GroupCall - what the hell happened?

[psydii]

No phone support, no response on support email. Phone calls to our account manager instantly disconnected mid-auto attendant response.

 

Unable to send emails through the service.

 

Community Brands this is not a good look, and makes us less likely to choose any of the other products you have bought.

[round2it]

have capita gone anywhere near them??? that smells of capita takeover

[psydii]

Not Capita. Community Brands are international and just buying up school communications services left and right.

 

Jonas Group did the same a few years ago with cashless catering - but (in our experience) they actually managed to improve the operations of the businesses they bought.

[GREED]

As the former Product Manager at Groupcall this is sad to read...

[DrBeaker]

We had similar experiences here in 2018 trying to get hold of any customer service to do our SIMs migration to a new server. Until a helpful member of staff here on edugeek helped me out. But direct contact didn't get me anywhere.

[GREED]

We had similar experiences here in 2018 trying to get hold of any customer service to do our SIMs migration to a new server. Until a helpful member of staff here on edugeek helped me out. But direct contact didn't get me anywhere.

Was that me too? God 2018 was a long time ago!

[DrBeaker]

Was that me too? God 2018 was a long time ago!

Yes, it was. I believe you've since left, which is a loss to them.

[andy_b]

This is the first company that we work with that I haven't been able to actually speak to someone..

[titch]

Any update on this? Need some urgent support but cant get through to anyone either on phones or via messaging. Bit worrying! Does anyone have a direct contact?

[titch]

I shouldnt laugh but everyone single extensions mailbox is full!

[andy_b]

Raised a support ticket last week - no response...

[titch]

When do we stop paying? My groupcall messenger literally isnt working at the moment so not ideal when you don't even have any feedback saying how long you might have to wait! The answer machines are mentioning covid as an excuse but Im not sure how this would affect their business model in a way that they no longer do any support. In fact, I would think they would thrive during lockdown!

[Katy]

Wow things have got bad, I remember them being really good at support back when we used GC Messenger. We swapped it for the built in email/SMS facility in the MIS in the end.

[DrBeaker]

Tried Tuesday to get hold of them and today. Neither time is the phone being answered - working from home apparently or emails acknowledged.

 

Apparently going as "Community Brands UK"?

[andy_b]

Took them about a week to reply to my ticket - from an eduspot email addresss??

 

I replied that their response was far too late and no longer relevant - didn't receive any reply....

[DrBeaker]

Their Twitter page has lots of users complaining about no response either [emoji33][emoji26]

[mrbios]

Had the same problem here, no support from them. Took until today for Y7s to start syncing into CPOMs and AccessIT, no idea if someone finally fixed it or if it started working on its own, guess i might find out eventually if anyone ever responds.

[DrBeaker]

Their Twitter page has lots of users complaining about no response either recently as Monday [emoji33][emoji26]

 

I've sent that to our SLT who are complaining about things not being done.

Edited September 10, 2020 by DrBeaker

[Zammo]

Yep we have at least 5 academies with issues that are outstanding and the support has been abysmal

[DrBeaker]

Yep we have at least 5 academies with issues that are outstanding and the support has been abysmal

I've literally said to our SLT if they're not getting back to us now, god forbid if we have an actual problem with them! Edited September 10, 2020 by DrBeaker

[AdeB]

Hello...at the risk of putting my head above the trenches, I'm a manager at Groupcall and Community Brands. Obviously I'm really disappointed to read the comments here. Our phone lines are incredibly busy and we've contacted our supplier to address some issues with dropped calls. I can assure you my colleagues are working flat out, but that will come as little comfort if you've been left in the dark.

 

While acknowledging this isn't the best medium for support, I'd be happy to look in to any cases for you to see what's what, so please PM me.

[andy_b]

Hello...at the risk of putting my head above the trenches, I'm a manager at Groupcall and Community Brands. Obviously I'm really disappointed to read the comments here. Our phone lines are incredibly busy and we've contacted our supplier to address some issues with dropped calls. I can assure you my colleagues are working flat out, but that will come as little comfort if you've been left in the dark.

 

While acknowledging this isn't the best medium for support, I'd be happy to look in to any cases for you to see what's what, so please PM me.

 

I do wonder how busy you were in the middle of August - this is usually one of the quietest times??

[titch]

Hello...at the risk of putting my head above the trenches, I'm a manager at Groupcall and Community Brands. Obviously I'm really disappointed to read the comments here. Our phone lines are incredibly busy and we've contacted our supplier to address some issues with dropped calls. I can assure you my colleagues are working flat out, but that will come as little comfort if you've been left in the dark.

 

While acknowledging this isn't the best medium for support, I'd be happy to look in to any cases for you to see what's what, so please PM me.

Thanks AdeB. Appreciate you coming on here on like you said probably not the best way for us to ask for support but probably a good way of us asking questions about the support.

 

First up just to say once I got through to support the service was great and you guys helped out efficeiently and effectively.

 

But getting through was an complete nightmare....I had to take to Twitter to get any form of response.

 

I have only just got an "official" response from my email ticket which was over a week ago.

 

I never got tickets created for the 2 online forms I filled in.

 

Presumably other than having your workforce at home/off sick it is business as usual for you guys with Covid?

 

If this is the case then how is it you have such a backlog of tickets? End of Aug/start of September is obvouisly the busiest time for you but you must know that and plan it in? Over a week response time for an what O thought was an emergency request ticket really doesn't cut the mustard

 

It really is sticking point and will be an important consideration when signing up for new contracts.

 

Just to add Adbe this isn't a direct moan at you. It's based on your current support business model. We really do appreciate you coming on here to no doubt get hounded!

[Zoom7000]

This is unfortunately my experience with Groupcall almost every year, especially in September

[AdeB]

Thanks titch ... and absolutely appreciate the feedback.

 

Pleased to read the support interaction was positive... I can ask which forms did you complete? If you didn't get a confirmation then yes something went awry.

 

We have a mix of staff remote and office based as of last week... but yes 'business as usual' if there's such a thing these days! August was our busiest August in terms of year on year trend, but overall cases were down of course, however we get a huge influx over about 14 days in Sept and while we bring in temporary staff and redeploy some perm staff to assist, there's simply no way of maintaining the same levels of support that we can in other periods of the year... at least not that would make for a commercially viable business. Our auto-replies do state the limitations and pressure given this time of year to try and set expectations. However, over a week to reply isn't good enough (and the stats tell me that isn't the norm) so I'd like to look in to that if you can ping me the details?