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April 17, 2015 at 9:28 am #2263
I posted a question about my 1st mentor video on the 9th April (on my mentor page). As I didn’t get a response I thought maybe I had to ask some where else. I noticed another student (Albert) had asked about how to get someone from the NMA to check postings on the discussion forums ( 12th April). When he didn’t get a reply I posted my own question on the 14th April (in case someone had contacted him directly with the information instead of replying on the forum) and gave it a bump on the 15th and 16th. Still no response from the NMA. As those postings were in the welcome thread, I’m hoping that I might get a response if I post as a new question.
1) What is the procedure for checking our mentor pages? How often is this done?
2) How often are these discussion forums checked?
3) Is it possible for someone from the NMA to check our mentor pages on a daily basis to see if we need some help and to pass this on to our mentor? Could someone then at least reply with a message such as – we have passed your message on to your mentor you can expect a reply in a day/ two days/ a week as we are very busy. (Days and weeks of silence are just soul destroying)
4) If none of this is possible could the NMA please explain clearly if there is a procedure to get some kind of response.
I’d also quite like to know how other students are getting on with their mentor pages and videos.
I also just wanted to say this isn’t a complaint, I’m still very excited to have a chance to work with my mentor but some information from the NMA would be helpful.
April 20, 2015 at 3:59 am #2287Hi Mic,
My apologies if you feel as if you’re not getting an adequate response time.
Let me explain how our communication system works. We field every email, mentor page response and –starting now– forum reply every day. I coordinate with students via email and official mentor responses are posted to your private page. Sometimes our mentors do get bogged down and the occasional response gets delayed which is what happened with your April 9th question. I want to apologize for that particular delay. The message was relayed to Steve on that very day but I should have followed up after a couple of days without a response. I’ll be sure to do so going forward.
In the future if you have questions on any part of your mentorship you always have the option of emailing me directly at mentors@artmentors.com
I’m happy to help you with anything you need. Again, apologies for the delay and I’m following up on that question you asked right now.
-Amir Gholi
April 20, 2015 at 8:07 pm #2294Hello Amir
Thank you for replying and offering to explain how your communication system works although, from as a customer’s point of view, I should explain to you that this still doesn’t appear to be working too well at the moment. I completely understand that Steve will be swamped and he will take time to respond to questions. However, until I asked him a question on the 9th April, any enquiries I have had have been general questions directed to the NMA and not to Steve. So my frustration is not with Steve (who is probably run off his feet) but with the communication between the NMA and its customers.
It is not particularly helpful to say that you apologise if I “feel” that I’m not getting an adequate response time because it doesn’t sound like you accept that there is a bit of a problem here as it’s pretty obvious that getting no response from the NMA for 10 days is crazy (I don’t know about other students but this has been fairly typical of my interactions with the NMA since this began)
You should understand that everyone wants this to succeed and students will be very patient and understanding if you keep the lines of communication open and let people know what is going on regularly rather than just maintaining long periods of silence (I have said this before and hoped that you might do this with the new website). It’s great to hear that you are checking e-mails and mentor pages each day and if this is the case please acknowledge receipt of enquiries (even if you can’t answer them when you read them). It seems reasonable for a student to expect a response from the NMA along the lines of, “I’m looking into your enquiry and will get back to you tomorrow/ in a couple of days/ it could take four or five days as we are very busy.”
Anyhow, I’m sure you’re pretty busy with all this so it is not my intention to stress you out further and I’m really not interested in another apology. The mentor site is in its beta stage, so it’ll take a while to go smoothly but my experience of this would be vastly improved if you could just –
1) provide regular updates (even if it’s all going horribly wrong, the long silence and lack of information is soul destroying)
2) acknowledge that you have read an enquiry and give a rough indication when you might be able to answer it (and give an update if you don’t get to answer it within the time you gave). Seems reasonable.
All the best,
Mic
April 22, 2015 at 8:09 am #2304Will do Mic, thank you for your feedback.
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