Mar 7, 2008
When is a fix not a fix?
For some reason, my phone suddenly decided to stop sending text messages this morning. It seems to have forgotten the Orange Message Centre number.
So I pop over to the orange site to find the number, and attempt to use the “fixing basic problems” menu to resolve it.
It asks a series of questions, and after each provides two choices: Yes this has resolved the issue, or No it hasn’t.
Are you roaming?
Do you have Line2 selected?
Do you have enough signal strength?
To each I answer “no, this hasn’t resolved my issue” until I get to one which reads
Have you checked the message centre number to ensure this is correct?
The message centre number must be correct in order to send text messages
This is, indeed, the problem I need to fix, but unfortunately Orange provide no way of actually helping me to fix it.
If I click “Yes, this has resolved my problem” I get a message saying “glad we could help” but if I click “No this hasn’t resolved my problem” I get presented with another potential issue (“Is the destination number valid?”) rather than any way to resolve the previous problem.
Please look at that screenshot and tell me how, from that information, anyone is supposed to know:
a) how to check the message centre number
b) whether it’s correct
c) how to correct it.
It seems that “fixing basic problems” is actually “diagnosing basic problems” with no attempt to actually fix them at all. I don’t want sympathy, I want a working phone. Most irritating!
(for anyone else suffering this predicament, I can recommend you find reputable and helpful orange network related answers elsewhere)
Not in the least bit surprised.
And all the sites are just as bad. I spent half an hour on Voda yesterday trying to find drivers for a 3g modem. Exact same circular problem.
It almost seems like these sites are an afterthought. There is more marketing on the help pages (well for voda) than actual help.
What amazes me is that they still don’t seem to realise how decent IA, well laid out help reduced load on your support structures.
I’ve often wondered if Wiki style help is not the way to go, where everyone in the company and even customers can develop it.
Of course that would require relinquishing control and mobile network operators hate that.
Not to mention how instead of spending a lot of money on paid search and SEO optimisation, that having a good help section will get linked to, and links being the currency of the web, has a lot of value.
Have you actually tried logging on to the Orange website (to check your balance, emails, that sort of thing.) What a mess *that* is – in fact Martin Belam has summarised it far better than I ever could over here:
http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2007/09/orange_usability.php
I’m of a similar opinion to Adrian – what they, indeed all mobile phone companies and all ISPs, really need is a series of simple, plainly formatted pages with technical data for reasonably tech savvy users. And then if you want to do fancy wizards, and send updates and configuration settings automatically to people’s phones, then you can do that as well, but not in place of providing the basic information people need.
Its a shame because, in terms of the interface between their computer systems and your phone, they do quite well – e.g. being able to forward junk texts free of charge to an number that spells out SPAM on a phone keypad, and being able to top-up a PAYG account by text message rather than having to navigate menus (which are, in themselves, quite good, even if they have finally dispensed with the nice Orange woman.)
I did once phone the Orange technical helpdesk – my outgoing email had stopped working properly on the Nokia 7650 phone I used to have – I never resolved the problem (actually I think it might have had something to do with the phone firmware – I spent ages trying to verify by hand if Orange’s SMTP server was sending the correct responses) – but the woman was quite helpful, and at least bothered to check their list of outstanding bugs/issues for me. But wouldn’t it be lovely (and unlikely) for a mobile phone company to put that sort of information online?
The irony is, if companies make a good job of this sort of thing, there’s the possibility I’ll be impressed enough to maybe even consider applying for a job there…
In this case, it’s not links which are the problem – after all you know to go to the mobile provider’s website to try to resolve the issue – it’s that the user can’t complete a simple task such as finding the message centre number.
The sooner that organisations start to identify core tasks and work to improve them, the more useful their websites will be.
Ooooh – really like the new blog template, Meg.