Biggest offense....ignored emails. No excuse for it = unprofessional!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2022 03:57AM by Hallow007.

Yep. An even bigger offense is when you are later either called out, given a "1," and/or informed that a shop was rejected and you had sent an email, and sometimes multiple emails, in which you asked about the very thing about which your shop was rejected. It happens, and that is among the reasons that we have 10-foot pole lists. I do not do shops that require me to pull out my wallet for schedulers who behave like that, I just plain don't.

I'll play devil's advocate here.....Just imagine how many people are sending emails. I doubt schedulers are getting just a few per day. Can you imagine if 10% of their shops they had to fill would email with questions? It would make it real hard to schedule when you are having all this administrative work to do.

Now, I think the better schedulers (i.e. Karen for Ipsos) make a point to respond quickly. But I'm pretty confident she sees some real doozies herself and is thinking "why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?"

I think there should be a way to get shopper help. Maybe not directly from the scheduler, but there should be a person/dept that can get answers or clarify things on a shop.

I have shopped for some pretty good schedulers. Even one that gave out text # on the assignment. I had an issue at a very remote location and got an answer/scenario change within 5 minutes.

I (like most others) find it irritating as phook when IPSOS just ignores emails, but then think of all the huge clients they have and the thousands of shops to fill and probably some lame questions to go with it. There are legitimate questions, but we all know some people are "not all there" and it could be very frustrating to need to respond to all of them.

Maybe we need a SHOP NAZI. Some funny responses could be "This obviously is too difficult for you." Or "No shop for you!" if they don't like the question, but at least you would get a response :-).

Marketforce is pretty good with answering questions from the helpdesk, but it's not always the most timely responses.

@Hallow007 wrote:

Biggest offense....ignored emails. No excuse for it = unprofessional!

@hbbigdaddy wrote:

I'll play devil's advocate here.....Just imagine how many people are sending emails. I doubt schedulers are getting just a few per day. Can you imagine if 10% of their shops they had to fill would email with questions? It would make it real hard to schedule when you are having all this administrative work to do.

Now, I think the better schedulers (i.e. Karen for Ipsos) make a point to respond quickly. But I'm pretty confident she sees some real doozies herself and is thinking "why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?"

Then they need to hire more help.
They won't accept me saying, "sorry I had too many shops to get to your request for more information on that shop from last Thursday". Therefore, I expect the same courtesy on their end if I have an inquiry. And I'll just add in that Karen from Ipsos is a great example of a scheduler who handles a lot, but is able to not only respond quickly, but clearly reads the email and not just looking for a few key words. I do think most schedulers are good enough, though.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2022 06:50PM by KA047.

Indeed. I had a gas station scheduled last week. Drove 100 miles to get there, app failed. Black screen of death! So I did my other shops, e-mailed the scheduler and asked for that one to be pushed to this week (deadline is not for another 3 weeks).

Also, that station isn't open Saturday or Sunday, so I couldn't do it either of those days, even though it wasn't due until Sunday.

This morning, without any response ever to my e-mail from 5 days ago, the shop was removed.

My attitude now is "their loss".

Yes, I'm sure adding some resources might be helpful. But if you increase an MSC operating costs, they will be tighter with pay and bonuses which will hurt us.

I'm not defending not responding to emails. However, you can see some people who post on these threads and know that they might be asking some pretty lame questions. And it might not just be questions. What about the random shopper who is upset at the low pay and wants to fire off to the scheduler about how the pay needs to be higher. I would hate to see the inbox of emails these schedulers get from legitimate questions because of poorly written or confusing instrx from MSC, to the explanations from some shoppers about why they did not complete an assignment, or complaints about where their pay is when it's 1 or 2 days late.

There was another thread going about percentage of shops being completed. I think for most projects, clients are told not to expect 100% complete and understand it is nearly impossible to fill 100% of their locations, so if a shop isn't done, then it is not the end of the world. I am thinking of a specific small "hands on" company that probably hits 100% of their locations, but that is because they are "old school" and do not tolerate knucklehead shoppers. They rarely post assignments and are very involved with the shoppers and clients to ensure the client is happy and not jumping ship to some mega MSC that wouldn't give them the same service and would just lowball the offer to take the client.

@KA047 wrote:

@hbbigdaddy wrote:

I'll play devil's advocate here.....Just imagine how many people are sending emails. I doubt schedulers are getting just a few per day. Can you imagine if 10% of their shops they had to fill would email with questions? It would make it real hard to schedule when you are having all this administrative work to do.

Now, I think the better schedulers (i.e. Karen for Ipsos) make a point to respond quickly. But I'm pretty confident she sees some real doozies herself and is thinking "why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?"

Then they need to hire more help.
They won't accept me saying, "sorry I had too many shops to get to your request for more information on that shop from last Thursday". Therefore, I expect the same courtesy on their end if I have an inquiry. And I'll just add in that Karen from Ipsos is a great example of a scheduler who handles a lot, but is able to not only respond quickly, but clearly reads the email and not just looking for a few key words. I do think most schedulers are good enough, though.

@ceasesmith wrote:

This morning, without any response ever to my e-mail from 5 days ago, the shop was removed.

My attitude now is "their loss".

@Cease, it would be great if it came back highly bonused and you could grab it again. That would be Karma, of sorts!

@ceasesmith wrote:

This morning, without any response ever to my e-mail from 5 days ago, the shop was removed.

My attitude now is "their loss".

It *is* their loss! And that's really unprofessional of the scheduler to just drop it from your log without contacting you first.

As has been stated before, they are alienating their best shoppers through their completely unprofessional behavior and militant dislike for their shoppers on the business end of things.