Signature Solar Two Hours On Hold Just To Buy an Item!

Bluedog225 said:

If they are taking callers off hold momentarily then placing back on hold, your analytics are shot. I’d think you would want to test this yourself.

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The report matches what he showed exactly. I think it is accurate. I've tested this before

I'm really curious how many calls a day they are getting vs how many employees handle phone duty vs average length of each call for both sales and tech support. It's one thing for a customer with a dozen technical questions to wait for a while in a queue vs another who just wants to verify stock availability prior to placing a web order.

sunshine_eggo said:

FWIW, I gave it a try:

Here's my evidence:


View attachment 142136

11:25 AM MST. On hold for 26 minutes. Gave up.

Message looped several times, but I believe on at least 3-4 occasions, the call was picked up and placed back on hold as that's what it sounded like.

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Holy cow that's awful!

BenFromSignatureSolar said:

Maybe if you're in Arizona where they don't observe daylight savings time. Didn't consider that

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My first call dropped for no reason after three minutes on hold for support. Next call worked and I got through to someone.

Sounds like there might be an issue with the call system.

sunshine_eggo said:

FWIW, I gave it a try:

Here's my evidence:


View attachment 142136

11:25 AM MST. On hold for 26 minutes. Gave up.

Message looped several times, but I believe on at least 3-4 occasions, the call was picked up and placed back on hold as that's what it sounded like.

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Maybe that's their trick to keep the phone system numbers from looking bad.

Will Prowse said:

My first call dropped for no reason after three minutes on hold for support. Next call worked and I got through to someone.

Sounds like there might be an issue with the call system.

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I believe one of the guys in the videos I posted a few pages back today said this also happens with email.

The sales and tech queues are separate. Sales calls average 7 min and tech about 12. There are 6 sales people most days (we're training some new folks) and 9 phone techs (a few others do tier 2). Today across both depts, when I left, we had taken in 342 calls and answered 260. That doesn't include emails. We average roughly 500 per week in sales and 350 in tech.

That is a lot of calls. SS next hire should be voice linked chat AI robot trained on SS knowledgebase.

I got another call and had to bail. Though 9 minutes is longer than I would stick around in real life. Except for the IRS.

This game is not much fun.

sunshine_eggo said:

FWIW, I gave it a try:

Here's my evidence:


View attachment 142136

11:25 AM MST. On hold for 26 minutes. Gave up.

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I am dreading testing this for Will-P. I am not doing it for 2 hours again but will try 1 hour.

sunshine_eggo said:

Message looped several times, but I believe on at least 3-4 occasions, the call was picked up and placed back on hold as that's what it sounded like.

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Yep! That's exactly what I heard.
It seems like about every 5 minutes (Aprox) you hear some sort of click and noise that gives the impression that someone is going to answer, but then it just loops again. It's like a telephone tease ?

Browse said:

That is a lot of calls. SS next hire should be voice linked chat AI robot trained on SS knowledgebase.

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Careful what you ask for. This is exactly what ChatGPT is going to do.
I am scared to even contemplate how many people will lose their Jobs.

realpinochet said:

I believe one of the guys in the videos I posted a few pages back today said this also happens with email.

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The last time I tried email, it was the standard 24 hour reply time. I have no idea what it is like today but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is still the same.

This thread clearly attracts a lot of interest, mine included obviously.
Competition is what makes a capitalist market work efficiently.

Does Signature have a monopoly on any products y'all buy from them?
If not, does Signature offer a lower price on products that others sell?
What price difference would make it worth buying from a supplier who offers zero phone or email contact or warranty ever, but sells products cheaper than their competitors?
If you could immediately establish phone contact 24/7 with sales and tech support, but you had to use a pay-by-the-minute (900) number to do so, would that be acceptable?
If products were sold at a price lower than any competitor with no support, but you could buy a "service contract" for full. immediate, expert tech support and warranty, what percentage of the product price should the "service contract" cost?

As in many aspects of life, there is no problem regarding solar products that money cannot fix.

Rock on!

sunshine_eggo said:

Here's my evidence:

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robby said:

I could make a 2 hour video of the Music while I am on hold but I kind of think that would be pointless.

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@robby just go back into your call logs right now and post a screenshot like eggo did.

mountkay said:

@robby just go back into your call logs right now and post a screenshot like eggo did.

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I used a Vonage landline, so no records.
I really am an old fart, it seems like no one has a landline in their house anymore.

BenFromSignatureSolar said:

That was far from the average today.

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Putting my telecoms hat on.... if that was far from the average, then you should be monitoring max / min and standard deviations too.

If (say) 50% of your sales calls are answered in 15s and you have an average hold of 5min 30s, then there are a lot of calls waiting much longer than that.

Also, most call centre telephony reporting systems should give you an abandoned call rate. Obviously 0% is not achievable... some callers will abandon after 10s because the dog just threw up / whatever! And @Mattb4 and myself will hang up after 60s anyway .... But from my experience you should be looking at an abandoned call of less than 5% and preferably nearer to 2% for customers to consider the response time as acceptable.

Agree SeaGal - When analyzing call volume and performance, there should be a way to monitor how many calls don't make it to a live person/extension (i.e. percentage of hang ups). This metric would be a key indicator for "customer frustration" level. Customer hang ups will artificially decrease the "time on hold" metric depending on how soon they give up.

robby said:

I used a Vonage landline, so no records.
I really am an old fart, it seems like no one has a landline in their house anymore.

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You can go online and see all your call history for the last 18 months with Vonage.

robby said:

You are entitled to your own opinion but I suggest that you give them a call and see how long it takes you to get through to customer support and then please come back here and let us know. Better to know in advance what your dealing with than to be without electricity and sitting on the phone for hours and hours listening to the same music.

If you canot get through to Sales Dept to give them your money then there is almost no chance of getting through to customer support which drains their money!

If you think you can install and an Inverter without any support and that it will work for years without ever having an issue that requires customer support, then it would be logical to save some Cash and buy another rebadged Voltronic model on Alibaba.
One assumes that when you buy something from a US Distributor that there is some form of customer Support.

BTW other Vendors have not given up using this website of their own free will, most of them would have loved to stay but they have been removed due to forum policy. If you think that SS is on here for the sake of charity and not for the sales it generates then you are clueless about product promotion.

BTW good luck with email when you have a problem. I have seen very few issues with electronic devices that are solved using email.

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That's weird. I called them multiple times this week, sales and tech support. I've been answered/called back within 15 minutes every time.

12 seconds. Called them yesterday. I mentioned the tragic 12 seconds lost, and the cs guy told me at times the wait is longer. The horror of it all.

w8dev said:

They have that option for support, not sure on sales. It’s a great feature…when it works. Tried using it for support multiple times. Never got callbacks.

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This happened to me the one time I used the callback feature. Never got a call back. I called the next day and finally got through.

OPTIMALSOLAR said:

12 seconds. Called them yesterday. I mentioned the tragic 12 seconds lost, and the cs guy told me at times the wait is longer. The horror of it all.

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WOW they need to get their act together!!!####!! 12 seconds. LOL

Look at all the fng’s. It’s all good!

robby said:

The last time I tried email, it was the standard 24 hour reply time.

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The only time I emailed SS was on Nov 16 2022.
Got a reply in 1h 7m. Granted it was an easy question.
But I had a follow up I sent later that same day.
Again received an email in 1h 6m.
There wasn’t much to that email either.

But honestly I was impressed. I was definitely ready to wait a day or two for an e-mail back. At least that’s what I was expecting based on what other companies seem to do.
I guess I just have a different expectation than some people.

I had an electrical inspector from a company completely ignore me after coming to look at my setup. Didn’t respond to my phone calls to let me know if I passed or failed (or why I had failed). His voicemail said it was best to text him, he didn’t respond to text. Didn’t respond to email. Absolute radio silence for 2 months. Still hasn’t got back to me. Just took my money and left.
Contacted a different company and they came out within a week and passed me. Gotta try and get a refund from the first company now.

Went to get my water tested at the county health department. They say they will let me know for sure in 24 hours if i have coliform bacteria (official report comes in 7 days). I’m feeling good after day 2 with no call, but on day 3 they call, oh we weren’t sure at first but it turns out it is coliform.

Bought a new manufactured home. Paid $5k for the skirting. Wind blew it in. Dudes came out to redo it. Wind blew it in again. Dudes came out to fix it. Wind still blows it in so I just fixed it myself.

The drain pan for my hot water heater that came with the house was completely smashed. I called to let the home company know they should bring a new one when they came out (as was already planned to fix the brand new, but leaky shower). They showed up and knew nothing about the drain pan even though i specifically mentioned that I was specifically calling ahead to make sure they would bring it.

I got scammed buying off of Amazon ordering a circuit breaker for my setup. Didn’t realize I had to check seller ratings and that they were different from product ratings. Amazon refunded me, told me to wait at first but I pointed out the ton of other messages reporting the seller as a scammer. Weird thing is Amazon crossed out each bad review and said it was not the sellers fault. This is Amazon. Not some small company selling niche products. Checked back 2 weeks later and they were still allowing the scammer to sell stuff and had a ton more reviews left about how the seller was a scammer.

I guess my point is that I do feel like people have become entitled to the point where they think SS is just some magical company that should be perfect.

I didn’t get upset at any of the examples I gave above. I just accepted that that’s way way things are. SS is the same. They are what they are.

I just feel like there is a real Karen Breeding Ground Situation here and even though I’ve ignored some users I keep getting sucked back in.

Maybe I should just make a new thread every week talking about how my EG4 setup is working fine to my standards and expectations

…

I wrote this all last night and wasn’t sure I was going to post it, but just got a call from 903 area code this morning. I wouldn’t have thought it was SS unless I read this thread.
I let it go to voicemail anyway because I didn’t know the number.
It was SS (just placed an order last night to fill out the last 2 slots in my battery rack). I called back (had an ext. number left to me), but I was still horrified it might take 2 hours for me to get thru. They picked right up. We discussed the issue (they said freight trucks might have trouble getting to me, I told them trucks have been here before, but I always call the driver ahead of delivery to let them know I can meet them off the highway if they want).
Whole call took 4 min.

When I first came to this site I was surprised by the negative experiences people here have written about sig sol. I don't disregard but.....

This new guy must have been lucky about 6 times with Sigsol. Bought panels on line. Lead time was 3 weeks. Showed up in 3 weeks. Called several times during to insure, no wait longer than a couple minutes. 10 panels arrived in perfect condition. Shipped for 54cents a watt. Producing better than expected since. The 315 Can Solar produce more at hi sun(4-5 hrs a day currently and growing) than my 400 watt qcells. Thanks clipping. And overall as a percent of panel space. Oh the humanity.