Change the wording of "Suspended"

[Guest]

Hi

We have a lot of customers who get confused by the "suspended" wording. And to be honest a lot of agents as well. They seem to think that the word "Suspended" means that the product was cancelled and thus that they do not need to pay the outstanding invoice.

I don't know where customers get the idea that they needn't pay their due invoices,  but honestly both agents need to be taught what the difference between Suspended, Terminated and Cancelled is, and our techs have previously made some erroneous implementations due to not understanding the correct button usage either. There are, additionally, a number of posts on this WHMCS Community about people not understanding what these buttons are for.

No one must be confused by the three buttons. They must be intuitive to use and understood by customers without any user guide or explanatory memorandum.

I propose a renaming of at least one of the buttons. Specifically

• Suspende(d) = In Arrears

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Guest

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

You could alter the language files - or the emails pertaining to the actions themselves to help customers 

If you have staff who can't grasp it, I'd recommend posting adverts for new ones 😆

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

You could alter the language files - or the emails pertaining to the actions themselves to help customers 

If you have staff who can't grasp it, I'd recommend posting adverts for new ones 😆

It is a frequent question in these communities and on e.g. Reddit. In my educated opinion, software should be for people and not the reverse.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

On 2/21/2022 at 12:39 PM, HenRex said:

It is a frequent question in these communities and on e.g. Reddit. In my educated opinion, software should be for people and not the reverse.

Far be it from me to praise WHMCS - But I don't see the issue with re-writing emails/lang files. Who'd want a carbon copy of everyone elses business?

[WHMCS John]

Hi @HenRex,

Thanks for sharing this feedback. I'd be interested to learn more about your market area.

The terms Suspended and Terminated are consistent with their usage in most hosting control panels (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin etc). I find that most admins are already familiar with these terms from that context.

In the immediate term, we do have an explanation of common terms in our Glossary here: https://docs.whmcs.com/Glossary#Suspend

 

[Guest]

We can't really expect end users to be system admins and know the difference between Suspended, Terminated and Cancelled.

 

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

I actually agree with John here, they're not just consistent with the hosting industry they're consistent with most industries  - again though you can alter them in the language files / email templates at any time if you feel it would benefit your customers 

I think for the rest of the world, we'd be puzzled 

[yggdrasil]

On 3/1/2022 at 12:31 PM, HenRex said:

We can't really expect end users to be system admins and know the difference between Suspended, Terminated and Cancelled.

 

You have a valid point between Terminated and Cancelled which might confuse some people but not with Suspended.

You can edit the email template that is sent after an account is suspended and try to explain it with more details to the user. Or edit the templates and put a message when a service is suspended, and they log in to check the service on their account.

If your users don't know if they must pay for suspended services, it means you are not properly informing them about how your services work. You can make it noticeably clear on the suspension email or their WHMCS account, that they must pay for suspended services, and they will be reactivated after payment, or make it clear in your billing agreement how services work. You can even put extra text when you invoice or emails before suspension.

There are multiple ways to make sure your customers understand the difference. From your explanation you are not using WHMCS for hosting services, this could be the reason they are confused maybe?

Edited March 4, 2022 by yggdrasil