Interface issues
It is my understanding that the phone number to call with questions for Family Search is going away. That is a great concern to me. I have served in family history for 13 years and currently serve in a temple office. We still get many calls for help from people who struggle with internet access or lack of knowledge. I am also aware that sometimes you just do not know how to word things to get to the right place when typing in a question but a person can talk you through the issue and figure out what you are specifically looking for. This can be extremely frustrating.
I was talking with a woman just a few days ago who is experiencing this issue in her own family. Her husband has just about given up on doing any of his work because of the looping he is experiencing. You type in a question and it gives you sort of an answer, you see that you should click on something else to maybe get a more in depth answer so you click. That takes you back to where you started. SUCH A PAIN!!! I told her I would be happy to help them but I know I have offered to help many others before but it is just such a hassle people quit. This is not the experience anyone wants for them. I do not want them to quit and I do not think Family Search does either.
I know that having it all online is helpful for so many but please do not neglect those who really need the personal contact of dealing with a human. Please do not take away the phone number to call!
Cheryl Clark
Comments
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Just some idle speculation from a random user here, but I wonder how much of this change is due to the Church's longstanding emphasis on self-reliance and personal responsibility? With just about everything we are taught to:
- Do all we can to be independent first - The new design of the Help Center really seems to be an attempt to draw people in to those articles and the majority of the answers from moderators in this community all include or are just "go read this article."
- Turn next to our families for help - In the case of family history I would regard our neighbors as family. Every ward should have multiple Temple and Family History Consultants to help out everyone that lives in the ward, both members and non-members. There is no better way to have personal, human contact than to sit down in your own home with a person you see every Sunday. Then there are the family history libraries that should have the resources to give individual, personal help to people that need it.
- Only after exhausting the above are we to turn to the Church - This would certainly leave much more time for FamilySearch support to concentrate on problems only they can solve, such as corrections on a person's ordinance page.
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In priniciple I agree with Gordon
HOWEVER - on the contrary I totally feel that for certain tasks where a FS admin is clearly needed - that the path to such support should be MUCH MORE CLEAR and USER friendly and quickly gets to resolution - rather than the current shuffle back and forth with responders that cant even resolve the issue that needs resolving.
There is a ton of angst and frustration on this issue . . . that is getting to the exploding point.
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I agree. There are things such as, for example, adding BIC to a record that only FS Admin can do. Those things need to go directly and promptly to the right people and the poster needs an immediate direct message that that is what happened. First time I had such an issue, the post was just moved and I got a message about two weeks later which did include an apology for not notifying me sooner. I hope they are getting better at that. I do see examples where the post is being left in place and prompt notifications are given, as in this example: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/91748/ordinances-not-recorded#latest which is a very encouraging sign that things are improving.
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