How do you solve problems and fix issues without the help of customer support?

[Jovanw]

Hello Seller Community!

I'm a researcher at Square and I'm looking into how you troubleshoot issues and reasons you may not use customer support. I'm curious to learn:

• What resources do you use outside of customer support to help solve your issues?
• How helpful is the seller community or other forums in helping you troubleshoot issues?
• What do you use customer support for outside of fixing problems with your account or devices?

Let’s discuss! I’m looking forward to hearing more. Thanks.

[DLFdesigns]

I don't have an answer besides using google, but I'm interested in answers that will come!

[Jovanw]

Thank you for replying. We appreciate your response. 

[jhowton]

I am extremely disappointed with Square support at every level.  My last few attempts to have you fix your software problems have been extremely frustrating.  It's almost like the people who respond to service tickets don't speak English.  They send replies that are unrelated to the problem - repeatedly; and don't ever concede thats there's a problem with your software.  There is no way to fix most of the problems because they are programmatic in nature.

[Girlvic]

I agree. I had support tell me they don't do abandoned cart emails! 

[Jovanw]

@Girlvic Sorry that you have had this experience as well. How were you able to deal with the issue without customer support? 

[Jovanw]

@jhowton I am sorry to hear that you have had this experience. Could you tell me more about what you mean by our issues being programmatic in nature? What have you done outside of Square support to deal with these issues?

[LOG]

I agree too, support can be good sometimes but I find other times it can be terrible. 

What I have realised is if the customer service agent doesn't immediately get what you are describing then do not proceed and just close the case as unresolved. Once they are dug in on a certain train of thought they just can not a) adapt to new further explanation b) be honest that they do not understand c) refer internally for help from someone who knows more. They just keep jabbbering at you with the same misunderstood resolutions and out of date links. The last CSA who had no idea what I was talkign about told me to call instead. I told him I wouldnt bother. 

The problem is that many users will know much more about the software and especially its many bugs and quirks than the customer support agents. And once they do accept the software has a bug dont expect a) any recognition b) enlightenment c) any transparency that it is a priority or will ever be fixed d) any notification that it is ever fixed. Its just a black hole of nohingness and silly marketing emails and features I do not really care about. 

[ReefPassion]

I'm afraid I agree with @jhowton. I generally have very little joy with customer support or they suggest completely inappropriate fixes. (eg I have been having an array of problems preventing my customers purchasing as there are issues with the checkout, the response was ask them to clear cache etc - I'm clearly not able to do this when they are finding my website online, if it doesn't work first time they will buy somewhere else)

It took 6 weeks to get a reply to my last customer support email!!!!!! I don't have time to keep chasing for responses as a busy business owner. I tend to come to the community or search Google as often someone else has had or is having the same issue. 

[BofBArtStudio]

The seller community is a great place to find answers to issues and share ideas that could improve functions.  

Most answers can be found there since the community is so active.

When there are urgent issues that need immediate help, I always call support and speak with someone. Everyone at support is so helpful and always get the issue solved very quickly.

For example, just a few weeks ago, I called support because someone was impersonating one of my team members and trying to gain access to their direct deposit payments.  We were able to get this solved and blocked very quickly over the phone. 

Because of how helpful the community forums and the support are, I very rarely need to look elsewhere. 

I do also belong to a couple of Facebook Square groups.  

[Jovanw]

@BofBArtStudio Thanks for sharing. I am happy to hear that you were able to get your issues resolved quickly. You mentioned that you are a part of Square groups on Facebook. Which groups are you a part of? Could you also tell me why you joined? 

[BofBArtStudio]

PYOP Square Users Group (for my industry)

Square Users Group (general group for all Square users)

I think I joined them five years ago. I'm always trying to understand and learn more about the systems that I use and make sure that I'm using them to their full capacity and it's always nice to be able to help others who have issues that I have knowledge of and can help them to understand how to solve or better ways to do things. I am both a contributor and a receiver on these groups. 

I really like the PYOP group for my industry though because it doesn't have as much of the riff raff as there is on the general group. And I think I get more information out of the PYOP group and I'm able to help my fellow studio owners as well. 

Mostly though I just spend a bunch of time in the community here on Square. I interact with the community almost every day.

[BuzzMO]

I'm afraid I largely gave up on support a few years ago. My memory is the wait time is long, the phone tree is frustratingly complicated and the first person I talk to rarely has the answer, resulting in escalation which took ages to get an answer that was often incomplete. Thankfully I haven't had any real issues in a long time, but I feel I should be able to call when I run into even minor issues, which probably occur once a month or so, but instead I just sigh and hope that the bug or issue will get fixed in a day or two. And while that wait is irritatingly dissatisfying, it's better than wasting my time making a call when as a small business owner, time is the one thing that I never have enough of. You asked what other resources we use, and for me, I just Google and hope for the best. Occasionally the Square help articles will help me get through something. For example I was trying to navigate to the interface to turn on cash drawers (which I had turned on but automatically turned off a few months ago, and I haven't had time to figure out why or fix it until this last week. Now I know it's a "add on" that I have to opt into again), but I couldn't figure out the breadcrumbs to get there. Thankfully the help article for that gave me what I needed. What would be extremely useful in the help articles would be screen shots and more links/URLs to help me navigate to the exact spot I need to get to. Sometimes the description of navigation or steps are confusing. I never find the help videos useful - they are too short and high level. I need to see a walk through on the screen rather than what often feels like a sales tool with a voice over saying something like "With Square, you can connect with customers in new and exciting ways" - I'm looking for the video because I can't get the feature I need to work properly. I know what it should do, I need help knowing the proper steps to set something up. The Seller Community is useful in that I find other people with my same issue, but often the answer from Square in the thread is "thanks for the feedback, but that's not on our roadmap" and the answer is 3 years old. I rarely find actual answers or help for the things I need. And it's not up to your sellers to offer answers to solve other seller's problems - unless you'd like to offer us a financial incentive to do so - so I'm not going to hang out on the forums looking to answer questions for someone who's struggling. Outside of contacting support for help with my account or device, I don't contact support. I think I've contacted support twice in the last year, and only as a very last resort. 

[Jovanw]

I am sorry to hear that you have had that experience with customer support. Thank you for your feedback. 

[Amyeichlerart]

I rarely contact support anymore because of the time it takes to get to the root of the issue (usually 30-60 minutes of back and forth on the chat.  If I had time to be tied up on the phone, it would probably be better).  I'd love a community forum for experienced Square users who could answer questions and share issues.  Unfortunately some of the posts/answers here are too outdated or questions go unanswered.  The issues I have are generally because of system/operational updates that happen without any heads-up to us or glitches in the system that occur without error notification info.  We'd like to help Square resolve issues, but it takes too much time to go through this with entry level customer support.  These issues have to be affecting a lot of customers, yet there's not a great way to work through this as a community. 

[Jovanw]

Thanks for your feedback. In an ideal world, what would that community forum that you mentioned in your post look like for you? 

[Michael_L]

I'm pretty good about researching my own issues before I call support, so when it reaches the point that I need to contact support I want to get someone who is skilled and experienced.

With most support calls, it starts with a call center and a standardized script that covers what I've already done.  The annoyance of having to redo the stuff I already did is generally enough of a barrier that I won't reach out unless it's genuinely critical to keeping my business operating.

To be fair, I have had very few calls to tech support and in the end they were all resolved properly.  My last one took a few days and apparently had to be bounced around a few people before they got the answer, but it did get resolved -- so thank you!

[Jovanw]

Thank you for your feedback. Where do you usually look when you are researching your own issues for help? 

[TCSlaguna]

- I mostly use the Community to find answers to the questions I have. There are so many knowledgeable sellers in the Community, I usually get an answer right away. 

- Super helpful

- I use customer support if there is an issue specific to my business, such as the website not updating inventory. Then it requires a call to Customer Support to see if they can fix something on the backend. 

[Jovanw]

Thank you for your feedback. One question I had to follow up was where do you usually search in the seller community for help with your issues? 

[homeprogreen]

I will normally check the community first to see if it’s a known issue and if anyone has come up with a work around. If I don’t find a thread talking about it then I will start a thread asking if others have noticed the issue and what workaround they’ve found. The reason that I don’t normally start with customer support for most issues is that while they’re normally pretty good at offering basic solutions to common problems they’re 1st tier support and for anything other than the basics they have to escalate the issues to next level support. I’ve used Square for a very long time so I’ve had lots of experience with solving the basics. Don’t get me wrong though Squares customer support team is very good and quick to escalate issues that they can’t resolve