How Are Other Schools Handling Escalated/Urgent Cases that Stall?

Christine Zaremba

We are now on the 7th business day of a high-priority, escalated case that has gone nowhere. A student who was successfully using the LMS in first period suddenly received a persistent “oops!” error in second period, across all devices and networks. This points clearly to a back-end issue.

After several days of back-and-forth with irrelevant KBs, I was told the case would be sent to development. I escalated it last Friday, but have received no update since.

This is not the first time a student has been locked out of the LMS for days or weeks due to stalled support. Parents are paying significant tuition, and we—who pay Blackbaud substantial sums each year—are held accountable to them. Yet Blackbaud support does not seem accountable to us.

When a high-priority case stalls like this, what response and resolution timelines should schools reasonably expect? What process should we rely on to get issues like this addressed quickly and effectively?

Scott Chrysler

@Christine Zaremba - extremely frustrating - try calling your "Customer Success" manager - you can also tag the Blackbaud team in community posts - @Michael Morrissette @Jacqueline Koca @Support Team @Leah Niblett to see if they may be able to help.

Good Luck.

Scott

Lauren Henderson

Hi Christine,

Is your school on SSO for student logins? Are you a Google or Microsoft (or other) environment? We experienced an issue last year when one of the fields in our internal user account did not match the actual email address, and this caused an authentication issue with BBID. @Jessi Walters is the Core product manager and has been very helpful in getting attention and resources for our critical issues. I agree with Scott that you should be involving your Customer Success manager as well as your Account Representative in this issue. @Miguel Alfaro is the Head of Global Customer Support.

Diana Holden

Christine,

We are also on day 7 of an issue that is keeping one student locked out of the LMS. We escalated the case and received a response, but the issue hasn't been solved. In our case, we think it is an issue with how the BBID is recognized between Google and BB. We've now looped in our Customer Success manager, but the whole process has been frustrating.

Jessi Walters

Hey all! I reached out to account teams for @Christine Zaremba and @Diana Holden. It looks like the ball is moving in both cases.

This isn't the experience we want you to have, and it doesn't meet the standard we set for ourselves. Our support principals are involved to identify any breakdown in process and to provide coaching to the team to prevent things like this from happening. I second what @Lauren Henderson and @Scott Chrysler said (and what Diana did) - contact your Customer Success Manager when you feel stuck. They are your best advocate to remove obstacles and bring the best resources. They go to bat for you!

Karen Diener

Quite honestly, I've reached out to the VP of customer success when I don't get resolution. I had a client who had a problem for a month and was getting nowhere. It was so clear that customer support wasn't paying attention to all of the notes, and the case had allegedly been escalated, but they were spinning their wheels.

I VERY rarely do this. I used to know a customer success manager and would reach out to her, but we've lost touch. When it is mission critical and you CSM and support are getting you nowhere, you shake some trees.

Christine Zaremba

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/307465#Comment_307465

Diana, they actually provided a resolution that worked last night - it does have something to do with the connection between BBID and Google, and will have to be corrected on BB's end. I just got the student back into the LMS a few minutes ago.

Diana Holden

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/307505#Comment_307505

We were also able to get resolution for our student. A data fix had to be applied on BB's end.