Capable Customer Service Is Essential To EV Charging Networks

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In a current article, I wrote about issues I had charging a Kia EV9 I’m reviewing. The automobile itself has been nice, however I wasn’t in a position to cost at two Francis Vitality stations in New Mexico, even after calling buyer help. This, in flip, led to me needing to cost at Degree 2 a number of miles down the street after which drive tremendous sluggish to make it dwelling on minimal battery. Altogether, that malfunction wasted about 4 hours of my life and saved me from going to mattress till 4 AM.

Since writing about that, I bought a message from Francis notifying me that there was an issue with my account. Whereas I had $20 in credit score that will have been greater than sufficient for the quick charging session I needed to do, my card was expired, so their software program wouldn’t let me cost. After I instructed them that I wanted telephone help had been in a position to let me know what the issue was, the rep bought defensive, telling me that that they had despatched a number of e-mails letting me know concerning the expired card.

Regardless of the cause for the shortcoming to cost was, there’s one large query the tech help individual didn’t wish to reply: why am I discovering out what the issue was two or three days later as an alternative of after I known as them from the charging station?

I do know from my experiences calling Electrify America, EVgo, and even Blink that it’s potential for customer support representatives (in any respect hours) to have the ability to do issues like reset stations, examine on error codes, and assist you to get by means of billing points. However, Francis Vitality’s telephone help is dealt with by a 3rd social gathering firm, and people representatives can solely assist you to begin a charging session. They will’t do any of the opposite issues reps for these different networks can do for you.

If I had known as that night time and had been instructed what the issue was, I may have simply fastened it and drove dwelling. As an alternative, I discover out two days later why I wasn’t in a position to cost, lengthy after that data would have been helpful.

Why I’m Sharing This Story

Whereas large names like Tesla, Electrify America, EVgo, and ChargePoint get quite a lot of consideration, these firms don’t run all the charging stations on the market. Increasingly more, I’m seeing smaller regional and even native charging firms popping up on Plugshare. It appears unlikely that these smaller charging suppliers can afford to pay for a giant name heart, so lots of them are going to make use of third-party help and software program to assist them handle the stations. The economics of scale could be taken benefit of when these firms share these sources.

However, the hazard to utilizing third-party help is that they received’t be as useful as they need to be. If the reps can’t see the explanations for charging errors, reboot malfunctioning stations, or assist you to repair account and billing points, many individuals aren’t going to have the ability to get a cost once they in any other case very simply may have.

The very fact is that we’d like all of those smaller charging firms to succeed. The massive names can’t deal with all of it. There is just too a lot want for EV charging within the coming years for us to lose any firm with out setting EV adoption again. So, we have to assist these firms see what the problems are and repair them.

Featured picture by Francis Vitality.