OVO SMETS2 (S2) Smart Meter installation - Member Guide

Yes I wasn’t able to replicate this on my iOS device. I did notice that the queue position didn’t update when I revisited, but opening up the message box again from the same Help page opened up the chat box with the queue updated. I was 2 from the front without knowing! 

No. apps can certainly have network connectivity when the phone is closed and raise notifications.  It might be a wholly different suit of API calls to do this, but other apps manage it. 

IE if whatsapp can ping me when soemone texts me, then there’s no good reason OVO can’t achieve that either.

The current behaviour may well be related to the way IOS is taking the app out of memory.

Websites and apps behave differently on iOS and Android. Apps are able to use Apple Push Notifications and Firebase Cloud Messaging, websites cannot access that stuff directly.

And websites running inside apps definitely can’t touch it.

@Blastoise186 you understand we are discussing the phone app and not the website right?

Yes I realise they probably implemented the app as a thin wrapper around the website. But that’s their choice of implementation…

The app can access those features, so if a hybrid approach is required then so be it. There's no good reason the app cannot receive push notifications and raise an in-app notification to me.  This doesn’t require the in-app browser to interact with those features. It requires some way for the app to inform the website of a return path for notifications.  But that’s a relatively simple matter of cookies.

I really have very little sympathy with something wasting hours of my time just because the developers didn't consider such obvious "edge cases" like long queue times.

I’m aware of that, but it’s not that simple. OVO did build the app, but the chat system isn’t part of what OVO built, it’s third party. Websites running inside apps still don’t have the ability to send push notifications unless the app in question is a web browser.

The current live chat tool doesn’t support push notifications via the web messenger. However, the provider does have a way to integrate chat directly within an app, which MAY allow notifications. In theory, it’d be in-scope for an Idea here. But it wouldn’t be something that can happen overnight.

@Blastoise186 I have no idea why you think I’m asking for this “overnight”. I’m certainly not describing an “idea” or “new feature”. A working queue that doesn’t randomly kick out some users isn’t a new feature. It’s a bug or design flaw.

I’m talking about getting it fixed. IE: Pass it back to the tech team, tell them how horrible this is for customers and let them prioritise it, cost it, and hopefully fix it in due course.

This was a very bad part of the customer experience. I lost around 4 hours of my time because of this.  It should never happen this way to customers. This is a crucial part of their customer services infrastructure. There’s so many companies that manage get this right, there really is zero excuse for just accepting it the way it is.

As you’ve realised I am a software engineer and I really don’t accept excuses like “our technology doesn’t support giving good customer experience”. My answer will always be the same: fix or swap the technology otherwise risk losing me as a customer.

I give most companies three strikes before leaving and never coming back.  The experience I describe above counts for two. First for not actively monitoring the smart metering for anomalies.  Second for wasting hours of my time just to make a relatively simple support request.

Thanks @Couling we value feedback and we agree that technology should be customer focused. If it doesn’t work for our customers, it should be changed. 

Also, we’re working on delivering Chat in the OVO app.... I believe we are on track for April-June period (Q2).

Hi just wondering if anyone has had a new smart meter fitted recently,  what I should expect, if there is anything I should do beforehand etc

Sorry, meant to say that I am having one fitted on Friday 12th May

Hello, on Tuesday I had an engineer out to swap my smart meter to a newer version, number 2 I believe he said. Before this happened we were normally prepayment customers and top up online. But since the swap, the meter and the new screen is counting up and showing how much we’ve used rather than how much credit we have. Any quick fixes to this please?