Customer Service

#1

First time using Huel. So far, I really like the product. It’s makes work a breeze. However, I’m very disappointed with the customer service I’ve received so far. When I placed my original order, I added an additional shaker (that I paid for) to be included with the free one for a first time user. However, it was no included in my first shipment. I emailed customer service, they responded quickly and sent another one out. However, they sent it to the completely wrong address. Since then, customer service has provided no response to my various inquiries of when they will send another.

It’s frustrating as a first time user when my girlfriend and I have not both been able to fully utilize the product because we only have one shaker. Although I’d love to continue using this product, I need reliable support and will certainly look elsewhere for my nutritional needs if this is the service I can look froward to in association with this product.

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#2

Really sorry that you don’t think the customer service you received was up to scratch this time. Sorry we sent the shaker to the wrong address, I’m sure it was an honest mistake. Let me know the correct address and I’ll raise it with the US team to resend. We’ll endeavour to do better in future.

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#3

I have also had a really bad customer service experience.

I received another customers order instead of my own and have been trying to get this sorted with customer service so I can actually get the products which I paid for but I have been completely ignored with no response except for the automated ticket allocation from Zendesk ref [48869].

This has been an awful experience so far to be honest and it feels like nobody at Huel cares about it.

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#4

Hey Sam, that is absolutely not the case and I’m so sorry you feel like that.

Of course we care and in an ideal world we would respond and take action within a minute of you messaging us – our Huelers are everything to us. But we aren’t perfect and we have to answer every person who emails us in that order and it can take some time. We get through and answer around 500 messages a day which is huge.

We care so, so much about your experience and will get to your request as soon as we possibly can, the delay is only because there are other Huelers ahead of you. It is never that we don’t care. We care more than most.

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#5

Hey Tim

I appreciate your response but maybe you can think for a moment about why I’m feeling this way.

I spent £60 with your company, received the wrong product on Wednesday and contacted you immediately. Two days have passed since I contacted you and nobody has been in touch with me at all.

I put a message on this public facing forum and got a response within an hour. However that response didn’t involve taking my issue forward and trying to help me.

It also didn’t involve talking about how you intend to improve and make sure the next person doesn’t have this problem. On the face of it, saying that you deal with everyone in the order they contact you sounds fair, but as someone who has worked in Support for over 15 years I can tell you it is not. Especially if you have a lead time of two days and counting before getting to a ticket.

A ticket relating to suggesting you introduce bubblegum flavour huel is not equal in priority to a ticket where someone has not received a product. Introducing a triage stage so that tickets can be prioritised appropriately based on their urgency and impact will also mean that you can tell the customer that their query has been passed to the appropriate team at this stage. This may seem minimal, but contacting people at these milestones just lets them know something is actually happening.

Zendesk has lots of functionality around automating emails, so you can set it to trigger a message to the customer as soon as it is passed to an appropriate group without actually having to type it out each time.

Its fine to not be perfect and its great if you really do care more than most, but for that to be true requires you to take action when people take the time to highlight to you that something is working.

That is just my opinion for what its worth.

Thanks

Sam

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#6

Hey Sam,

Your frustration is totally understandable, you sent us an email and haven’t had a reply - that’s super annoying.

Zendesk absolutely does have a lot of functionality and we are working on ways that make things smoother for both the Customer Service team and our Huelers. This isn’t a quick fix though and getting things perfect takes time.

We receive, on average, 1000 emails per day and everyone’s email is important to us (and to the person who sent it).

For some context also, you dropped us your first email on Wednesday afternoon, you then sent 2 follow ups, today and yesterday. This actually bumps your email back down the list as it recognises the email being updated today and not on Wednesday.

Please don’t think we aren’t working as hard as we possibly can to get round to everyone’s email, we absolutely are.

I’m really sorry that you’ve been disappointed on this occasion. I hope we can improve on this next time and we appreciate you taking the time to let us know your thoughts.

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Support response times
#7

This actually bumps your email back down the list as it recognises the email being updated today and not on Wednesday.

Oh dear.

I emailed you Saturday morning, had heard nothing by Wednesday afternoon (other than the automated Zendesk ticket, #45667), so gently inquired whether the email had slipped through the cracks.

But I shouldn’t have chased following the initial lack of response as that resets your response time (after which another couple of days have gone by without any human acknowledgement)…?

What is your target response time?

Best,
Simon

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#8

A customer service system where ‘update’ emails move a query to the bottom of the queue sounds like one which is broken…

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#9

I’ve had a mixed expierence with the customer service. The first time I got a thoughtful reply almost immediately, second time took longer and the reply was somewhat cobbled together, but passable. Currently waiting for a reply. Kind of feel sad since I really love the products but the customer experience is weighing it down. The subscription page has gotten better but there’s still huge room for improvement. I hope Huel gets their stuff together soon :heart:

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#10

To give you a feeling as to the current response times, even now I have not had any response and have not received the product I paid for.

Also as much as I fully accept that a complex support process cannot be changed over night, you could if you wanted change the listing of tickets to be by ‘received date’ for ‘unassigned tickets’ and only sort by ‘last updated’ for tickets if they are assigned to someone. This change could be made in minutes and would stop customers being penalised for following up on or adding more info to their tickets.

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