Not a fan of the 'new' virtual support

JoAnn Strommen

Took some doing to get to a person and then while I waited….

Amy Dana

@JoAnn Strommen Oof

Karen Diener 2

No “like” option fits, so I'll reply with the disappointed face emoji. ? This sort of “response” is really disappointing.

Elizabeth Johnson

@JoAnn Strommen I too hope the kinks are worked out quickly. I have to say when I get a live person the quality of service has been amazing.

Lee Grisham

@JoAnn Strommen I like how my requests are all being titled things like “person,” “take me to a person” and “0” ?

Joe Moretti 3

@JoAnn StrommenAnother BIG SNAFU from Blackbaud. With all the money they charge for their products, I expect a live tech person within a minute or two. Again, poor service from a behemoth. company that seems to have lost their way.

Kevin Hardy

@JoAnn Strommen for what it's worth, the last time I went through this mess I was told that I should type “talk to an agent” immediately in order to bypass a lot of the bot questions.

(haven't tried yet though)

JoAnn Strommen

@Kevin Hardy and Lee Thanks. Will try the “talk to an agent” next time I'm on.

Thought maybe I'd get an email from ‘Michelle’ saying she had “looked into the issue” but nope.

Crystal Bruce

@JoAnn Strommen:

Took some doing to get to a person and then while I waited….

Hi @JoAnn Strommen I reached out to the support team to see if this was expected behavior and they responded with it is, that the session will time out after being inactive for 10 minutes and that there should be a timer that you see in the chat window. Can you let me know if that is the same experience you had? Thank you!

JoAnn Strommen

@Crystal Bruce I did not notice a time. It's frequently a long time when they need to look into something so I just kept working on my other monitor and glancing for a reply.

So if I as the user need to keep the session open I have to watch the timer and key in some text to keep it active?
That would be beneficial to know.

Bobby Steurer

@JoAnn Strommen I concur with others that “Please let me talk to a live customer support agent” has lead me to an actual person, but you'll have to type it a couple of times. The chatbot really wants to help. (It's annoying). The quality of live agent help is still hit-or-miss once you get to them, but that's been my experience with Blackbaud support since I started working with it ten years ago.

Lee Grisham

@Crystal Bruce when it was rolled out, the agents had NO IDEA that it was happening. I kept putting in random phrases to avoid the timeout and they would reply by “you don't need to do that” until I explained that it would time out if I didn't and sometimes they still wouldn't believe me.

If you are waiting for a response from the agent, they need the ability to pause this timer as we have no control over how long it takes them to respond. If that is not an option, it needs to be removed to avoid reopening cases. Like @Joe Moretti said, this is another way for BB to decrease the amount of people hours spent which equates to $$$ down the drain for their shareholders.

Crystal Bruce

@JoAnn Strommen:

@Crystal Bruce I did not notice a time. It's frequently a long time when they need to look into something so I just kept working on my other monitor and glancing for a reply.

So if I as the user need to keep the session open I have to watch the timer and key in some text to keep it active?
That would be beneficial to know.

I'm checking into this for you!

Christine Cooke 2

@Karen Diener

with the sad irony that the customer success/relations dude was so excited about the changes they've made in the last year and coming in 2024 - when speaking during the opening bbcon thingy that I watched yesterday (from the comfort of home) . fix it what you have and test before it goes out.

Crystal Bruce

@JoAnn Strommen Hi! We appreciate your feedback as our aim is for every customer to have a positive experience when contacting Customer Support. The Customer Support team will ensure that all our associates understand to check in when a resolution is taking longer than usual in order to prevent the chat from timing out, and to ensure that you know they are still working on your issue.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

@Crystal Bruce I do NOT see a timer but I have the experience of being timed out. Super irritating to have to periodically type in something along the lines of “are we still connected” or “touching base” just to stay connected.

Petra Hall

@JoAnn Strommen
I've just stopped using the chat, and skip straight to creating cases. I generally find the responses to be faster than waiting for the chatbot to actually connect me with a person.

Lee Grisham

@Petra Hall How do you do that? I don't see an option when I go to

Do you have to do something specific?

Petra Hall

@Lee Grisham I click on “Manage Cases" and then, at the top of the list, the “Create case” button.

Beware, that the easy-to-spot search field at the top of the Manage Cases screen is actually for the Knowledgebase. If you want to search your case history, there is a second (smaller) search field in the menu bar just above the list of cases.

Lee Grisham

@Petra Hall ? I don't have one.

Petra Hall

@Lee Grisham I'm guessing that is either your access permissions, or the support contract between Blackbaud and your organization. This is what I see:

JoAnn Strommen

@Lee Grisham I can get the options @Petra Hall showed by clicking Manage Cases.

Or, noticed if I scroll down on home support page it's there too. Good to know.