Lack of Support

[SecChamp]

I am relatively new to the ISC2 organization and have been eager to get my training credits recorded well ahead of the due date so as not to find myself in the position where I am racing to get them done at the last minute.  But I must say that for a company of computer security professionals the ISC2 org infrastructure seems to fail miserably.  For one thing, I keep getting errors which prevent me from seeing, accessing, recording or getting credit for training.  The only support mechanism is an email support infrastructure. In spite of the fact that standing up a ticketing and issue tracking system is a fairly low cost endeavor and this organization ought to be sufficiently funded to make use of such a system.  In fact if I am not mistaken there are many cloud providers which can help on a pay as you go basis with that technological hurdle.

But even the email support system seems unreliable.  If you submit an issue you receive an automated reply saying that an employee will review your issue and reply in 3 days.  But then when 3 days has elapsed no support response is provided.  This smells like a mom and pop outfit who have managed to create a larger than life money machine but have turned it on auto pilot and visit the site periodically to maintain some sense of credibility.  Paranoid? perhaps, but the level of support here on my first impression at least is quite miserable.

[ljschneiter]

I would like to congratulate you on achieving your certification.  This is a great accomplishment and you should be very proud.  I applaud your enthusiasm to get started on earning and submitting CPEs.  You have joined the (ISC)² Family at an exciting time.  We are in the process of transitioning all of your services to a new system.  We are updating the CPE portal pages and member dashboard.  We are rolling them out in stages and adding new features to benefit our members.

Please be advised that members need to wait until the start of their three-year certification cycle before you can earn and submit CPEs. CPEs must be earned within the certification cycle dates. Your cycle starts the first of the month after your endorsement is completed.

At this moment, we are applying some updates to several pages and members are experiencing some errors.  We hope to have them corrected very soon.

Our goal is to provide our members with outstanding customer service.   I would personally like to apologize if there was a delay in responding to your email. We have any incredibly high volume in email inquiries.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you for your membership.

Laura Schneiter

Customer Service Manager

lschneiter@isc2.org

[rslade]

> SecChamp (Viewer) posted a new topic in Member Support on 10-19-2018 12:53 PM in the (ISC)² Community :

>   This smells like a mom and pop outfit who have managed to create
> a larger than life money machine but have turned it on auto pilot and visit
> the site periodically to maintain some sense of credibility.  Paranoid?
> perhaps, but the level of support here on my first impression at least is
> quite miserable.

I may disagree with every word this person has said, but I will defend, to the death
if necessary, his (her?) right to say it!

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
The great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearances, as
though they were realities, and is often even more influenced by
the things that seem than by those that are. - Niccolo Machiavelli
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

[SecChamp]

ljschneiter

Thank you for getting back to me.  And if I am not mistaken for calling me.  If you are the same person, that I spoke to on the phone I will have to say that you have done a lot to lend credibility to this organization in the eyes of this newcomer.

To reiterate the suggestions I made on the phone:

1) Rather than providing links which are not accessible such as links to submitting certifications and rendering a SSO error, it would be better to provide a meaningful substitute such as some message, or link which provides the same information you provided in the response about needing to wait until the start of the cycle before entering CPE credits.

2) Adding a ticketing system to the site seems like a must.  If your organization is as large as you say it is, and your support team is as small as you say it is then you may want to have your executive team refer to a few articles like this one: 
https://www.capterra.com/help-desk-software/

3) I also noticed on the site that resetting login seems to be difficult due to certain links on the login page referring to forgotten passwords don't actually link to your password reset page.  Making that page a little easier to find would probably mitigate many of your support issues before they occur.

4) Finally you may want to speak to your technical services team to ask them to incorporate a notifications widget into your site so that when the site is unstable due to maintenance you can notify people who are using the site with a small banner that explains that the site is currently undergoing maintenance and may exhibit some unexpected behaviors.

All of these suggestions will if taken up for action ultimately result in reducing the number of support calls you have to deal with.

Best Regards.

Steve Owens

[SecChamp]

ljschneiter

Thank you for getting back to me.  I had made a previous comment which ended up getting flagged as spam due to the fact I had copied your username from your post and pasted it into the third revision of the comment.  On posting that version I was notified that the content contained inappropriate html, and then later notified it was marked as spam. 

This is sad because I had made 4 useful suggestions which would have been most beneficial to your org.  I am not interested in reiterating those.  You ought to be able to recover the message which was marked as spam if you actually have any interest in hearing what I had to say.

At any rate good luck with your web site updates, it looks like you have your hands full and that the updates are sorely needed.  It will be interesting to see if any of the issues I mentioned would end up being resolved as a consequence of your current maintenance.

Best Regards

[denbesten]

"Inappropriate HTML" is not a condemnation of your verbiage.  Rather, it is an indication of a syntactical error in the formatting. Sometimes when using the "rich text" editor, the invisible formatting tags can get messed up, especially if you copy/paste things around. There are three ways to fix this:

1. Often times, the editor fixes the errors by itself. Simply clicking "post" an second time might succeed.  In these situations, I also like using "Preview" to make sure that things look as expected.
2. Clicking on "HTML" will allow you to edit the HTML directly.
3. Right-click and "Select All", "Cut" and then "Paste as Text" (a chrome feature).  Then, re-apply the formatting manually before posting.

None of my posts have been flagged as "SPAM", although I have encountered the "bad word" filter, which can be worked around by selecting a synonym.

 @SecChamp wrote...

The only support mechanism is an email support infrastructure ... a ticketing and issue tracking system is a fairly low cost endeavor 

They additionally offer member support by phone and on this community. Although I have no direct knowledge, I am pretty sure (ISC)² internally uses an issue tracking system, given that they use Salesforce (you can tell by the favicon on the CPE site).

[SecChamp]

The error message said inappropriate HTML the only change to the message
from the two previous iterations which were not flagged as spam and which
were posted was pasting in somebody's ID as copied from the same UI love

[slcoppedge]

I must say that I have always been more than happy with the support I have received from (ISC)2 when calling in to member phone support. I do, however, agree with the poster on the lack of continuity on the website and member pages, especially in regards to getting CPE credits posted.  I have personally had issues several different years. It does seem like, with as many professionals that you have at your disposal, who are ANXIOUS for CPE credits, you might consider enlisting some free help.  I know I would!