[bromcom] Bromcom POLL on their services

[Dr_Zeux]

To all schools using Bromcom, I'd like to get some quick feedback on their services to get a general idea on how they're performing.

Just a quick 1-10 on the following categories (1 being the worst and very dissatisfied and 10 being the best and they're performing really well).

 

1. Customercare

2. Helpdesk (resolution to tickets in a timely fashion)

3. General communication to inform you of any issues, slow performance or downtime with their system (incl. status update page)

4. Rollout of updates

5. Development ideas

 

Please respond and leave a number next to each, or N/A if it doesn't apply to you.

 

Many thanks for your participation!

Edited March 27, 2024 by dbluston

[drutt]

1. Our onboarding manager decided to stop responding to emails from the 15th February when we had not officially gone live, which was nice. Had a right mare manually importing data from SIMS that was missing as we had to use our demo to go live with due to the ESS drama.

2. We have third-party support so I believe we have to go through them for everything first, they've been great with any questions we ask but they are new to Bromcom as well.

3. Other than the status page don't really get notices but we've only been live for about 3 weeks

4. Completely invisible as far as I can see, not noticed any downtime.

5. Don't have access to the community section and not sure how to get it now I can't contact our onboarding manager

 

Even though it's not been the best experience regarding communication the system itself is leaps and bounds a better experience than SIMS.

[Bromcom_Darren]

5. Don't have access to the community section and not sure how to get it now I can't contact our onboarding manager

 

Please email me on [email protected] and I will get you a link sent over

[supportman]

To all schools using Bromcom, I'd like to get some quick feedback on their services to get a general idea on how they're performing.

Just a quick 1-10 on the following categories (1 being the worst and very dissatisfied and 10 being the best and they're performing really well).

 

1. Customercare

2. Helpdesk (resolution to tickets in a timely fashion)

3. General communication to inform you of any issues, slow performance or downtime with their system (incl. status update page)

4. Rollout of updates

5. Development ideas

 

Please respond and leave a number next to each, or N/A if it doesn't apply to you.

 

Many thanks for your participation!

 

1) Generally good when you log a ticket. I miss the quick chat for quick responses but get why they can't offer that with so many new schools joining now.

 

2) Helpdesk has been excellent for us on virtually all tickets. Usually takes 24hrs but always get a response.

 

3) Much improved recently. Status page is nice but they always send out emails if there are any major outages. I think there has been 3 major outages in the 4 years we've had them and all solved within an hour.

 

4) Updates are excellent, they do them on Friday nights mostly and very seamless. Certainly 1 million times better than Sims and generally transparent.

 

5) Not great with development ideas on the portal, but I hear that is changing with a new team. Their communication has been particularly bad in that area even if the speed of development has been amazing. I'm still waiting for my room bookings update and making the payment option more prominent even though I identified them when we joined to multiple people. Then again, they have fixed the MCAS onboarding, speed of some lists that were an issue pretty quick after I mentioned them.

Edited March 28, 2024 by supportman

[Steve21]

I appreciate we're from a different perspective, but we're just in the process of moving over to Bromcom and already finding lots of issues that don't seem to be workable with no real answers coming back to us.

 

As an example, despite having a direct contact point as part of our migration we've raised an issue where support staff can't access teachers seating plans (as there seems to be an "old" seating plan route for support that they can view by accessing a teachers class, and a "new" seating plan route for teachers and you can't view the new ones unless set in THAT class as the new view won't show for them) and despite asking for any updates as to how to resolve this we just get answers like "it's working as expected, if you want to change it raise a development idea"...

 

Obviously having two different routes to the same items that half our staff can't use doesn't seem very "working as expected" - Being able to see a teachers seating plan as support staff or a cover teacher would be very normal for us.

 

It's just an example of something (as there are many others) that either seems to be certain staff lacking with information, if there is an easy way to resolve these, or items that because modules are being updated on the fly that it's getting disjointed in it's way of accessing items as somethings updated to a new system, yet another route for other staff isn't - I know it may be the case that it'll be fixed soon or updated etc, but just constantly being told to raise development ideas etc isn't very helpful responses in getting an actual answer

 

Steve

[TheCookieMonster]

1 - No problems here we generally use the self service to add new users and haven't made any complaints. We also raise tickets online when required.

 

2- Helpdesk have been great and has clearly grown in the last year to cater for the demand of new customers.

 

3 - Much better again over the last year we also receive a weekly digest from the community which also includes the top 5 posts from the previous week and any important information that needs to be shared. (This is really useful) Status page also gets updated. You can never receive too much communication in my opinion however.

 

4- As mentioned above these are released on Friday evenings. Sometimes it doesn't get released fully as appreciate things need to pass a testing process.

 

5- We raise Ideas and share them on the community to gain traction and votes from other customers.

Edited March 28, 2024 by TheCookieMonster

[Bromcom_Darren]

I appreciate we're from a different perspective, but we're just in the process of moving over to Bromcom and already finding lots of issues that don't seem to be workable with no real answers coming back to us.

 

As an example, despite having a direct contact point as part of our migration we've raised an issue where support staff can't access teachers seating plans (as there seems to be an "old" seating plan route for support that they can view by accessing a teachers class, and a "new" seating plan route for teachers and you can't view the new ones unless set in THAT class as the new view won't show for them) and despite asking for any updates as to how to resolve this we just get answers like "it's working as expected, if you want to change it raise a development idea"...

 

Obviously having two different routes to the same items that half our staff can't use doesn't seem very "working as expected" - Being able to see a teachers seating plan as support staff or a cover teacher would be very normal for us.

 

It's just an example of something (as there are many others) that either seems to be certain staff lacking with information, if there is an easy way to resolve these, or items that because modules are being updated on the fly that it's getting disjointed in it's way of accessing items as somethings updated to a new system, yet another route for other staff isn't - I know it may be the case that it'll be fixed soon or updated etc, but just constantly being told to raise development ideas etc isn't very helpful responses in getting an actual answer

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

 

Please feel free to DM me or drop me an email with anything that you still require any assistance with and I will see it gets investigated for you.

 

Thanks

Darren Moody

Community Manager Bromcom

[email protected]

[Steve21]

Hi Steve,

 

Please feel free to DM me or drop me an email with anything that you still require any assistance with and I will see it gets investigated for you.

 

Thanks

Darren Moody

Community Manager Bromcom

[email protected]

 

Morning Darren,

 

Thanks for the offer. Will get a few of them summarised up and sent over if that’s ok (as we aren’t fully live yet we don’t have the full helpdesk yet so would be good to try to get a few off the list for when staff return to Bromcom after Easter as it’ll be hitting the ground running)

 

Many thanks,

Steve

[Bromcom_Darren]

Morning Darren,

 

Thanks for the offer. Will get a few of them summarised up and sent over if that’s ok (as we aren’t fully live yet we don’t have the full helpdesk yet so would be good to try to get a few off the list for when staff return to Bromcom after Easter as it’ll be hitting the ground running)

 

Many thanks,

Steve

Take your time happy to go through a full list to make the process as simple as possible for you.

[CHiLL]

1. Customercare - Usually pretty good, though it's been leaving a lot to be desired recently

2. Helpdesk (resolution to tickets in a timely fashion) - With the ticket I have open at the moment, dire. I opened it over a month ago and the last update told me someone would be in touch soon, which was about three weeks ago

3. General communication to inform you of any issues, slow performance or downtime with their system (incl. status update page) - Performance/stability has been significantly better than it was. We've come back from at least two breaks without it going down on the first day back. Communication about scheduled updates is also better, though sometimes the warning they can give it only a matter of hours (but generally works are done from 5pm onwards).

4. Rollout of updates - Unsure as they're generally invisible

5. Development ideas - Can use their ideas portal to create and vote on ideas, but not sure if any of them made it into production (may have done).

[Bromcom_Darren]

1. Customercare - Usually pretty good, though it's been leaving a lot to be desired recently

2. Helpdesk (resolution to tickets in a timely fashion) - With the ticket I have open at the moment, dire. I opened it over a month ago and the last update told me someone would be in touch soon, which was about three weeks ago

3. General communication to inform you of any issues, slow performance or downtime with their system (incl. status update page) - Performance/stability has been significantly better than it was. We've come back from at least two breaks without it going down on the first day back. Communication about scheduled updates is also better, though sometimes the warning they can give it only a matter of hours (but generally works are done from 5pm onwards).

4. Rollout of updates - Unsure as they're generally invisible

5. Development ideas - Can use their ideas portal to create and vote on ideas, but not sure if any of them made it into production (may have done).

 

Good morning,

 

Please could you forward me the case number of the outstanding case and I will get it looked into further for you.

[CHiLL]

Good morning,

 

Please could you forward me the case number of the outstanding case and I will get it looked into further for you.

I've DM'd you.

[Bromcom_Darren]

I've DM'd you.

 

Received and I have chased the case for you.

[CHiLL]

Received and I have chased the case for you.

My case is still unresolved, despite being opened on 04/03/2024, approaching two months ago. I haven't had a response other than along the lines of "I have chased our software team again".

Edited April 22, 2024 by CHiLL

[Bromcom_Darren]

My case is still unresolved, despite being opened on 04/03/2024, approaching two months ago. I haven't had a response other than along the lines of "I have chased our software team again".

 

Hi Chris,

 

This has been chased this morning again for you.

 

Darren

[CHiLL]

Hi Chris,

 

This has been chased this morning again for you.

 

Darren

Hi Darren. I did eventually get a response, but I had to reply back as it's not fully resolved the issue. That reply was 5 days ago and I've not had a reply back. I have noticed that to/from on the reply says my name > my name, instead of my name > support agent, so it seems like I'm replying back to myself without a notification to the agent. I don't know if this is what is happening, or if it's by design or a bug.

[Bromcom_Darren]

Hi Darren. I did eventually get a response, but I had to reply back as it's not fully resolved the issue. That reply was 5 days ago and I've not had a reply back. I have noticed that to/from on the reply says my name > my name, instead of my name > support agent, so it seems like I'm replying back to myself without a notification to the agent. I don't know if this is what is happening, or if it's by design or a bug.

 

I will take a look for you

[Steve21]

Honestly found Bromcom helpdesk to be one of the most useless since we've started with them.

 

Either they have no actual staff and it's an AI that closes your ticket after every reply with generic information not even related to what's been asked half the time, or someone is paying their staff based on seconds taken to close tickets...

 

Never had to re-open so many tickets so often in my entire IT life so far!

 

Steve

[Bromcom_Darren]

Honestly found Bromcom helpdesk to be one of the most useless since we've started with them.

 

Either they have no actual staff and it's an AI that closes your ticket after every reply with generic information not even related to what's been asked half the time, or someone is paying their staff based on seconds taken to close tickets...

 

Never had to re-open so many tickets so often in my entire IT life so far!

 

Steve

 

Hi Steve,

 

I am looking into this for you and have sent you a further message offline.

 

Darren

[Dr_Zeux]

Honestly found Bromcom helpdesk to be one of the most useless since we've started with them.

 

Either they have no actual staff and it's an AI that closes your ticket after every reply with generic information not even related to what's been asked half the time, or someone is paying their staff based on seconds taken to close tickets...

 

Never had to re-open so many tickets so often in my entire IT life so far!

 

Steve

 

Hi Steve

Their helpdesk answers calls quite quickly these days (compared to last academic year), but I agree with you in relation to some tickets and/or closing tickets before they've actually been resolved. I've had a case open for about 7-8 months now, and it's been closed and re-opened a number of times, but not actually resolved. With another case, it took 6 months to resolve, and I quote, "I can only apologize again for the delay on this case. Unfortunately we accumulated a very large backlog since the September period until now and we did not manage to get back on all of them in time."

 

So, it seems as if helpdesk have had a huge backlog of cases since September - we can only speculate why... Helpdesk suggested that if I wanted to provide feedback on this case, to email [email protected]. I replied, and said there's no point - they don't respond to emails. Or perhaps it's just me Steve, as I have made 3 x complaints since September - to which, i'm still waiting for a response! Darren@ Bromcom is aware of this and I also forwarded these complaints to him, but still nothing. They haven't met their own criteria for complaints, which is clearly stated on their website: http://docs.bromcom.com/knowledge-base/how-to-raise-a-complaint-about-bromcoms-products-or-services/

 

Though getting Darren@ Bromcom involved, does seem to speed up the process...

 

I was curious to hear other customers' experiences in relation to Bromcom, hence me setting up this thread in the first place.

 

Thanks for your feedback!

Edited May 8, 2024 by dbluston

[CHiLL]

I will take a look for you

I've had an update from a member of the escalation team, who have been referred the ticket before it is passed to the developers. They have admitted that [bromcom] "have not been able to look into this issue" and advised me to "please keep an eye out for a change in the tickets status". I understand that this has been marked as a low priority ticket, but over two months seems an excessive amount of time for this ticket to be open and not even investigated further than basic helpdesk responses. I have just responded to the escalation team member, though I don't know how long it'll take to get a response. Pprevious replies appear to be weekly, though only following my prompts to you in this thread and sometimes as long as a month.

[Bromcom_Darren]

I've had an update from a member of the escalation team, who have been referred the ticket before it is passed to the developers. They have admitted that [bromcom] "have not been able to look into this issue" and advised me to "please keep an eye out for a change in the tickets status". I understand that this has been marked as a low priority ticket, but over two months seems an excessive amount of time for this ticket to be open and not even investigated further than basic helpdesk responses. I have just responded to the escalation team member, though I don't know how long it'll take to get a response. Pprevious replies appear to be weekly, though only following my prompts to you in this thread and sometimes as long as a month.

 

Could you message me the case number please?

[CHiLL]

Could you message me the case number please?

Sent you a PM.

[Bromcom_Darren]

Sent you a PM.

 

Ticket has been chased for you.

 

Darren

[CHiLL]

Ticket has been chased for you.

 

Darren

Hi Darren. It's been a further two weeks since you last chased them for me and there's again been no update from that. I shouldn't have to resort to replying publicly to you in order to get an update.