A new layer of support to fight through
First it was the virtual assistant and now there is apparently a external layer of support that can't do much more than transfer to internal support.
Comments
-
@Brian Hoyt
Yes, agree or they need step by step instructions with screenshots - it is like training them too along with our own users.2 -
0
-
@Brian Hoyt I had this same experience. The person kept asking for my steps and I had to clarify that I did not know the steps that's why I was reaching out. I think I repeated this maybe 5 times. They had to have someone get back to me.
0 -
Earlier this year blackbaud hired third party online support for Blackbaud EMS in India.
It was announced yesterday via email from the VP of Customer Support that Beginning in February 2024, Blackbaud will begin partnering with Teleperformance in Jaipur, India.
If you can and wait a long time then you will get the US blackbaud support. This is so bad. The online support always ask what steps you took.
0 -
Agreed! This has been so frustrating this year. I would literally pay extra money for a fast pass to the internal team or something. We have been using BB for several decades and I only ask for help when it is something complicated which can never be solved by the 1st level of support. I always say what I've already done and it's still so much of my time wasted to eventually just be transferred to someone internal that can help me in five minutes. I am a one-person tech team and between the AI chatbot and this I am unable to efficiently work. It was also be a huge improvement if the chat would make a sound when someone writes. It is so frustrating to get hung up on because I'm trying to do work while I wait.
3 -
@Melika Panneri
I agree with everything you are saying. the Combination of wait times increasing 5 fold over the last couple of years and there being this many layers to reach useful support is making the function unusable at times.2 -
@Brian Hoyt
Yes, agree or they need step by step instructions with screenshots - it is like training them too along with our own users.What if there was a better way to run software support? I think there is, especially as Blackbaud has access to user history.
As it operates today, Blackbaud sets up an antagonistic relationship between users and support. This is a terrible business plan.
Anyone else remember when Blackbaud had best-in-class support? It used to be one of my strongest arguments for adopting this “world class” software. Back then, due to communication limitations, an organization was expected to have a person on-site who could handle the basic issues and they would escalate to contacting Blackbaud support when something interesting came up.
Bare with me, but I wonder if the current setup is a reaction to too many people having access to support? Rather than being able to assume the person contacting support is the site expert, support has to assume they might not know the basics. This results in people with experience (and listen up Blackbaud: the people who make decisions) getting treated as if we need help finding the spacebar.
If Blackbaud has to support all levels of users, in addition to escalating levels of support, I wonder if it would be possible to classify people who access support: first-timers, experienced, and people who tend to bring the interesting issues?
If support automatically classified users and directed them to more experienced support staff, as appropriate, it would save time (money) and reduce the frustration for everyone involved.
The above all assumes that Blackbaud is actually employing more than five people who actually can provide more than knowledgebase-level support.
5 -
@Petra Hall You are right on — I have been toting the Level “Marking” for years. As someone who has been working with the BB suite (Education, Website, RE/RENXT, FE/FENXT Plus) for over 15 years and I am the resident BB troubleshooter for our school (everyone goes through me first) - I have been through all the hoops/jumps to try and figure it out on my own. When contacting BB - I always walk through the steps I have taken and 95% of the time - it's a glitch in the software and has to be escalated to the engineers. Chat doesn't work for me - they only repeat what I have already said - then they need to investigate - via email again repeating the steps I already laid out 2 or 3 times and it takes at least a day in between emails, it takes weeks to get anywhere - I end up sitting on the phone to get anywhere – waiting on hold for more than an hour - sometimes 2 - most likely it's an escalation ticket to the engineers. I am extremely frustrated with the way support has gone - there is none. ?
9 -
@Brian Hoyt et al I am tagging @Miguel Alfaro on this very informative and insightful discussion thread.
4 -
@Petra Hall Regarding too many having access to support - I was under the impression that the new Security > Support role with the task of Contact Support would allow us to limit which users could contact support. However, it seems to do nothing since all added users automatically can contact support. What is the point of this role?
0 -
@Brian Hoyt If support is now being done from a foreign country 12 hours difference why does support have to end at 3 PM Pacific time?
3 -
Hi @Lauren Henderson, thanks for including me in this conversation. I'd like to address some comments/feedbacks posted here:
We appreciate your feedback regarding our Support experience and want to address some key points mentioned here to enhance your experience with us.
Recent data shows that around 40% of the cases that end up with a Support agent were resolvable using our existing self-service documentation. Our Generative AI technology sources from our vast Knowledgebase to help you find answers swiftly and get back to your work without needing to speak with a Support agent. While a live agent is always available when needed, our Virtual Assistant helps you get a prompt response when the answer is already documented in our comprehensive and growing Knowledgebase.
We recognize that our hold times for phone support are currently outside of our norms. However, we are seeing live chat support times within our standard and encourage all customers to use chat to connect with our teams. We are constantly reviewing the feedback you provide to ensure we are providing the high-quality Support you expect. If you are experiencing delays in your case resolution outside of your expectation, we encourage you to leave comments in surveys when they are received. This helps us gather feedback and change accordingly.
Our self-service materials are available 24/7, and there is also the option to leave feedback on articles, documentation, and generative answers. If you reference our self-service materials before reaching out to Support, your feedback will help us update our resources, making them even more useful to you and saving you a call in the future.
All of our agents regularly rely on internal resources and their peers to resolve cases. In some cases, when an agent is not able to resolve your question promptly, they may ask a teammate to get involved directly so that we can get you back to work. All of our agents are trained and ready to support your mission. We will continue to coach our team on the way this is communicated to you so that you have confidence in our entire team and our value as a partner in your mission.
We serve a broad and diverse social good community. Many of our users have years of experience in the sector and with our products, while many others are brand new and come to us with a limited technical understanding. To gain an understanding of your personal experience, our agents may ask for the specific steps you’ve taken, the area of the software you were working in, specific error messages you encountered, and Knowledgebase articles you reviewed prior to contacting Support. Having this information available for the agent when you contact our Support team will help us address your personal issue so that we can get you back to work. We appreciate you providing specific steps and as much information as possible about the issue you are experiencing to help our agents assist you.
The lack of audible notifications in our chat system is a system limitation from our chat provider. There are visual notifications about a waiting chat message. This has been reported to the provider, and we will continue to investigate solutions. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you when contacting Support.
Finally, we are expanding our global footprint with the aim of offering customers extended business hours in the near future (we are targeting Q2/Q3 2025). You may notice new faces working within our Support team as our qualified agents come out of our comprehensive onboarding program and get up to speed supporting you, so that we can offer extended hours that better align to your working hours no matter where you are in the world.
Thank you for your continued support and understanding.
Miguel3 -
(1) Have multi-level support, based on both user experience and support staff capabilities.
(2) Revise the knowledgebase interface so people can ask the question, then select their product from a sorted list of software that is relevant to their organization.
(3) Extend support hours to match your customers. This is especially key in the education sector, where 15 minutes can make a significant difference in the ability for a school to provide its core services.
6 -
@Petra Hall Tagging onto #2 - KB Articles should be dated - there are many that just don't apply anymore to the product - the product has been updated but the KB is still show OLD screenshots. A date created/modified would help in determining if you are on an old article - side note - because I have worked in the product since BB rolled out the education suite - I can usually come close to finding the solution to my issue because I know where it has been moved or changed.
12 -
@Brian Hoyt agreed. the support/chat support from blackbaud continues to go downhill year after year despite their product costs going up and up
2 -
I won't even complain about the AI assistant. I just wish the one in the KB worked as well as the one in chat. ?
But the major frustration is that I KNOW the outsourced support has never seen any of the systems, let alone worked in them. I don't contact support until I have exhausted every other option, so it's extremely frustrating to me to not be able to get an answer until my question has been escalated. When we leave Blackbaud, it's going to be because their support has gotten so bad that you can't report an issue without having to walk the support person through what normal should look like!
4 -
@Brian Hoyt When I started as platform manager 10 years, I sang Blackbaud support's praises for the quality of the help and assistance I would receive every time I called in. I rarely had anyone that didn't know their stuff and how to navigate the site and find a solution. I was always in awe of how they knew all the connecting pieces and could unravel just about any issue I had. However, in the past couple of years, I've noticed the quality has gone down. I have been getting more and more individuals that I had to teach them how to get to the area I was having issues with and how it connected with another piece within the database. But today I want to just throw up my hands and quit. When I called, I got a sweet gal, but she could not even look at my site or the issue I was having. She collected all of the information and said I'd get a “call back within an hour.” Now 7 hours later no call, no email, nothing and still have an unresoved issue. Where have all the brilliant BB support minds gone?! I am totally frustrated with Blackbaud. Thank you, to one and all, for letting me rant.
1 -
@Sheila Long - had similar experience. after hour waiting for someone to answer, I told support what my problem was and the steps I went through to try and fix…after all that the support person told me she was going to give to one of her team mates and they would contact me by the end of the day - 2 days later, still no movement on the ticket. Made a note for udate - still nothing, then I got email that the support person assigned was on leave and that they were taking over the ticket. I contacted my Customer Success Manager, still nothing
0 -
@Kathy Hannon Unbelievable. BB Support has sunk to a new low.
0 -
@Miguel Alfaro
That is not the reality that many of us experience. The support people are typically clueless and even if you try to walk them through how to get to the issue you are experiencing. They don't grasp the issue (it's like talking to someone who has never seen Blackbaud) and then they put you on hold so they can research what they imagine to be the problem (which is often a misunderstanding since they haven't listened carefully or followed the instructions you provide so they can see what you are seeing) and they come back with something basic that doesn't solve it (because most of us DO search the knowledge base before calling support). Some of the “resolved” are from us giving up since they totally misconstrued or misunderstood the problem. We eventually figure it out ourselves, for those of us who have had a lot of experience with Blackbaud.5 -
I so remember when support was so good I modeled my own support after them.
I have complained a lot about this new layer. I even had a survey person reach out to me via phone to ask me about my support experiences because I complained to such a degree to the “support” person. They told me that the head of Blackbaud support felt great about having a very short on-hold time. I told him I'd rather have to wait an hour on the phone and then have a knowledgeable person who could help me than to deal with this additional layer they've installed. All this new format accomplishes is making me angry. I also echo comments here that every call is like training the support person. They know absolutely nothing and clearly that's not their job. Their job is to get you to describe in minute detail what your problem is and all the things you have done to try to resolve it and send screenshots of the issue. Add to all of that that I really struggle to understand what they're saying, and… because of the language barrier, I am unable to describe in detail to them what my problem is because they can't understand what I'm talking about. I'm a high level user and when I call, it's rarely a level 1 question. Heaven help the person who is calling for help and doesn't already know a lot.
Basically, I have been emailing that support person back that this is a waste of my time and they should just close the ticket because I'm not doing all of this. It's an incredible waste of my time. Maybe if enough people do that it will make a difference.
I hope and pray they get rid of this awful call center in India and make a move back to better support.
0 -
@Kim Ashcraft I echo all of this! It makes me want to leave Blackbaud!
3 -
I'm afraid I have had the same experience others have shared in the comments. Support has significantly declined this past year. As others mentioned, I do everything I can to research an issue using the Knowledgebase and Community Ideas/Discussions before I contact support. When I do contact support either by phone or via a ticket/email, I find I need to walk them through the screens step by step just to explain the issue. I would rather wait longer to get a knowledgeable support rep than to be put right through to someone who does not have a basic understanding of the software.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 6 Blackbaud Community Help
- 206 bbcon®
- 1.4K Blackbaud Altru®
- 394 Blackbaud Award Management™ and Blackbaud Stewardship Management™
- 1.1K Blackbaud CRM™ and Blackbaud Internet Solutions™
- 15 donorCentrics®
- 357 Blackbaud eTapestry®
- 2.5K Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®
- 646 Blackbaud Grantmaking™
- 561 Blackbaud Education Management Solutions for Higher Education
- 3.2K Blackbaud Education Management Solutions for K-12 Schools
- 934 Blackbaud Luminate Online® and Blackbaud TeamRaiser®
- 84 JustGiving® from Blackbaud®
- 6.4K Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®
- 3.6K SKY Developer
- 242 ResearchPoint™
- 118 Blackbaud Tuition Management™
- 165 Organizational Best Practices
- 238 The Tap (Just for Fun)
- 33 Blackbaud Community Challenges
- 28 PowerUp Challenges
- 3 (Open) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing
- 3 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Standard Reports+
- 3 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Email Marketing
- 3 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Gift Management
- 4 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Event Management
- 3 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Home Page
- 4 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Standard Reports
- 4 (Closed) Raiser's Edge NXT PowerUp Challenge: Query
- 778 Community News
- 2.9K Jobs Board
- 53 Blackbaud SKY® Reporting Announcements
- 47 Blackbaud CRM Higher Ed Product Advisory Group (HE PAG)
- 19 Blackbaud CRM Product Advisory Group (BBCRM PAG)