Lack of Communications

[bluejup]

My first experience is not good so far.
Yesterday I ordered a SSL certificate. I went through to PayPal and paid, and then the return to NoZone button took me to a broken link. I tried the same link a couple of minutes later and worked, so I proceeded to enter the Certificate Signing Request information. Since submitting that I have had no communications at all saying what would happen next, except an auto-generated ticket which just has the contents of the internal communications between PayPal and Steadfast Networks - ie no useful info to me at all.

So I lodged another ticket explaining how confusing and unclear this was. I received a quick response saying that the account had to be approved by billing - no info about when that might happen, or any response about my information regarding the very unclear process and lack of communications.
I then updated the first auto-generated ticket that I understood was going to be reviewed by the billing people with some queries.
:No response.

A few hours later I updated the urgent ticket asking when this order may be processed.
:No response

I sent an email to sales@steadfast.net
:No response

So right now I have no idea if the order is being processed or not or if I need to get it from somewhere else.
I know these certificates are not that much income, but why offer them for sale and then waste my time and yours by not communicating. We need the certificate - if you can't supply that's fine just don't offer it. Others will supply it within 2 hours.

We were also looking at trying other services at Steadfast like dedicated servers, but right now the confidence is a be shot by this lack of action and communications.
I don't get it.

[Justec]

Usually billing departments are not open 24/7 like support. So if you are placing an order in the evening it might take until morning to have it processed.

[bluejup]

Yes I'm aware of that (its been over a day), but the main point is tell the customer what is going on and what to expect. A simple email to inform what the process is would go a long way. But instead get an auto generated ticket with just the contents of the paypal ipn which shouldn't be sent to me - shows lack of foresight by whomever set up the process if you ask me, and continued non responses just makes you wonder what to expect in the future.

[Karl]

Our sales staff has been busy at HostingCon (http://www.hostingcon.com/), so there has certainly been a delay on sales and billing tickets. We will be able to get through the remainder of the tickets tomorrow, Thursday.

[Tommy]

Yep, I think it was caused of Sales/Billing staffs attended HostingCon. Steadfast always solves these issues quickly!

[bluejup]

Yes maybe, but a lot could be solved by sending an auto email just saying what the process will be - ie don't send me the PayPal ipn in a ticket and nothing else. Instead of that it would be very easy to send an email saying thanks for the order, our billing account will approve this in the next x hours, and following that you will normally receive your order in y hours. That is easy.

My experience is that if you tell the customer what will happen then they are happy - even if there may be a delay. The above can all be done automatically and then it doesn't matter so much if the staff are away at conferences or whatever.