Customer Support

cybercrypt13

Well, this is a perfect example of how customer's do things that you guys don't seem to get. Because I deal with my own customers and they think they are ordering from me, not smug mug. I've gotten 2 phone calls today asking if I knew where their prints were. I can't tell my customer's to call someone else but I was about to.

However, after getting on smugmug site I can't find a phone number to even call and one of the customer's doesn't have access to a computer at the moment. Where is a phone number? Is there some quick way that I can see if a customer's order has shipped so that I can just tell them instead of having to go through all this trouble?

Why is there not a phone number plastered on the site for support? I clicked on contact us page but no phone numbers... at least none I saw...

Thanks,

3rdPlanetPhotography

No offense Glenn but sounds like you need a local print place. Smugmug works great for me.

Not sure what answer you will get but I guess you could call EZPrints in Georgia. Maybe Andy will know.

cybercrypt13

kc7dji wrote:

No offense Glenn but sounds like you need a local print place. Smugmug works great for me.

Not sure what answer you will get but I guess you could call EZPrints in Georgia. Maybe Andy will know.

No offense taken, although I don't see your point. What has a local print place got to do with finding out if an order has shipped? My only gripe is that smugmug hides all my customers information from me and as a result I can't help them. Has nothing to do with anyone being local...

DavidTO

cybercrypt13 wrote:

No offense taken, although I don't see your point. What has a local print place got to do with finding out if an order has shipped? My only gripe is that smugmug hides all my customers information from me and as a result I can't help them. Has nothing to do with anyone being local...

Send an email to help@smugmug.com and see how fast you get a response. I'm sure it'll surprise you.

Andy

Hi there, Glenn,

I'm sorry - we don't have a telephone support desk. I think you'll see that your questions - even here on dgrin - are answered usually with in 24 minutes, not 24 hours - and so we do the same via help@smugmug.com - and I personally have done that for you over the past couple of months as well

You can rest assured that your customers will get the same swift, courteous response from everyone who works the help desk, as you've gotten from me. And that, Glenn, is 24 hrs / day, 7 days a week including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and trash day.

I looked at your orders. The oldest one was ordered on 11/25th and shipped on 11/26. Your customer ordered Economy, which, while cheapest, is done by the USPS and is therefore not trackable. The USPS says that it can take *up to* 14 days (not including holidays) for orders to arrive. I wish we could speed up the postman, but there are just some things we cannot control.

Again, please do give help@smugmug.com a try, encourage your clients to use it as well - that's part of the full service we provide!

All the best,

Andy

cybercrypt13 wrote:

No offense taken, although I don't see your point. What has a local print place got to do with finding out if an order has shipped? My only gripe is that smugmug hides all my customers information from me and as a result I can't help them. Has nothing to do with anyone being local...

Glenn,

We DO NOT hide all customer information from you. We've been down this road several times together. We give you the name and their email address. You're free to email them, and they are able to email you, as well.

Again, encourage your customers to email help@smugmug.com - that's what we're here for

DavidTO

cybercrypt13 wrote:

No offense taken, although I don't see your point. What has a local print place got to do with finding out if an order has shipped? My only gripe is that smugmug hides all my customers information from me and as a result I can't help them. Has nothing to do with anyone being local...

Shay said it best when he jested:



Glenn, smugmug handles 1,000,000 visitors a day, over 100,000 customers a day, all happily buying and dealing with help@smugmug.com. Can they all be wrong? I've been watching the level of support you've been demanding and getting, and I have to say I'm impressed with the hand holding you've received for your $99. I'm not sure you have all that much to complain about...

cybercrypt13

Thanks Andy, I understand but they weren't around a computer, and as I stated it would just be nice if I could at least see that type of information so that I can help them when they call. You don't offer telephone support and I am available for them to call. But again, hiding the info makes me have to hang up, search/ask questions to you and then wait for responses and then call them back. Had I had access to the same info you are looking at I could have answered their question.

Its still a little confusing though as I have other customer's that have received orders last week placed on the same day and they all live here in GA which is in the same place as the print shop which shouldn't take more than 2 days to get here even with postal service.

Thanks,

DavidTO

Just a reminder, Glenn, that I'm not an employee, I volunteer here as a mod, no affiliation.

cybercrypt13

Andy wrote:

Glenn,

We DO NOT hide all customer information from you. We've been down this road several times together. We give you the name and their email address. You're free to email them, and they are able to email you, as well.

Again, encourage your customers to email help@smugmug.com - that's what we're here for

Andy, Where do I see if an order has been shipped? Where would I see address information to confirm that the order was sent to the expected address?

Therefore, its not there for me to see and therefore its hidden... :-) Maybe you use a different word for where its at, but I can't see it.

3rdPlanetPhotography

Economy Shipping
I've seen a dramatic change in the Economy shipping myself. This has nothing to do with Smugmug though. I had the same questions recently when I was wondering "where is my order". It took almost 2 weeks for the snail mail to get it to me. I know now that I won't use the economy shipping any longer. When I joined a year or so ago I was getting prints in "maybe" 3 days. I can only guess that the USPS changed some routes or something of that nature. My last order was placed on a Sunday and Smugmug mailed it out on Monday. It was then 11 days until I got the package.

Go Smugmug!
kc7dji

cybercrypt13

DavidTO wrote:

Just a reminder, Glenn, that I'm not an employee, I volunteer here as a mod, no affiliation.

If you don't consider tying my hands behind my back with respect to assisting my own customers with their orders when they want answers, then I guess you are correct. Smugmug is perfect and no one should ever complain. I'm sorry if I am not one of those types of people that see it that way. I try to go the extra mile to help my customers and telling them to email you is rediculous when they ordered the pictures from me.

I'm sorry if you guys think I'm being rediculous here but this entire thing seems rediculous to me. You don't provide information to me because you tell me that my customers don't want me to have it, yet my customers call me making the requests... Just doesn't seem straight.

I agree you guys have great support and have not said a word about that. My point is quite pointedly towards not giving me all the information on orders. Thats it...

Andy

cybercrypt13 wrote:

Andy, Where do I see if an order has been shipped? Where would I see address information to confirm that the order was sent to the expected address?

Therefore, its not there for me to see and therefore its hidden... :-) Maybe you use a different word for where its at, but I can't see it.

Hi Glenn,

Your customer gets order confirmations, can access everything about the order including the date shipped etc. You can do the same by email us at help@smugmug.com, anytime - we handle 100s of emails a day like this, with courtesy and aplomb.

3rdPlanetPhotography

Maybe it would be more helpful to be able to see "all" the sales info from the Sales Information screen where we can see the orders. We can click and see the detail on the order. It would be pretty simple to add that addional info to the screen.

Just my .5 cents.

kc7dji

Andy wrote:

Hi Glenn,

Your customer gets order confirmations, can access everything about the order including the date shipped etc. You can do the same by email us at help@smugmug.com, anytime - we handle 100s of emails a day like this, with courtesy and aplomb.

Andy

cybercrypt13 wrote:

If you don't consider tying my hands behind my back with respect to assisting my own customers with their orders when they want answers, then I guess you are correct. Smugmug is perfect and no one should ever complain. I'm sorry if I am not one of those types of people that see it that way. I try to go the extra mile to help my customers and telling them to email you is rediculous when they ordered the pictures from me.

I'm sorry if you guys think I'm being rediculous here but this entire thing seems rediculous to me. You don't provide information to me because you tell me that my customers don't want me to have it, yet my customers call me making the requests... Just doesn't seem straight.

I agree you guys have great support and have not said a word about that. My point is quite pointedly towards not giving me all the information on orders. Thats it...

Hi Glenn,

As we've said a number of times - you're paying SmugMug (15%) and part of that goes towards customer service. Have your customers email us and we'll be happy to treat them as we do everyone who writes to help@smugmug.com - usually answering within 15 minutes, 30minuts - rarely longer than one hour. Day in, day out, 365 days a year.

Glenn, it sure sounds like you are unhappy. I honestly don't know what else we can do for you - we've provided countless amounts of support - on your photos, color adjustments, calibration, website design, and more. If this isn't customer service, I sure don't know what is.

We don't normally do this - but I'm willing to make an exception - if you'd like, I'll be happy to issue you a full refund on your pro subscription, and that would free you up to seek an alternate service. I hope you don't do this, but if you wish, the offer stands.

All the best,

Andy

kc7dji wrote:

Maybe it would be more helpful to be able to see "all" the sales info from the Sales Information screen where we can see the orders. We can click and see the detail on the order. It would be pretty simple to add that addional info to the screen.

Just my .5 cents.

kc7dji

Hi kc, thanks for posting - we love it straight like this!

Way the majority of orderers (the pros customer) will email us. We can check the status far easier than anyone. You're paying us to do that - thereby freeing your time from fulfilment and servicing, and go out and shoot more

Mike Lane

And now a cute bunny break...

flyingdutchie

What about tracking numbers?

Andy wrote:

Hi Glenn,

Your customer gets order confirmations, can access everything about the order including the date shipped etc. You can do the same by email us at help@smugmug.com, anytime - we handle 100s of emails a day like this, with courtesy and aplomb.

Maybe tracking information?

When i ordered prints from smugmug a little while ago, i got an e-mail with a tracking number.
However, it was just a number, no html-link to a tracking page or even a company name... i had to try various courier companies to figure out whose tracking number it was... finally FedEx accepted (online) my tracking number and displayed the transit of my prints.

It would be nice to be able to track shippings. Smugmug has the shipping number. Maybe you can make it permanently available (for track-able packages) on a page accessible by the customer and/or smugmug-user(seller).

cybercrypt13

Andy,

It really is amazing me with the responses here. First of all you are totally missing my point. I had 2 customers call today wanting to know where their orders were. Because you won't allow me access to my own customer's orders in order to provide information to them, I had to tell them both to hang up and email you. That is totally unprofessional in my opinion. One of the customer's told me they were not around a computer and could I check for them.

Again, I could not do this because I don't have access to anything. SO I have to take more time out of my already hectic day, to go post a request and then wait for a response and then call the customer back later.

I don't care what you guys at smugmug say. Customers are going to call the photographer when there are problems and when they want info on their orders. In a perfect world perhaps you comments are valid, but in my world they are not.

I don't want a refund, I want you to provide information so I can help my customers. I appreciate you providing support for the 15% of my income, but honestly, I'd rather keep 10% of that, you take 5% and let me support my own customers. I seriously doubt you will ever be hearing from them as they all call me.

What can you not understand this?

3rdPlanetPhotography

I think Andy was very clear. This is Smugmug. This is the way it works. It's the service provide. Love it or leave it.

Shay Stephens

This is meant in a nice way.
Based on my experience in providing prints, books, post cards, etc from many different vendors I have learned that in order to provide good customer service to *your* customers, it depends on *you*.

If that means you have to get back with them while you send an email, make a phone call, or go in person to visit someone, well, that is what you do. I deal with a company over in Italy and I can tell you that you don't get fast response. But by keeping the lines of communication open with your customer, letting them know what to expect, this is rarely a problem.

The point is that *you* have to do the leg work and use the channel of communication you have available to you for your vendors. Some have phone lines, some email, some only have international office that your request has to be routed through. Whatever it is, figure out the fastest and most efficient way you can to use it.

Your incessant and petty whining about an issue that is not going to change has become absurd (I am speaking from a professional photographers point of view). You need to gain some perspective, learn that customer service is your job, and not blame your vendors. Without vendors, your job gets a whole lot harder

cybercrypt13 wrote:

Well, this is a perfect example of how customer's do things that you guys don't seem to get. Because I deal with my own customers and they think they are ordering from me, not smug mug. I've gotten 2 phone calls today asking if I knew where their prints were. I can't tell my customer's to call someone else but I was about to.

cybercrypt13

And Andy, I"m not upset with the service or the site. If you go back and take a look at my complaints, they've all been around the same things. I wish my customer's would email you, but they can call me. Any person would rather call and get info now than send an email and wait until later.

Therefore, as long as you don't answer the phone, my customers are not going to communicate with you. They are going to call me.

I appreciate all the help with everthing, but I don't think a little help in one area gives free rein to ignore another. I have already spent more time trying to find out what is going on with this customer order than I would have while on the phone with them and I still haven't called them back yet. Its been over an hour.

I was on the web when they called and looked up their order while they were on the phone. It could have all been over right there.

You are so close to a perfect solution but it appears that you guys are quite content with the levels you provide and don't see anything further as a valid issue. I'm sorry I'm the only one complaining about this and I"ll stop. In fact based on all my previous complaints and the way they were answered I guess I'll just stop offering any more suggestions and will just deal with what you have.

Sorry to have troubled you...

cybercrypt13

Shay, I appreciate your response and opinion, however, providing excuses for such a simple problem that could allow much better communicate is rediculous. All I can promise is that you will hear no more complaining as I can see now where it gets me...

SMUG MUG YOU ARE PERFECT! Don't change a thing!

Have a good one.

Andy

cybercrypt13 wrote:

In fact based on all my previous complaints and the way they were answered I guess I'll just stop offering any more suggestions and will just deal with what you have.

Sorry to have troubled you...

Hello Glenn,

You're not troubling us. It's our job to help you. But it appears that you are un-help-able. You state above - "all my previous complaints and the way they were answered"-- this sure sounds like you are one of the few folks around that we just can't satisfy no matter what we do. Not with hours spent helping you get your color right, sending reprints, calibration prints, website help, and more. Not to mention all the folks here on dgrin that have helped you.

I'll reiterate my above offer - if you'd like a refund, we'll happily do so, freeing you up to find something out there that may be better suited for your needs.

All the best,

flyingdutchie

cybercrypt13 wrote:

Shay, I appreciate your response and opinion, however, providing excuses for such a simple problem that could allow much better communicate is rediculous. All I can promise is that you will hear no more complaining as I can see now where it gets me...

SMUG MUG YOU ARE PERFECT! Don't change a thing!

Have a good one.

Cybercrypt, I can understand your frustration a little, but you're digging in your heels a bit....

Phone support is just not feasible for smugmug right now (business reasons). And e-mail seems too slow for you for certain inquiries.

Why not suggest, like i suggested earlier, an enhancement in the 'sales'-page of your pro-account, where you would be able to easily track your (ahum.. smugmug's) shipments. Maybe that could be a solution....?

cybercrypt13

Andy, You obviously are having trouble following the trouble here. No where have I said anything about colors or anything else. I did not realize that by asking questions on this forum that it was being tallied up in order to provide excuses later.

Again, THE ONLY trouble I have had are 1) Shopping cart back button, 2) No address information on customers, 3) No order information on customers other than an order number and the photos they ordered.

And for the refund, the problem is that i'm leaving town in the morning and won't be back for a month. I can't have my site down that long while I looked for other services.

I honestly am blown away at what an arguement is being put up over something so silly.

cybercrypt13

flyingdutchie wrote:

Cybercrypt, I can understand your frustration a little, but you're digging in your heels a bit....

Phone support is just not feasible for smugmug right now (business reasons). And e-mail seems too slow for you for certain inquiries.

Why not suggest, like i suggested earlier, an enhancement in the 'sales'-page of your pro-account, where you would be able to easily track your (ahum.. smugmug's) shipments. Maybe that could be a solution....?

Dude, lol, this is all I was asking for. The digging the heals in is because of the constant excuses as to why nothing like that can be done. That is why I'm blown away at where this thread has taken me. I didn't expect such a request to be fought so wonderfully.

Mike Lane

And now a cute kitty break...

cybercrypt13

great photo!

JimM

Mike Lane wrote:

And now a cute kitty break...

Mike, you totally crack me up!!!

flyingdutchie

cybercrypt13 wrote:

Dude, lol, this is all I was asking for. The digging the heals in is because of the constant excuses as to why nothing like that can be done. That is why I'm blown away at where this thread has taken me. I didn't expect such a request to be fought so wonderfully.

I guess it was your opening-sentence of this thread:
[Well, this is a perfect example of how customer's do things that you guys don't seem to get]

It is hard to make friends when you start an question with an accusation.... I can understand you're a bit miffed over the hoops you had to go through earlier, but it is wise in those circumstances to delay hitting the 'Submit Reply' button and hit the 'Preview Post' instead... read it wait a little until your frustation has simmered down somewhat... Change your post... and then hit 'Submit Reply'

Better catching flies with honey than with vinegar....