support gets frustrated and either becomes rude, or hangs up and says oops, we were disconnected (of course after the customer calls back). 

Next, I was raised to believe, if you wish to succeed, you must first invest the capitol to offer a product that meets the customer need, not allow the customer to feel unimportant, or unappreciated because of customer support issues. 

Not all "new members" know about this board until after they have signed up with Hughes.  There are others, like myself, I am sure, who went to Hughes because they were told by someone that it existed.  Also, if they have never used a dish service before, it isn't like they are going to sit down and say to themselves, "Now...I wonder...if Hughes has a chat board".  Many people have not even used a chat board until they came across this one. 

All this being said...the new members as well as the established members need a page put up prior to entering the chat area that could be very short and to the point.  I.E.  if you see the word Champion beside a name, they are volunteering their time (God bless them) to help you, and do not work for Hughes.  Or, place a Champion word on the screen with a link they can touch giving this information to them.

Don't assume because you know the ins and outs of Hughes or for that matter are quite knowledgeable about computers that all others are.  For example, don't give them a vague answer when they ask for help like go to your such and such on your computer and run a diagnostic test.  Many have no clue what you are talking about which adds to their frustration. 

Lastly, try to understand, even though you may have said over and over the same answer to many new, frustrated customers, ask yourself, what is more important to me...getting them to realize how ignorant I think they sound, or helping them so they won't leave. 

These are just my thoughts, and I am not claiming them for anyone else.  Just ideas.  But please ask yourself why you are a volunteer here at Hughes....to help...or worsen an already volatile situation.  Sorry for the book, but felt it necessary to post

[Liz]

Hi again cuddlebug, just consolidating your feedback into one thread.

I totally understand your frustration with any difficulty understanding our support team. This has been brought up to our executives, and I'm sure it won't be the last time.

The community has actually been around for about 4 years now, and we've grown a LOT since then! We weren't as widely advertised before, but at least since I've been here, I've seen our visibility increase greatly. Did you know we also encourage our Facebook visitors to come here to work out their concerns? It's much to cluttered on our Facebook page to try to troubleshoot, so we offer them help here so they can take advantage of having they own thread to themselves.

Good ideas about distinguishing Champs, Official Reps, and subscribers within the community. At the moment, the most we can do is add these colorful frames around each type of member. However, if we have a way in the future to implement your ideas, we'll definitely look into it!

Thank you again for your valued feedback, cuddlebug, it only helps us improve.

-Liz

[cuddlebug]

Thanks Liz, on both idea replies.  From time to time, I do try to give my less than computer geek ideas.  I try to keep them general and non-offensive.  Glad to hear you are alright with them.  I just feel Hughes is losing a lot of customers they don't have to because more and more people are feeling let down and not cared about.  So, if we can start posting more information for them, it helps to cushion somewhat.

[Liz]

You're welcome! Well, it always seems so bad in the community sometimes, but as I know as Charles Scott has brought up before, we're seeing just a very small, but vocal minority of subscribers who have run into less than ideal circumstances with our service. We have over a million customers, and thankfully, we don't hear a peep from most of them because our service works. For those who do contact us, we do our best to help those who seek it here. Venting, I'm sure might make one feel better, but in the end, we're here to help; it's better for both parties to come in with a constructive purpose.

-Liz

[cuddlebug]

Hahaha Bill....me offering advice....(wiping tears from my eyes from laughter).  If you want to talk novice, my husband taught at Ferris State University.  When computers were still in dos formatting, I had never in my life been on one.  Larry told me to send an email to someone and wait for the answer.  I honestly thought he was pulling a prank.  I said "right....I'm going to talk with someone over this box".  I finally agreed to try it, and was literally amazed that I could actually do that.  I'm still amazed when someone teaches me to do more than my comfort zone will quickly acclimatize to.  Yes, it is a learning curve here.  But it is my hope, that anything I learn along the way may just help someone else.  As far as the customer service goes, yes, I understand what you are saying, but it does not help those who cannot understand the person from customer care to not be frustrated.  Especially when hours of time are taken up to do that.  The biggest difference I can see between this Customer Care and the cable I used to have, is if I needed customer care to talk English to me, they saw to it someone was available.  Thanks to Bill and Liz for the replies.

[Gwalk900]

Hi Cuddlebug, Thanks for the input !

Actually Hughes has made major strides in the "Customer Service" department believe it or not !

I think over 50% of the service reps are in the US now. The problem is .... they appear to be the higher tiered levels and leaves a subscriber having to work through the lower "filter" tiers.

I remember from years ago ... there was no official "Hughes Community". I hung out at the DSLR Hughes subforum where users would ask questions and a core group of tech minded users would do their best to supply answers. Later on, on occasion someone from Hughes would post some information that everyone would grab onto. Later Sara (among others) poured in blood, sweat and tears to create this Community and I think the result is great !

Once a user does arrive here at the Community they are in many cases frustrated beyond belief.

Many lack even basic computing skills let alone any understanding of "networking" and hardware.

It can be very difficult to get some users to do a "direct connect" so as to determine their baseline performance levels . A novice user isn't even going to be aware of the existence of some router settings or NIC and wireless adaptor settings that if misconfigured can really trash performance.

Then we have users reading old posts for information (a good thing) but pick up some conflicting information because of all the various system platforms and a multitude of plan levels.

I tend to post a lot of pictures in my replies, not only to provide a clearer "step-by-step", but it also provides a crosscheck for users ..."hey, mine don't look like that".

I found years ago that phone support was very frustrating and vowed to learn as much about my system as I could to reduce my reliance on same.

Not everyone has the same interests of course .....

[cuddlebug]

I love the input from the members here.  Thank you to you Gwalk for joining the input session.  I look forward to learning from posts here and reading others ideas.  It is a wonderful thing to read messages from those who actually know what they are talking about.  I learn and pass it forward.