Vonage Slams

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 3:38 pm Post subject:

Steve48 wrote:

blakadher wrote:

dconnor wrote:

So, not being a big fan of Vodka and Rice, I tend to block the whole C Block of the offending IP.

Geez, Dan...you just described my breakfast. I'm offended.

Rice for breakfast? Geesh.

Yeah, whatever happened to beer for breakfast?

Let's face it, Vonage does have its problems. They've expanded faster than they were truly ready for and have had growing pains in the process. They've found themselves to be a victim of their own success when it comes to things like servers which run the dashboard & voicemail (which have been slow & unresponsive at times until they could bring more servers online), and especially noticable at the tech support. They've tried to keep up by building new call centers and hiring new techs, but this presents a new problem -- unexperienced techs.

There really isn't any quick answer on fixing this one other than time. You can train people all that you want, but they're not going to truly learn it until they've worked with the product and dealt with the challenges of dealing with customers. I do believe they need to hire a few more techs and thin out the phone tree a bit. I think an "acceptable" wait time is ~5-8 minutes, preferably shorter. As far as the phone tree goes, they need to simplify & consolidate the menus. Cut out the excess verbiage and cut down the number of options, or at least make them more consistent. I'd prefer to only have to enter 2-3 menus before being queued up for the next agent.

I will give Vonage credit -- The calls have (almost) always gone through. I think I've encountered 2 times so far where the call didn't go through, which is FAR more reliable than a cell phone and my Sprint landlines for that matter. Many of the problems they've had to deal with are things they've not had control over, such as the way other phone cos (mis)treat them, shoddy customer ISP connections, and the Voip technology itself. Just a few years ago, Voip was just a toy, left only for teenagers with instant messenger programs. Now we have large businesses, even hospitals, depending upon Voip. It's more of a case of the demand outpacing the technology, as we've seen with Vonage shipping out the various adapters over the years.

Is Vonage perfect? Absolutely not....but it's far better than working with any of the landline or cell co's that I've worked with (exception: the old GTE corp... was great back then...but prices were much higher and the technology wasn't anywhere near as complex). Oh yeah, saving a couple hundred dollars a month doesn't hurt either.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I agree with everything that you've said, but Vonage could improve tremendously on customer service by implementing one strict policy. Basically, if you tell a customer that you're going to do something then do it. Even the most inexperienced representative should be able to understand this. How many times have we heard "the tech promised to call back in ten minutes and it's been two days"?

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 6:13 pm Post subject:

I've never experienced them saying they'd call me back & never do it, if anything, I've been very fortunate with this. One of the techs even called me on his own cell phone after he'd already left work. Now, Vonage REALLY needs to ditch the e-mail support if they're not going to answer the e-mails in a timely fashion. That seems to be a black hole in their system, and a piss-poor reflection of customer support.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I had it happen to me once in the early days of the Caller ID fiasco. I didn't consider it a big deal, but the number of similar reports that I read in here makes it add up to a problem in my book.