Freelance Writing: Simple Tips on Complicated Topics
Communicating with RWC: Making it Work
For those somewhat unfamiliar with our communication system, I’d like to provide some useful information. This combines my experience of working both with the writers, and the support team.
First of all, there are a couple of ways to reach out and touch us: the chat, the messaging system, e-mail, and you can try calling.
Let’s break all this down:
The Live Chat: You can exchange messages online 24/7 with one of our support representatives. They are a reliable source of crucial help or advice.
The critical point to remember is that those folks staffing the chat are really, really busy. At any time, there might very well be another 5-6 people, just like you, waiting for a response as well.
This can be frustrating, but we do ask you to be patient and wait for your turn. One way to reduce “traffic jams” is to make sure to use the chat screen feature only for emergency issues!
The purpose of the chat feature is live support, on the spot. Of course you can address the support team who work on the chat on general issues, if you are a rookie. But if you fill this chat screen time with comments such as, “I don’t like how things inside the system work, and as for that…blah-blah-blah”, you are probably wasting their time. Support will have to do their best to accept your feedback; they will have to record it, forward it to the appropriate department, add a comment, etc.
You can imagine that the rest of the writers using the chat screen will have been waiting all this time. There are ways to provide your feedback; we will get to those a bit later on.
So basically, urgent issues such as, “Materials are not here, please reach the customer, I have been already sent message and have been waiting for a while” should be those addressed in the chat. These guys are just brainiacs; they have masses of information, and they know tons of stuff about our business. That is why, to resolve emergency situations, you have the chat option available.
The Messaging System: We continue on to the messaging system. The guys working with the admin panel, to whose help you gain access after registering with the company, are really frustrated about a lot of things. But the most important is spam.
You know, sometimes you feel like one message is not enough, and you send another one, and then another 3, by just copy-pasting the content. Think about the impact! Can you imagine that I would just put similar articles in the same blog post? I could just copy and paste them, one after another. Would you read the second one? Probably not!
That is fine for you because you can just exit the blog. On the other hand, consider the support team; they are required to read through every message, to make sure that they are actually the same, and nothing is left out. That is really stressful, especially when they have other work to do.
One order request is enough; there’s no need to send it in again. You can be sure that we saw it! (After all, we want the work to get done most of all!) If you were not assigned, then you either have other work to do, or you are a rookie and do not qualify, or you have a bad reputation due to a lot of late orders, etc.
Yes, we hear a lot of stories about lags and problems with the flash software. If the system had bugs, it would not be able to perform at all. That is highly unlikely.
What is more likely is that a user clicks on the “Send” button 20 times per second, imagining that this conveys the message faster. Of course it doesn’t; it only slows down the connection, as you are loading more requests onto the server. And to conclude, spamming is always simply rude and irritating, irrespective of the content and importance.
Messages are best used for suggestions about our work, other issues on orders which are not critical, order requests, etc.
The E-mail: This is better for issues which are not time sensitive. They have the longest response period, but they are more multi-purpose. The e-mails can concern any relevant topic, you can upload files, and you will definitely receive a response within 3-4 hours.
The Phone: This follows the same principle as the chat – the most important and relevant issues should be directed here. KEEP IN MIND: only voice mail messages are accepted over the phone. It might take some time for the Support Dpt. to check them. But the voice mail channel is treated as an important source of feedback – so it shouldn’t take long for our staff to respond. (updated by Editor: March 20th, 2012)
And last, but not least – please, we are practically begging you, if you have an issue – use one source of communication at a time. If it is an emergency – use the chat screen. If not, then use the message screen, e-mail or call to leave a voice message.
But sending a message, an e-mail and, at the same time, chatting about the fact that you cannot get an order, is not efficient. Different people do different stuff, and you create a duplication of work. Then, there is the confusion which results when different people express themselves differently. And what you read in the messages might be open to different interpretation than info received over the chat. And so an endless round of wasted effort continues.
We would really appreciate you following this advice. We realize that we screw up too sometimes, but we are all people. We have to be sympathetic about most of the stuff that happens, especially in this particular context of screwing up (for example, providing incomplete information, providing irrelevant info, not assisting quick enough).
I hope that this article enhances our mutual understanding and cooperation. Have a great day, and ‘bye.
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