Just browsing through the feedback forum and seeing the same-old same-old response for order issues: "we're a separate entity, we can't help with shop support". I understand that but it's a recurring thing, so why not work to resolve THAT issue and make more customers happy? Simply have the shop set up a dedicated, high-priority queue for issues people post in the forums. That allows mods to post support issues to the shop support people and get it handled instead of simply providing irritated customers with a dead-end (and likely a lost customer as well since they're posting on the grasscity.com forums - like it or not, you as the forums are still Grasscity). In a position of authority, mods are the one group of people that customers would expect to be willing to provide support, not just "wrong place, go here". I think it would benefit the sanity of the mods and the confidence of the customers as well... and it wouldn't have any real impact on support load either. How many support issues find their way into this forum? Visibly, a lot. But when you sit and think about it, the time that mod spends saying "wrong site, go away" could be spent forwarding it to the support queue. Then it would only take that support representative about the same amount of time to come up with a solution and provide it to the customer via PM or direct posting (or both: PM with the reply and post that a reply was sent, for tracking and public acknowledgement). And on the other end of things, if that person were to actually go and contact support anyway (after posting here), they would likely cost the rep even MORE time than if the rep were replying directly, as the customer would be even more irate and impatient. With the rep already seeing the issue detailed in the forum post, it helps them get the issue understood and resolved with less pressure and time needed. It would be a net zero total loss/savings of support time to handle forum issues forwarded by a mod, instead of a mod posting "go to the support portal" and making the customer go contact a rep through another channel. Am I making business sense here?
the mods have a heavy load as it is. adding another large task to their already unpaid workload seems unnecessary. adding that responsibility will only exasperate the problem we are trying to alleviate. if everyone would read sticky in which it clearly says that we have no access to anything shop related, that they must contact the support email address then we wouldn't have to auto refer them to the support email and you wouldn't see us doing so.
in totals the people who try to get support via the forum are neglibable, and we have a very good support system via support, people will not get better support via the froums, the mods cannot help because they don't (and won't ) get acccess to the shop backend. We are working to extend our manpower on the CC department. SJ