Meet Our Support Team – David Black

At True Potential we’re aware that there may be many reasons why an adviser needs to contact one of our firms, however some of these requests can often be dealt with more quickly through our dedicated support team.

David Black, our Head of Support for True Potential, manages a team that are on hand to answer a multitude of questions for both you and your clients. In our blog this week we spoke to David to find out more about how our support team can be of service to you.

How many members of staff do you have on your team?

There are 15 of us, including myself.

Can you explain to us the philosophy of the support available?

We offer system support through support tickets, emails and telephone, with the capability to carry out remote screen sharing where possible. We are here to make sure advisers can use the system to its full capability, but as we support thousands of advisers across a few different methods we have to distribute resource, so there aren’t 14 people waiting for the phone to ring for example. It might be that seven are taking calls whilst the other seven are looking after the tickets and emails, to ensure we remain within the service level agreements.

What feedback have you received from advisers?

It is mostly positive I’m pleased to say, but of course there are times when we have system glitches that can be very frustrating to both the advisers and us alike. I think it is fair to say advisers and their staff are grateful to have a team to contact with their system queries.

What targets do you and the team work to?

Support tickets need to be answered within four hours, whilst emails that we receive before midday need to be answered before we leave on an evening. Emails after 12pm, we have until 12pm the following day. That’s not to say we’ll have the issue resolved in those time frames, we just have to progress the query.

Roughly how many tickets do you answer per day?

In September we averaged 117 tickets a day, 144 emails and 148 phone calls. It’s quite busy!

What hours is the telephone line in operation?

The phone line is in operation during office hours, 8.30am – 5.30pm. The team take lunch between 12 and 2pm so if you call in those times you may be on hold a little longer than normal as we will be running at half capacity. I would urge you to raise support tickets or emails so that a specialist in that subject area can pick up the query. For that reason, I would avoid using the telephone unless it is an urgent query or you are happy to join the hold queue. As a reminder, the support number is 0191 242 4876 and the switchboard works as follows:

• General Support (My team! System queries, client site logins, anything to do with V6/V7)
• Compliance (Issues with cases, checking or regulatory queries)
• Implementation (Brand new firms/advisers are assigned an implementation contact)
• Reception (If none of the above)

There are of course separate contact details for True Potential Investments, Auto Enrolment, TPI Pension team and so on.

What are the most common questions you’re asked?

Because the system is so vast, when the phone rings it could be absolutely any query on the other end. In no particular order our more common queries would be advisers needing assistance submitting business to the platform, real time valuation queries and clients who need assistance logging in.

For more information on our products and services, please contact our support team on: 0191 242 4876

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