24/7 Live Chat For Technical Support Available Now
EDITOR’S NOTE 04/26/16: 24/7 live chat for technical support is now available to all 45,000 of WP Engine’s global customers via our User Portal.
We believe that when customers ask us for help, our skilled team of WordPress experts should deliver a personal, one-on-one experience right when needed – regardless of the time of day, day of the week, or region of the world where our customers live.
That’s why we’re excited to announce that live chat for technical support will be available 24/7 for all 45,000 of WP Engine’s global customers starting on Tuesday, April 26.
When we launched live chat in mid-2013, it quickly became our most popular channel for support, surpassing tickets and phone calls, even though it has only been available less than 14 hours per weekday. Through live chat, we are able to solve over 90 percent of all questions and issues within a single session, in addition to earning an exceptional customer satisfaction score.
With the launch of this enhanced service, we will be changing the workflow for how our customers receive support. To improve the experience we provide, all initial requests for support will be made either through live chat via our User Portal or a phone call. We believe that this level of human interaction is very important, as it ensures we are able to deliver customized guidance quickly.
Therefore, initiating technical requests for support via a ticket will no longer be available as of Tuesday, April 26.
In the event a question or issue can’t be resolved over chat, we will be happy to create a ticket on behalf of a customer and ensure it gets routed to the appropriate subject matter expert to solve.
Please note: In addition to 24/7 live chat, phone support will continue to be available 24/7 to our customers with Professional, Business, Premium and Enterprise plans. Customers with Enterprise plans may continue to open tickets as well.
In providing this service, we are pleased to fulfill the No. 1 request we get from customers across the 133 countries we serve. Thank you to our customers for your feedback and for the opportunity to serve your business. Starting April 26 come chat with us anytime. We’ll be here to help 24/7/365.
Tina Dobie is a results-driven software executive who is passionate about customer success. In her 20-plus-year career in the enterprise software, SaaS, and management consulting industries, Tina has built and led global teams to place the customer at the center of their business, while simultaneously optimizing internal operations for high growth and scalability.
Y’all do a great job of supporting us users, but I have to say I am disappointed that ticket support will be disabled for non-Enterprise users. Oftentimes, I am running between meetings, and a ticket is the best way for me to communicate what I need in terms of support. Your live chat & phone support is great as well but not always convenient for me. Just thought I’d let y’all know my feelings on the matter. 🙂
Thanks Toby for your comment about the great job we do supporting customers like you. A big part of that is listening to our customers – and with this move to 24/7 live chat we’re fulfilling the No. 1 request we get from customers. We hope this investment in a more on-demand, personal level of support will streamline getting answers or solutions to your questions resulting in an even better support experience. Thanks for being a valued customer!
Happy to hear that live chat support extending to 24/7. Its an awesome decision from WP Engine team. Hats off !!!
Is the 24/7 Live chat outsourced or is it US based?
Hi Alex,
We are proud that all of our WordPress experts on our Customer Experience (technical support) team are full-time employees of WP Engine and are based in our Austin, TX and San Antonio, TX offices.
I’ve the same concern as Toby. I’ve noticed some wait times for chat. What if we need to initiate a ticket but will be away from computers and phones, perhaps at an appointment where those devices are turned off. Is there another option in those cases? Otherwise the issue can’t be addressed until we have time to be at the computer.
Overall I think your idea is great but just wonder about that one option.
Hi Mark,
For customers who are on Professional, Business, Premium or Enterprise plans, we offer 24/7 telephone support in addition to live chat. We will be happy to work with you one-on-one to answer your question or resolve your issue just as quickly as possible so that you can go about your day!
I am so excited that you are going 24/7! It never fails that an issue arises just after 8 PM after your offices have closed. Who wants to wait until the morning to try to troubleshoot a major issue – no one! That is is what sets your company apart from the rest. And THANK YOU for not outsourcing! Keeping jobs here in America is so important.
I say BRAVO to the already fantastic team at WPEngine!
Thank you so much, Kym! We have a team of incredibly talented people who care passionately about our customers, our company and each other. We are grateful for the opportunity to provide a world-class customer experience, so thank you for the kudos and the support of WP Engine. We are happy you are happy!
I’m not convinced this will improve service. Today I wanted to open a support ticket for a problem. I did not know about this policy change until I logged on to WPEngine.
I figured, no worries, I’ll just open a support chat and start the process .
I went over to initial a support chat to begin the process as I am having a problem with my sites, and the WPEngine sites says: “Oops, Live chat is having technical difficulties.”
I’ve never had a problem starting a support ticket via email, but I did have many, many issues with another hosting service that wanted all tickets to begin with chat (as their chat did not work half the time).
If chat is going to be the starting point, it needs to be more reliable.
Thom,
Thank you for letting us know that you were experiencing an issue with live chat. Hearing about your experience allowed us to troubleshoot and understand what was happening, as we have not experienced a live chat service disruption recently. With a specific browser plug in installed that filters out analytics and other tracking scripts, we were successfully able to recreate the error message you received. With this info, we plan to update our error message handling in our User Portal to be more helpful to others who may also use this type of browser plugin.
I apologize for the frustration caused, but sincerely appreciate the feedback. It’s how we improve!
Really not digging this live option. There are plenty of instances where I don’t have time to sit and speak to someone as they go through the problem in real time. To completely eliminate the option to leave a support ticket is bad business in my opinion.
Thank you for sharing your feedback, Robert. Our goal in providing this level of one-on-one interaction is to work with our customers in real time to troubleshoot and solve issues as quickly as possible. Having our customers provide feedback to us during this troubleshooting process is invaluable towards getting that quick resolution. I apologize that your experience hasn’t met expectations. In the spirit of continuous improvement, I’ll be happy to review the chat and ensure that we understand why it took longer than you would have liked. Thank you again for the feedback and for being our customer.
Terrible move – will definitely make me look for another provider.
Natalie,
I’m sorry to hear that you will be looking for another provider. Learning about how we can improve is important to us. Please feel free to send me an email directly at [email protected] and let me know about your experience. We take feedback seriously and want to understand the reasons behind your frustration.
I think Chat is a very good *addition* to the wonderful support already offered by WP Engine, but shouldn’t completely replace the ticketing system. There are times when it is simply more convenient to to fire off a support request and not wait for a response. We also seem to lose the ability (if we use only Chat) to be able to go back through old issues that were supported like you can currently with the ticketing system.
Hi Ken,
Thank you for letting us know our team is doing a wonderful job. We appreciate the feedback. With our current live chat functionality, customers are able to email themselves a transcript of the conversation when the live chat ends. We also keep a copy. In the future, we plan on making these transcripts available to our customers, on demand, in the User Portal the way historical tickets are today. Thanks for confirming we are on the right track with this planned feature improvement, and thank you for your support!
Going to reiterate what others are saying here. Adding live support 24/7 is a great *feature*, but should NOT be the only means of support. There are two major flaws with this change:
1) Sometimes I’m in a meeting or about to run to a meeting when an issue crops up or just don’t have the time to go back and forth with a support rep at the time of need. I’m guessing I’m not the only client that has a busy schedule and being able to quickly open a ticket to get the ball rolling on an issue is very valuable.
2) Along the same lines, I’ve opened chat before and been presented with a 30+ min wait. Even a 5 min wait sometimes is too long. In these cases, when I need to run to do something else (away from a phone and away from a computer), I need to be able to open a ticket to be sure the issue is made aware of an someone is working on it.
I see the value in live chat and believe most issues can be handled efficiently with chat, but there are some flaws in this system that I don’t believe have been evaluated throughly.
I really hope others speak out about the issues with only providing live chat vs a ticket system.
Thanks for listening.
Hi Justin,
Thank you for your thoughts and for being a customer. I’m pleased to say that we have significantly improved the wait times our customers have experienced since the introduction of 24/7 live chat, with zero wait during most times of the day. I do understand your concern about having the flexibility to open a ticket when on the go, but please know that we also offer 24/7 phone support to our Professional plans and above. We sincerely believe there is value to having a direct conversation with our customers to troubleshoot and solve quickly, but if your schedule doesn’t permit, please just let us know and we’ll open a ticket on your behalf. Thank you again for your feedback!
“…if your schedule doesn’t permit, please just let us know and we’ll open a ticket on your behalf.”
And, exactly how am I supposed to let you know? Via chat?
A great example is right now… wait time is 20 min. I have a simple request to look into some of the stats (don’t need to talk live with someone) and have a meeting starting in 10 min.
So, instead of being a happy customer, I’m frustrated that I have to cancel my chat request and try again later.
This is a horrible mistake to remove ticket support.
I want to open a ticket on my own time, take my time to compose it and add screenshots or other information to help resolve the issue. Then I expect to have it answered within a reasonable period of time. I also want to be able to refer to past tickets.
I don’t want to have to wait on chat or get on the phone when it’s early or late and I need silence.
That’s quite awesome with the above mentioned plugin but also the other one i enjoyed most of all the plugin for Online Live Chat is..http://www.wp-chat.com/ Very easy to use and can be also be found on Android with classic features.
Migration of custom website was migrated over to WP engine without a hitch. Required some admin adjustments -fine-tuning for preparing new content to be added. EXCELLENT support & resources provided by Support Team [ Jeffrey Crane] and others for a smooth transition. Up & Running!! ***
Hi Andrew,
Thank you so much for being a customer and I’m pleased to hear about your experience. Our team works incredibly hard 24/7 to deliver an amazing and differentiated experience, focused on the success of our customers as priority #1. Jeff will be excited to see your kudos, so thank you very much for taking the time to share. Should you need additional help in the future, our team looks forward to assisting you!
Best,
Tina
Live is the best way to contact us 24/7 with customer.
If its all about the customers. Then id say give your customers options that help them run their busienss more effciently. Making one sit at live chat or telephone is not effective/effecient for us, whereas i relalize its very effecient for your end.
Great services regardless and i have brought over all my cleints. Almost.
24/7 Live chat support are good services for all types of problems facing in online live chatting. I am very happy with this facility and got a complete satisfaction by support team which is working 24/7 for live chat services.
Modern world moving on systematic versions. Live chat is the best way to boost the website audience. Several agencies offers online chat support services on 24 hours. Live chat supporting could help you move to the next level with your online business.
Our website has been with WPengine for about as long as we’ve had our business! They are fantastic, their chat support is great, there is literally no downtime and their servers load super fast!
We don’t plan on taking our business anywhere else as long as they are around.