I’m both sorry and disappointed to say that it darned well looks like it.
Here is what Andrew Hansen says in his sales page:
As a Firepow member you’ll have access to 24 hour a day LIVE support.
That means you’re playing with Firepow at 2am and you run into an issue… there’s someone there to talk to immediately, WAITING to help you.
No waiting days to get your problems solved, period.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Well, here’s the current reality:
I have only seen live Support for 2 days, and that was immediately after Firepow 2.O was launched.
I used it twice during that time. The fist contact resulted in a directive to leave a message about my problem. I did… and that was the last I heard. The second time somebody was in attendance and I received good service.
Since then Support has not been ‘live’ any time that I have visited it. I have had to post my query and wait for an answer. I usually get a reply (always courteous and helpful) around 4-10 hr later. By Internet standards that’s not bad, not bad at all. But by the standards promised by Andrew, that’s nothing short of appalling.
If we look at the forums (which is where a lot of people seek help) we find that one person seeking help at 10:48PM on the 21st (All times and dates are GMT +10—Australian EST) and another person at 3:49PM on the same day, still haven’t received answers up to the time of writing—11:00 AM
Now they may have received help in the meantime from Support—I have no way of knowing that—but I think that is most unlikely.
This is why: I lodged a ticket myself at around 6:00 PM yesterday (the 21st), and I still haven’t received a reply. That’s 17 hr.
There’s a bunch more things I could say about the lack of Admin’s presence in the forums yesterday and so far today, but I’m not going to take the time. What I’ve said is evidence enough of a faltering support system
Quite frankly I’m gutted by this demonstration of over-promise and under-delivery. It’s simply not good enough, and the whole sorry affair is exacerbated by the fact that there has been no apology or even a notification that live Support could not be maintained, not to mention that together with that should have been an indication of what in fact could be expected in the future.
Do I think this detracts from the real value of Firepow 2.0?
No I don’t. Not to any significant extent. It’s a fabulous program and I wouldn’t be without it.
There’s nothing wrong with Firepow that a good management consultant and a good instructional designer couldn’t fix. Absolutely nothing.
I just wish that Andrew and his team, intelligent, honest and possessed of remarkable IT ‘smarts’ though they undoubtedly are, would realize that nobody can be good at everything, and it is crucial that some management processes, apart from law and accountancy, are outsourced.
Over-promising and under-delivering is a damaging management fault that significantly undermines customer confidence. It is a practice that simply has to be eliminated.
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