Best way to contact Sonic?

[warbucks]

I am having increasing difficulty with contacting Sonic Support/Billing/etc. Calling in I get on the interminable wait, some lines (Billing) they throw to Voice Mail after a while, others they give the 'call back' option. And there is email. BUT, nothing seems to work in a time effective manner. This month I am 1 of 3 on call backs, and given the late hour I assume I will be at 1 of 4 but COB today. I am am 0 of 1 on email contacts. And 0 of about 10 or so on call-ins.

Any idea of a way to get in without making it my fulltime occupation? Support has usually been helpful or sympathetic if I can get through. Billing I cannot get hold of, so no experience, though now I need to talk to them. Do I need to drive to Santa Rosa and make it in-person? Bueller ..... Bueller .... That is how I feel these days when trying to get in touch with Sonic.

- Rick

[dane]

The two primary methods of contact are telephone and email.

If you call by phone, 8am - 10pm, you should reach someone here. There may be a wait, but we offer a "virtual hold" feature that'll ring you back when your turn comes up. And, you can click to see current queue size, estimated hold time, and request a call: http://sonic.net/support/cba

The second method is email. When you email support@sonic.net or billing@sonic.net, you'll receive back a ticket number assignment, which you can use to reference the item if you fail to receive a response. If you don't see a response in 24 hours, do ring, and reference the ticket number.

I'm sorry we've been challenging to reach, that's not the typical experience.

[warbucks]

Dane,

I appreciate the input, but if you re-read my post the reason I made it is that none of the methods you mention work, at least not in a timely or reliable fashion. Over the past month I have spent, conservatively, 40+ hours on hold. So far this month I am 2 of 4 for callbacks on the 'virtual hold', though one of those was way overdue. And I am 0 for 2 on attempts to use email as a contact method. To be blunt, I do not have time to make sitting on hold an occupation, and 2 for 6 for the other methods ('virtual hold' and email) would only be a good average for hitter in baseball. Those averages need to be near 100% within a reasonable time period (same day if done early enough, beginning of the next work day if not). Perhaps my experience is not typical; if it is not typical then what can be the explanation of the poor record on callbacks or email responses? Am I being punished?

[goetsch]

My experience is not unlike that of warbucks. Generally I try to avoid contacting support because I know it's going to be an ordeal to get my question or problem handled, so I'll try to handle it myself, only reaching out as an absolute last resort. I am not a big fan of phone support because of the inefficiencies involved: having to explain my problem to potentially several different support people, requiring that the tech and I are both at the phone at the same time--whether at my initial call or at their return of my call--and so forth. Apparently sending an email to support serves to initiate an automatic trouble-ticket-generating process, but more times than not I don't receive any human-generated response. I was always curious as to what happens to all those open tickets that don't get acted on?

Back in a previous lifetime when I did customer support, dealing with complex hardware and software issues and naive end users (Yes, Virginia, CP/M was a real thing), our goal was to leave no support request unfilled at the end of the day. While there may have been the occasional miss on that, by and large it just didn't happen, and management leaned heavily on us to make sure of that. I hear so much about Sonic's award-winning support, but frankly I really have never experienced it.

[guest]

My experience is not unlike that of warbucks.

I hear so much about Sonic's award-winning support, but frankly I really have never experienced it.

These guys are great when you have their full attention. My guess is this is Sonic is growing faster than their support organization. If so it's the cost of accommodating people's concerns about "I need more speed, give me more or I'll leave." That was my concern when people wanted Sonic to expand their footprint rapidly.

[dane]

We are aware that hold times have been longer, and more variable over the last year, and that emails are taking a bit over 24 hours to be answered. We're hiring and training as quickly as possible.

But this is the first report I've seen regarding not being able to reach us: not getting a reply to an email, and not getting the callback from the virtual hold system. Have others experienced that?

We did have issues a few weeks ago related to capacity in our phone system, where some calls were being dropped or rejected. That was resolved with a doubling in trunk capacity a couple weeks ago.

For the original poster, it'd be useful to have the ticket numbers from any emails you sent in which you haven't received a response for.

[virtualmike]

I've had one occurrence where I did not get a callback when I used http://sonic.net/support/cba. This would have been about three weeks ago (you can check my account and see the day when a vendor meet was scheduled with AT&T for my Fusion x2 service). I tried reaching Sonic support because the AT&T tech called me several hours earlier than the scheduled time, asking if the meet could be rescheduled. I told the tech to contact Sonic, and I also tried to call Support.

Regarding http://sonic.net/support/cba, it would be very useful if clicking the "Request a call" button would give feedback that the number is in the queue. Currently, when clicked, nothing appears to happen. A second click yields "A call is already scheduled for XXX-XXX-XXXX," but I think it would be a better experience to see an acknowledgment when the button is clicked the first time.

[dane]

I've had one occurrence where I did not get a callback when I used http://sonic.net/support/cba. This would have been about three weeks ago (you can check my account and see the day when a vendor meet was scheduled with AT&T for my Fusion x2 service).

We've published an update on this item, see:
https://corp.sonic.net/status/2015/08/2 ... -resolved/

Regarding http://sonic.net/support/cba, it would be very useful if clicking the "Request a call" button would give feedback that the number is in the queue. Currently, when clicked, nothing appears to happen. A second click yields "A call is already scheduled for XXX-XXX-XXXX," but I think it would be a better experience to see an acknowledgment when the button is clicked the first time.

Yes, that page used to provide a confirmation, and we are working now to determine why it broke and get that fixed.

[virtualmike]

Thanks! I saw the update earlier today. This is great news.

[lr]

The second method is email. When you email support@sonic.net or billing@sonic.net, you'll receive back a ticket number assignment, which you can use to reference the item if you fail to receive a response. If you don't see a response in 24 hours, do ring, and reference the ticket number.

I'm sorry we've been challenging to reach, that's not the typical experience.

I worry that Sonic's (usually excellent) staff is getting a bit overloaded. I just remembered that I have a ticket open (not support, but sales), and it has been 4 days without response.

Dane: Would it be possible to put a quick hack into your ticket tracking system that sends an automatic e-mail after 36 or 48 hours on an ticket without any activity, just saying "we have not forgotten you"? It might also a good idea to do a little audit of how long tickets go before being answered.

In the meantime, I'll just forward the ticket e-mail to sales and support, they can work on it next week.